Hog wild and 520 pounds
Boar was killing cows on Sweetwater farm
By BOB HODGE, [email protected]
October 29, 2005
A.J. Smith's story sounds like an urban legend. And not even a very good one.
Have you heard the one about the oversized wild boar that was killing a farmer's cows? It seems the big pig would kill a cow, and then disappear into the woods where even experienced bear and boar hunters couldn't find it.
Urban legend? For Smith it was an exasperating and expensive reality.
"In a year-and-half it killed a dozen cows and injured a half-dozen others so bad I had to sell them," said Smith, who owns a 1,050-acre dairy farm in Sweetwater.
"There were no knocked-down fences or anything like that. You've heard the story of the gray ghost? Well, it was just like that."
In early 2004, Smith and some of his farm hands found a cow that had been badly cut around its legs. In short order they started finding more cows with more cuts and had no idea what could be doing it.
Smith's men looked for a fence that could have been doing the damage and found nothing. They searched fields for a stob or hunk of metal and found nothing.
From the looks of the cuts, Smith thought maybe it was his cows with horns that were causing the problems.
"It was cows in the dry field, cows we weren't milking, so we de-horned every cow in the dry field," said Smith.
Cows kept getting cut. Then a couple of them were found dead.
Getting desperate for an answer, Smith and his hands went to wade one of the farm's ponds. He was thinking maybe a hayrack was in the pond and the cows were accidentally gashing themselves when they were going to water.
That was the day he first saw the hog.
"When I saw it I knew right then that's what was doing it," Smith said. "I had a 22-.250 with me that I use to shoot varmints and thought if I could shoot it behind the ear I could kill it."
Smith shot and the hog went down. Before he could shoot again the cattle got in his way and the hog got up and made for some thick Bowater pines that border his property. That's what happens when you bring a boy gun caliber to a man's hunt<g>
That was in the spring of 2004, and that's when the chase began in earnest.
"I called some bear and boar hunters, but they couldn't find a scent," Smith said. "After that he could be gone for three or four weeks, then he would come back in."
The hog's habit of killing cows was an expensive one for Smith. His Holsteins cost about $2,400 a head, and the hog was downing them with regularity. Those that were cut had to be sold for slaughter.
"I would lose $1,800 to $2,000 on those," Smith said.
Smith figured the animal was coming in to eat hay put out for the cattle, and was accidentally killing them as it nudged them out of his way. Most of the dead animals had their bellies ripped open and one had a puncture wound in its neck directly on a main artery.
One night Smith stayed in his field from dusk to dawn. The next morning he found another dead cow just out of sight.
Other than dead or injured cattle, the hog was leaving no other sign except some tracks.
And it had an affinity for that particular herd.
"As far as I know nobody else saw him," Smith said. "He never did bother anybody else's cows."
The hog already had one of Smith's bullets in him and it wasn't long before he took another. After the sixth or seventh cow was found dead, Smith shot him again with the 22-.250.
The hog already moved through the area like a ghost, and after that he should have been one.
"I shot him right between the eyes," Smith said. "He went down, but got back up got back in the thicket. I went in after him expecting to find him in there dead." Still hasn't learned, time to get a bigger hammer
Smith had called Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency and they told him to handle the problem best he could. Feral hog season is open year-round in the state, but since this particular animal was causing a major depredation problem he would have been fair game anyway.
He also spoke with the Monroe County Sheriff's Department, but no one ever thought a human was behind the cattle killings. The sheriff and some of his deputies got involved in a more unofficial capacity.
"We actually had been out there and hunted the hogs ourselves," said Rusty Vineyard, chief deputy in Monroe County. "Somebody would see him and we would go out and try to track him."
Smith called on David Mashburn of Sweetwater, a longtime bear and boar hunter. Mashburn began spending so much time at the Smith farm even the wife of a veteran hunter began noticing his time away from home.
"I was out there a lot," Mashburn said. "My wife was about to kill me."
At one point while he was hunting the hog, Mashburn showed Smith a picture of a 430-pount hog Mashburn had recently killed. It was a huge hog by anyone's standards except Smith's.
"I looked at that picture and, if somebody had a gun to my head, I would have told them this hog was a good 100 or 120 pounds heavier," Smith said. "I don't think he believed me."
But seeing is believing, and everybody finally got a chance to see the hog nine days ago.
The hog continued downing cattle through much of this year and had even been shot again. One of Smith's sons, Jamey, shot it with a .243 in August. Again the hog went down and, again, it got up and disappeared. What's with all these .22 cals? Carry a REAL GUN!
While Smith was in South Dakota pheasant hunting with Knoxvillian Steve Bean - the hog hunting at home was tough, but it's a good year for pheasants in South Dakota - the hog killed another cow.
