i was watching the space between the fence and the corn field when i saw the wart-hog about 600-700yards away. i told a friend of mine that the hog seems to be limping. i was watching the place where he went into the cornfields.

not long after that he appeared again, and went back into the bushes, that he first came from. again i saw that he was limping.however, over that distance i couldn't see,that he was missing a leg.

after a while he appeared again and went into the corn fields. since it was beyond my reach we decided to walk and stalk closer. after a while i could make out the edges of the hog.

we pushed our luck and went closer. after a while, i could see enough of the hog through the corn to take a shot. when i took aim realized that he saw us. when the bullet hit, he ran out of the field and over the path between the field and bushes. it stumbled briefly in front of us but got up and disappeared in the bushes.

after some easy tracking we found him about 30 yards from where he stood when the bullet struck. we couldn't believe our eyes when we discovered one leg was missing. i think the age of this hog is about 3years.but it seems the injury must have happened when he was a lot younger.the skin of the stump was smooth and one could see the hog was using it actively.

this only once again strengthened my admiration for the wart-hog's and showed one of the reasons they tend to flourish when other species demise. i hunt wart-hogs about twice a week and they never stop to amaze me.

Interesting story and pic. I really love hunting warties, and am jealous that you get to hunt them twice a week!

I swear I could make a whole safari on hunting warthogs and bushpigs!

maddog

I noticed that they spend a fair amount of time on their knees when feeding, maybe that helped this fellow cope with his, er, shortcoming.
Thumbs up...

That was my pet pig "Stubby"

I've never hunted them...though I suppose I would, I love to hunt for just about anything.., except for my keys.

Are they good table fare..?
Or is it mostly just one of those animals that need constant management ?
Are they wary, and challanging..?

Cartridge, load..?


Great story, such a unique animal.

Thanks for sharing.

the sows are edible. in fact we make russian and cheese sausages from them. we roast the wieners whole. the boar's smells like ghosts breath.

we manage( rather we try to)the hogs in my region. i grew up where i live today and has ben hunting since school days. however it is only in the last 9 years or so that we have had a overpopulation of the wart-hogs.

i shot this one with a 308 180grn. it stood at a skew angle and the penetrating point was behind the rib cage and the exit hole was on the opposite shoulder. i wont go for smaller than 243win, but a couple of my friends take them with 223.

from all the wart-hogs i have hunted a would guess that more than 50% was shot on the run. we have a saying here:"hogs graze at 50mph" so you either take them or loose them when they are visible.if a hog has spotted you you can count to 3 and if you didn't take the shot, it is to late.

i have added two more pictures on is of a hog burrow that a wounded boar slipped into and the other is of my biggest hog of 2009. the barrow was interesting when we went inside on all fours there was about 4inches between my back and the roof of the burrow. the trackers took a spotlight with us.

Good Lord, you've killed "tripod"!

picture of the burrow

a view of one of the burrow entrances, and some of the skinners watching eagerly they know because it is a boar that i will give it to them

LT Dan,

Thanks for that...

No doubt, I would enjoy that.

Do they did their own borrow...or do they use another animals borrow..?

It seems they are a pesky creature, thus the management must be done.

I do appreciate the education, thank you.

Yeah, they use to call that pig "Lucky" not anymore.

Congrats on your hunt..

Did you get a 25% discount?

they "liberate" the burrow from other animals such as artvarks and bat eared foxes. they then enlarge it.

i didn't get a discount. the farmer asked us to come and sort out his wart-hog problem. not that i think it is possible.

I also shot a three legged warthog on my trip. My PH asked me to shoot it as a management/meat kill, thinking it was a recent injury. It turned out to be my only good opportunity for a warthog. I passed up a number of long shots. The leg on mine was off further up, almost at the shoulder and was well healed. We surmised that it was lost in a snare. Wish I would have photographed the short leg. None of my photos show the off side. I've talked to a number of hunters who have shot three legged animals, most had healed stumps, some still had wire from snares still embedded. Life in the bush is tough.
Enjoyed your post.
Bfly

thanks blackfly1, where did you hunt?

Glad we didn't drive off into that burrow when we were driving around looking for Hogs!

mark, look since i know you, and know you will appreciate it i will tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

with reference to the hog in the burrow: we sat near a cattle drinking point when the big boar showed. it was facing me head on and i shot it in the chest. when it turned around and ran i could see the exit wound next to its tail. so it penetrated the full length of the hog. both me, and my hunting buddy saw the exit wound.

now the golden rule of tracking a big wounded wart-hog boar, is to let it cool of. we put in a call for the trackers, toasted the shot, and started tracking the hog. we tracked the hog for about two hours when we saw the blood trail go into the burrow. shortly after this, the trackers caught up with us. they brought some dogs and spades as digging was a possibility seeing that the top soil was soft. so we put away the rifles and went into the burrow. but what i didn't know was that the farmer arrived while i was in the burrow. the problem is he stopped quite close to the opening and left his door open.

