Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Italian Hunter Killed by Wild Boar That He’d Just Shot

Growing up in the swamps of Central Florida, I killed my share.
Had a couple that were pretty dammed exciting at the time of the kill, now they are just more like interesting memories.

We had them all around us, always kept one in the freezer, just took them as needed. We called them wild boar but I suppose they were feral hogs, they were all black, they all had tusks.

I gonna bore ya with some details to set this up so you might understand how I wound up in the predicament I did.

At the ripe age of 14 I'd landed a job with a real estate developer that was subdivding a island in Tsala Apopka Lake.
The island had a small cabin on it that I'd cleaned up and setup as my personal camping/hunting hangout. By water, it was about 8 or 10 miles from our home.

I pulled up to 'my' cabin one day and there was a big f'in Lots For Sale sign nailed up, I gathered all my gear from the cabin, loaded my little skiff and hauled azz home.
2 hours later this realtor dude pulls up in our backyard in his boat claiming I'd stolen his stuff.
He'd seen me leaving with my loaded skiff and hunted me down.

We argued, we talked, 45 minutes later I was employed by him.

He had needs, he needed a barge that'd haul a tractor, I knew where one was scuttled in the swamp.
He needed someone wasn't afraid of snakes and spiders and such to help with his surveyors. They were just starting to break the island up into lots and there were 3 monuments they needed to find that were submerged due to high-water.

My job was to wade around barefooted in chest deep water feeling for these 3 inch round brass monuments with my feet while staying clear of the occasional snakes and gators that were there.

Nuttin' to it, I was his man.

I worked throughout the entire survey cutting through 6 to 10 foot high old growth palmetto creating acer and a half lots out of a 30 acer island.

Once the survey was complete we had to cut 10ft wide trails down every lot line and build docks were every other lot line met the water.
Other than the survey company, that was long gone, I was the only one that knew where everything was, he let me hire two guys to help and away we went cutting through the palmettos and building the docks.

I had to take my boat to work everyday, Tsala Apopka Lake is mostly made up of Sawgrass and shallow lillypads with a small percentage of open lakes.

Here is a image of the island we developed, the small kicker trails or canals tie everything together, the upper right of this image shows a canal disappearing into the hazy horizon, that's the one I traveled everyday to get to work.



Still with me? lol

Every night I took home half a dozen machetes and two homelite chainsaws to sharpen for the following days work.

So it was a typical morning and I was rippin' down the kicker trails heading to work in my little 12ft flatbottom skiff and I came up on this nice 250 pound or so hog swimming the trail I was in.

I didn't have a gun, I kept a 12ga. on the island for a snake gun, all I had in the skiff was the machetes and chainsaws.

I got up beside him cutting him off from the shallow area beside the kicker trail and started hacking away with one of the freshly sharpened machetes.
The cuts were deep but he kept swimming and I kept circling him keeping him in deeper water and I kept hacking away at him.

He kept trying to get to the shallows where his rear legs could touch the bottom. If he were to make it, he'd be able to cover ground more quickly and there was a palmetto laden island about 50 yards away. The wounds I was inflicting on him would eventually be fatal but I didn't have the time to wait on him to bleed out and then drag him outta the dam palmetto.

I just couldn't get the machete through his backbone but I kept tryin', I was a 85 pound 14 year old skinny little fu_cker.

There just wasn't nothing vital on the back side of his backbone to stop him.

The hog started getting desperate and was trying to get in the skiff with me. If I let him hook a leg over the edge of my little boat he'd of turned me over for sure.

I had to keep a hand on the tiller to keep the boat maneuvered to both keep him in deep water and be able to keep him close enough to chop on while keeping him from trying to climb in with me.

We were both growing pretty tired of the entire event, him probably more so than me considering he had huge gashes in his back from his ears down to the hump on his back.

I only had one option at that point, I fired up one of the homelite chainsaws. It took a couple attempts but once I got that bar sunk in him good he was done.

I drug him over to the shore of the little island he'd been trying to get to and with the boat tipped on its side I was able to wrestle him in and off to work I went.

The other guys were already on the island waiting on me to show up with the tools when I arrived.
They were giving me some odd looks as I pulled up to the dock, they were like 'dude you're all bloody', that chainsaw had me covered with blood spray. I was on a bit of a adrenal rush I guess and really hadn't taken notice.

Jumped in the lake and cleaned up and off to work I went.

Reading that story anyone else have the Doors "The End" playing in their head?

Hawkeye, You wanted a closer look at the pistol on the spotted pig, here's a closer look .45 LC's. Rio7