That morning, Mashburn was in the field and saw the downed cow and figured it was either giving birth or had been killed.
"It was just getting light and I was looking at the dead cow through my scope," Mashburn said. "I could see the white of it. One time I looked back at it and it had turned black."
The black was the hog back at the scene of his crime.
Mashburn shot the hog four times with his 30-06. The big porker's 18-month rampage was over, but just how big it was stunned even an experienced hunter like Mashburn.
Smith's gestimate of its weight was close: The hog weighed 520 pounds and the tusks that were gashing his cows were 33/4 inches long.
"I've never seen a hog like that," Mashburn said. "I really don't think it is a feral hog. If TWRA would do a DNA test, I think they would find out it's just about 100 percent pure Russian."
The story caused a sensation in Sweetwater. Wild hogs aren't uncommon in Monroe County, but this one was making his living on the western side of Interstate 75.
Smith has been a dairy farmer for all of his 58 years, and he's never experienced anything like it.
"There never were any knocked-down fences or anything," Smith said. "It's unreal. At first, I thought he was just trying to get the cows out of the way, nudge them away from the hay, but I think he was intentionally killing them. He just killed too many of them."
Mashburn has come up with a different theory.
With the exception of the cow that was jabbed in the neck, nearly all of the wounds on the dead cows were identical. They died after being stabbed in the stomach by one of the nearly 4-inch long tusks.
Mashburn believes the boar was trying to get milk from the cows and was killing them accidentally.
"He was almost too precise the way he was cutting them," Mashburn said. "I think those cows raised that hog. I think be began to nurse those cows and just got too big. He didn't know he was hurting them."
As evidence Mashburn points to the cows not being frightened when the hog came in the field. He said it was acting more protective than aggressive to the cow that it killed the night before.
"He wasn't eating them and he never killed a calf," Mashburn said. "And you know, after I shot him those cows acted protective of that old hog."
There's no way of knowing if Mashburn's theory is a good one. Vineyard believes the hog was just rooting the cows out of his way and killing them, as does Smith.
But in the death of the cows and the eventual death of the hog, Mashburn believes he found a metaphor for life.
"How many people are like that old hog," he said. "They're living their lives, not realizing how their actions may be hurting others. We've all known people who live like that."
Maybe the legend should really be: Have you heard the one about the hog that thought it was a cow?
Boar was killing cows on Sweetwater farm
By BOB HODGE, [email protected]
October 29, 2005
A.J. Smith's story sounds like an urban legend. And not even a very good one.
Have you heard the one about the oversized wild boar that was killing a farmer's cows? It seems the big pig would kill a cow, and then disappear into the woods where even experienced bear and boar hunters couldn't find it.
Urban legend? For Smith it was an exasperating and expensive reality.
"In a year-and-half it killed a dozen cows and injured a half-dozen others so bad I had to sell them," said Smith, who owns a 1,050-acre dairy farm in Sweetwater.
"There were no knocked-down fences or anything like that. You've heard the story of the gray ghost? Well, it was just like that."
In early 2004, Smith and some of his farm hands found a cow that had been badly cut around its legs. In short order they started finding more cows with more cuts and had no idea what could be doing it.
Smith's men looked for a fence that could have been doing the damage and found nothing. They searched fields for a stob or hunk of metal and found nothing.
From the looks of the cuts, Smith thought maybe it was his cows with horns that were causing the problems.
"It was cows in the dry field, cows we weren't milking, so we de-horned every cow in the dry field," said Smith.
Cows kept getting cut. Then a couple of them were found dead.
Getting desperate for an answer, Smith and his hands went to wade one of the farm's ponds. He was thinking maybe a hayrack was in the pond and the cows were accidentally gashing themselves when they were going to water.
That was the day he first saw the hog.
"When I saw it I knew right then that's what was doing it," Smith said. "I had a 22-.250 with me that I use to shoot varmints and thought if I could shoot it behind the ear I could kill it."
Smith shot and the hog went down. Before he could shoot again the cattle got in his way and the hog got up and made for some thick Bowater pines that border his property. That's what happens when you bring a boy gun caliber to a man's hunt<g>
That was in the spring of 2004, and that's when the chase began in earnest.
"I called some bear and boar hunters, but they couldn't find a scent," Smith said. "After that he could be gone for three or four weeks, then he would come back in."
The hog's habit of killing cows was an expensive one for Smith. His Holsteins cost about $2,400 a head, and the hog was downing them with regularity. Those that were cut had to be sold for slaughter.
"I would lose $1,800 to $2,000 on those," Smith said.
Smith figured the animal was coming in to eat hay put out for the cattle, and was accidentally killing them as it nudged them out of his way. Most of the dead animals had their bellies ripped open and one had a puncture wound in its neck directly on a main artery.