so the next thing, one of the dogs took the hog. i tell you the acoustics in that burrow is excellent. so with no doubt in my mind i got out of there. me, 4 trackers and 6 dogs all at once.i knew by the sound that hog made it was emotional about something and he was coming for us.

with all that confusion i popped out of the entrance and ran straight into the farmers open pick-up door, hitting the door on the open edge, with the lower part of my right arm, when i protected my face. at that point i didn't care, i had a slighter bigger problem chasing me.

i realised it was only a mock charge when i saw the farmer and my hunting buddy laughing their ar*ses off. i started laughing as well, but soon felt nauseous. it was then when i remembered my arm. it felt numb and when took a look at it there was a bump the size of an egg on the impact point.

then the pain started, and the farmer declared me out of the hunt.
so we toasted to the injury with brandy and coke. we soon realised that the burrow was to deep so we gave up the search and we toasted to that. we then toasted to the efforts of the trackers, we then toasted the fact that we are hunters. we toasted to a lot of things but mostly i was trying to numb the pain.

i felt the pain the next morning before i woke up. in front of my wife i kept my cool but every time i bumped into things with the arm i felt nauseous again. in the end i gave up and went to see the doctor. the one bone in my arm was fractured. wish we had your 325wsm there.

please tell me that i am not the only one that had something embarrassing happened while on the hunt.

p.s i have pictures of my arm on my cell phone. i will try and post it.

picture of the arm after i removed the bandages

I was in north central Namibia, not far from Outjo. We had been looking for warthogs for the last five or six days. We had seen a lot, but the only real nice tuskers were either too far away, or I couln't get a shot in the tall grass. It had been a rainy fall. We had been hunting most of the day and came to an old stock tank that was leaking into a small puddle. We sat off to the side. A number of gemsbok and springbok came and went. There were a large number of warthogs that came to drink. They were all females with piglets or young boars. As the sun began to set behind the windmill, a warthog came in from our left. He had a bouncing gait that seemed odd. Danie whispered in my ear, 'He's got a broken leg. Shoot him. It's the only humane thing to do.' I put the cross hairs in an opening ahead of him. When he entered the clearing, I fired. He ran, turned and started to head back the trail he came in on. I fired a second round. He tumbled. When we walked over, we saw that the leg had been off for a long time and was completely healed. Both shots had been perfect, passing within an inch of each other.
It was the day of the warthog.
Bfly

Bfly, i suspect that pound for pound the wart-hog is of the toughest animals to kill. i am glad to see you mention that your shots were perfect. but still the hog kept going. i have seen this many times. i shot a sow in march of 09. the bullet hit her to the right of the chest and went through the heart one lung and shattered the opposite shoulder and leg. she stood still when the bullet hit, yet she ran over 100 yards after the bullet exited.

hope you enjoyed it in Namibia the people there are truly hospitable.

Bet the Arm hurt, hurts me to look at it!

I haven't broken any bones while hunting but one time I had a pack mule kick me with both hind feet square in the chest, threw me back into a tree.

Found a photo of the wartie and I.
I am the taller one! We positioned it so that the grass clump masked the bullet hole. First shot was angled from the front. Second shot was on the off side and at about the same angle as the first, only in reverse. Bullets went through good shoulder, heart and lungs. Range was only about 70 yards. Did not take a picture of the side without the leg. Wish I had one.
Dan, I did enjoy the people and country. Truly amazing.
Bfly

Bfly, nice. by judging only on that pic i would say, that boar is about 5 years old. wonder how old the injury was.

tell more about that rifle in the pic.

I'm farmed most of my life, so I tend to look at teeth on the animals that I kill. This guy's teeth were worn pretty flat for a hog. Uusally the ridges of enamel and dentine stand up pretty high. We seldom killed hogs at home that were more than two years old. I can say he was well older than that, from the wear. The hollow in the tusks was pretty small as well.
The rifle is a Ruger 77 tang safety in '06, with a Leupold 2x7. I've killed a bunch of game with it. It's one of six current 77's that I shoot and hunt regularly. Had seven, one in 416T, that I built, but sold when I needed some money. That was a mistake. I really like those early Rugers.
Bfly

Bfly, judging age on a wart-hog on the size and girth of its teeth is not an exact science.(by the way that is what i used when i looked at your pic) in my region a wartie with that teeth would be around 3.5 -5 years old. you and i have actually stumbled across one of the hottest local debates: judging age of a wartie by the size of its teeth.

one (myself) should limit my judgement to hogs from my region. the reason being that in different regions teeth wear faster and slower depending mostly on two things:

1: the hardness/toughness of the top soil of that region
2: the depth of food below the top soil of that region

thus the one regions trophy is the other regions dominant boar.

however the method you used ie: the farmers method is more sound.

have to say i like your rifle collection 06, and 416 together with the H&H calibres are true african classics.

i love to hunt with farmers they tend to look at different things your average hunter observes. you cant help but learn a lot from farmer hunters.