A hog hunt last weekend turned into an episode out of “Tarzan” when two men plunged into a river after a wild boar and one of them stabbed it to death.
Eight Pike County hog hunters turned their dogs loose at daylight Saturday morning off Martin Road, said Jared Brister of McComb.
“They bayed the hog in like five minutes under some big oak trees that had blowed over from Katrina,” said Brister, a McComb fireman who’s been hunting wild hogs for about a year now.
The boar broke and ran, plunging off an 8-foot bank into a deep section of the Tangipahoa River.
“Chris Hudson and I jumped into the river and swam over to him. When he got to the other bank he turned and tried to swim back,” Brister said, noting the far bank was too steep to climb.
“I got him by the back legs and Chris got a back leg and I stabbed him with a knife. We actually just rode him around and eventually he got tired out.”
Brister stabbed the boar on the right side behind the front shoulders. He was using a 6-inch sheath knife after losing his 10-inch “pig-sticker” in the oak blowdown.
“He was trying to get us,” Brister said. “Matter of fact, he killed one of David Dunaway’s bulldogs while we were in the river.”
The animal weighed an estimated 300 pounds and sported 4-inch tusks.
“It’s more exciting than fighting a house fire, I’ll put it that way,” said Brister, a five-year McComb Fire Department employee.
“I killed an 11-point (buck) last year. You get excited shooting something, but being able to kill it with a knife is maybe like the Indians used to do. It’s pretty exciting.”
After the hog expired, the men castrated it, gutted it and sank it in the water to keep it cool while they resumed the hunt.
A little while later, Clay Cooper dispatched a 50-pounder, also with a knife.
The hunters deliberately use knives to avoid shooting a dog in the melee.
“You can’t really shoot them because the dogs are running around barking at them,” Brister said, noting the men use Plott hounds to run hogs and bulldogs to catch them.
Brister grilled some shoulder meat at the firehouse Thursday night. “It was real good,” he said. “I think wild boar cooked right is just as good if not better than a tame hog to me.”
Also participating in the hunt were Joe Hodges, Raymond Mason, Derek Mason and Kyle Brooks.
