The Rock Wall

I was getting in my pickup to leave Shopko Thursday, when Darrell Eason came over to tell me about a huge boar he had just seen on a trailer at the Conservation headquarters. Darrell is a life long hunter so I knew he wasn’t exaggerating.

I called Conservation and they had already taken pictures of the animal and moved it. I asked for a photo and a story.

Stacia Whitaker supplied both. Then she sent another email: “Here are a couple of suggestions for titles:  ‘Sooie’, ‘Boaring Story’. Please refrain from words that are linked to hunting (trophy, bagged, etc.) as this hog was captured, not hunted.”

I had already edited the article before I received her email, but I thought she had some interesting suggestions. I used her story verbatim so it did not have any taboo words in it.

We raised hogs when I was a kid. In fact, hogs were one of my FFA projects that earned me my State Farmer Degree. No one even thought about applying for the American Degree. Until James and Jerry Brackenridge made American Farmer, Paul Tinsley, a neighbor of Dad’s family near the Eight Mile Corner, was the only one from here who had attained that degree. Charlie Tinsley, my high school chemistry teacher, was Paul’s younger brother.

The “Taberville Hog” brought back memories of a Duroc boar we had about that size. He developed a knack for opening the corn crib door at the back of the west side of our barn. One day I peeked into the west side of the barn from the south door and didn’t see him so I assumed he was in the corn crib again. I marched back to the corn crib door and it was still fastened.

When I turned to leave, I had awakened the big ol’ boar who had been sleeping along the west wall. He woke up cranky and forced me to climb the wall to the hayloft backwards, kicking at him until I gained a safe altitude. I was wearing work shoes and he put one of his two-inch tusks through the toe of the right one. Just missed my foot.

An hour or so later, he was tied up with a baling wire on his upper jaw, pulling back and squealing while I used bolt cutters to remove his tusks. I kept those in a little jar for several years but lost them in one of my moves.

So I have no desire to cross the path of a feral hog the size that the MDC employee got.

Some guys hunt hogs that size with a knife. The hog’s ears are tender and hounds will catch and hold it until the hunter arrives. No thank you.

– I hope you noticed the list we printed last week of gifts for the first baby born in 2019. If you know someone who is in the running, please call the Sun office as soon as the baby is born. Since many babies are born in the middle of the night, you can wait until office hours. If it’s a weekend, call us at home – 876-2987 – after daylight. KL