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The fight was on. An inner fight
between wanting to fall asleep and shivering in the cold. We had been on
the hochsitz for a couple of
hours, overlooking a small clearing near the
edge of the woods. It was now about 10 PM, and ..."There they are!", my
brother whispered. "Are you sure?" was my stupid reply. Except that it
did not seem so stupid to me at the time. For crying out loud, it was
dark, cold and windy, no moon, no snow, and I could not see a damn thing
down there, except that the pale winter grass did provide a somewhat
lighter background than the woods. Helmut had binoculars, Optolyth 9X63,
but wasn't using them when he announced the pigs. I cradled his drilling,
but did not use the Swarovsky 2.5-10X56 on it to scan the opening. That
was too cumbersome, and also involved too much motion.
Helmut now had the binos in his face, and confirmed the pigs. My pulse
increased a notch. Carefully, the drilling inched into position, and with
the scope at 8X the search for a boar was on. First only pale background,
but then, there, right at the edge of the woods, dark shadows moving
about. While appearing out of focus, I did manage to line one up with the
fat #4 reticle. Only thing was, the beast never stopped, NEVER, until it
had moved out of my radius of action. I was pissed!
For years I had been wanting a wild boar, Russian boar, or as they say in
German: Wildsau, really really bad. Years ago I had invested many
uncomfortable nightly hours waiting on some high stands, and never seen
one. Then my brother tried to get me into pigs on almost every visit since
I had left the old country, but we never saw any. Then, during my last
visit in November '97, he greeted me at the airport with the exciting
news: the pigs had repeatedly visited that clearing, where he had made it
'interesting' for them by leaving some goodies such as oak nuts, kernels
of corn, and guts from small game, all hidden under oak leafs so birds
would not detect the smorgasbord. We 'refilled' that stuff on the second
day of my visit, and confirmed that they had taken it that same night. The
next night found us on the stand, but since no new munchies had been
there, the pigs just moved through, and I did not get a shot. Normally I
would have taken the moving challenge, but this was my first boar, and I
wanted it to be a good shot. But hey, I was two steps closer, had actually
seen wild boar, and even aimed at them. Pigs aren't easy. An old saying
goes that you, on average, sit fifty hours in ambush for every pound of
boar meat. It is truly a trophy, no matter what the size.
We offered more oak nuts, and sure enough, the next morning inspection
showed that the pigs had returned again. We added more yet, and made plans
to return after dinner that evening, to try again. It was a long day of
anticipation. Dinner finally came, and soon we snug back into our ambush
position. There was no inner fight this time, no problem to stay awake.
And bingo, barely a half hour later the same whisper from mister owl (I
now call him that after detecting our quarry in virtual darkness, without
binoculars), "There they are". Again no binoculars. This time I did not
ask, but moved the Krieghoff into action immediately, as my pulse was
noticeably increasing now. Right on! I made out several black shadowy
creatures, obviously busy enjoying our offerings. The #4 settled down on a
boar that had just moved, so I knew which end was forward, in an area I
believed to be the chest. One last check, everything looked about as OK as
it could in this twilight filled with out of focus shapes, and BOOOM,
orange light filled the scope. The RWS 7X65R had spoken its 177 grain
language, and we heard critters crash through the nightly woods to put
distance from us. It was done, I shot my first wild boar.
Or did I?
After waiting the obligatory minutes to let everything settle down, we
turned on the flashlight and inspected the area where the animal had been
when I fired. No pig, no blood. We stepped a little further in the general
flight direction, and nothing. In order to not trample on potential
evidence, we went home, only to return early the next morning with Samson,
his black hunting dog. Samson did not get any scent trail at the shot
site, so we circled the place, pushed through thick stands of young pine
trees, found bedding places where the boars had been, but no blood, no
dead body, nothing. Then doubts came up. Did I really have a good shot? It
looked like it, but Helmut did try to comfort by pointing out that
shooting in poor light conditions is not always what it seems to be. Well,
then, my return trip to the US was the next morning. It was a nice and
short visit, seeing the family again, going hunting with my brother,
bagging five mallards and two deer, and having actually gotten a shot off
at the wild boar. Too bad I missed.
Or did I?
The story would finally end for me on New Years Day, 1998. Prior to that,
for Christmas, I had made my traditional call to Germany. When the
chatting turned to hunting, Helmut told me that another hunter from the
village, at a different spot, had taken a shot at a boar with a 30-06,
also at night, and the beast also took off. They used a trained bloodhound
the next morning, but the dog did not get scent, either. The guys
eventually found some blood, then Helmut looked at the terrain, crawled
through some dense cover, and actually found the dead porker.
Helmut called me on new years, which is unusual, and I knew something was
up. After telling me some hunting stories from recent party hunts, he
finally announced that he had found my wild boar two days earlier. While
'restocking' the pig smorgasbord, he saw a hawk fly up near by. The hawk
had found my dead pig! It had gone no more than 70 yards, and died under a
small bush. In our search, with the dog, we had been walking within 5
steps of it, but none of us detected it. Hunting is not perfect, and here
was proof. Helmut told me that the shot, as best as he could tell, went
diagonal through the lungs, basically where I had aimed. Still, I wish my
first wild boar hunt would have turned out more positive.
I will try again.
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