One night Smith stayed in his field from dusk to dawn. The next morning he found another dead cow just out of sight.
Other than dead or injured cattle, the hog was leaving no other sign except some tracks.
And it had an affinity for that particular herd.
"As far as I know nobody else saw him," Smith said. "He never did bother anybody else's cows."
The hog already had one of Smith's bullets in him and it wasn't long before he took another. After the sixth or seventh cow was found dead, Smith shot him again with the 22-.250.
The hog already moved through the area like a ghost, and after that he should have been one.
"I shot him right between the eyes," Smith said. "He went down, but got back up got back in the thicket. I went in after him expecting to find him in there dead." Still hasn't learned, time to get a bigger hammer
Smith had called Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency and they told him to handle the problem best he could. Feral hog season is open year-round in the state, but since this particular animal was causing a major depredation problem he would have been fair game anyway.
He also spoke with the Monroe County Sheriff's Department, but no one ever thought a human was behind the cattle killings. The sheriff and some of his deputies got involved in a more unofficial capacity.
"We actually had been out there and hunted the hogs ourselves," said Rusty Vineyard, chief deputy in Monroe County. "Somebody would see him and we would go out and try to track him."
Smith called on David Mashburn of Sweetwater, a longtime bear and boar hunter. Mashburn began spending so much time at the Smith farm even the wife of a veteran hunter began noticing his time away from home.
"I was out there a lot," Mashburn said. "My wife was about to kill me."
At one point while he was hunting the hog, Mashburn showed Smith a picture of a 430-pount hog Mashburn had recently killed. It was a huge hog by anyone's standards except Smith's.
"I looked at that picture and, if somebody had a gun to my head, I would have told them this hog was a good 100 or 120 pounds heavier," Smith said. "I don't think he believed me."
But seeing is believing, and everybody finally got a chance to see the hog nine days ago.
The hog continued downing cattle through much of this year and had even been shot again. One of Smith's sons, Jamey, shot it with a .243 in August. Again the hog went down and, again, it got up and disappeared. What's with all these .22 cals? Carry a REAL GUN!
While Smith was in South Dakota pheasant hunting with Knoxvillian Steve Bean - the hog hunting at home was tough, but it's a good year for pheasants in South Dakota - the hog killed another cow.
That morning, Mashburn was in the field and saw the downed cow and figured it was either giving birth or had been killed.
"It was just getting light and I was looking at the dead cow through my scope," Mashburn said. "I could see the white of it. One time I looked back at it and it had turned black."
The black was the hog back at the scene of his crime.
Mashburn shot the hog four times with his 30-06. The big porker's 18-month rampage was over, but just how big it was stunned even an experienced hunter like Mashburn.
Smith's gestimate of its weight was close: The hog weighed 520 pounds and the tusks that were gashing his cows were 33/4 inches long.
"I've never seen a hog like that," Mashburn said. "I really don't think it is a feral hog. If TWRA would do a DNA test, I think they would find out it's just about 100 percent pure Russian."
The story caused a sensation in Sweetwater. Wild hogs aren't uncommon in Monroe County, but this one was making his living on the western side of Interstate 75.
Smith has been a dairy farmer for all of his 58 years, and he's never experienced anything like it.
"There never were any knocked-down fences or anything," Smith said. "It's unreal. At first, I thought he was just trying to get the cows out of the way, nudge them away from the hay, but I think he was intentionally killing them. He just killed too many of them."
Mashburn has come up with a different theory.
With the exception of the cow that was jabbed in the neck, nearly all of the wounds on the dead cows were identical. They died after being stabbed in the stomach by one of the nearly 4-inch long tusks.
Mashburn believes the boar was trying to get milk from the cows and was killing them accidentally.
"He was almost too precise the way he was cutting them," Mashburn said. "I think those cows raised that hog. I think be began to nurse those cows and just got too big. He didn't know he was hurting them."
As evidence Mashburn points to the cows not being frightened when the hog came in the field. He said it was acting more protective than aggressive to the cow that it killed the night before.
"He wasn't eating them and he never killed a calf," Mashburn said. "And you know, after I shot him those cows acted protective of that old hog."
There's no way of knowing if Mashburn's theory is a good one. Vineyard believes the hog was just rooting the cows out of his way and killing them, as does Smith.
But in the death of the cows and the eventual death of the hog, Mashburn believes he found a metaphor for life.
"How many people are like that old hog," he said. "They're living their lives, not realizing how their actions may be hurting others. We've all known people who live like that."
Maybe the legend should really be: Have you heard the one about the hog that thought it was a cow?
absolutely amazing, if true. 
Anything so dangerous that it can *accidentally* kill a COW just through carelessness - imagine what it can do if it wants to hurt you. I'm thinking that my .45 colt revolver that is my theoretical 'hog defense handgun' is a mere joke.
