The large gray Razorback that moments before had been in my sights, honed in on the Russian boar as he stepped into the clearing. He didn’t like the Russian following him and his group (five other boars) and his body posture told the story—hairs bristled down his back facing off with the big Russian. The gray boar charged driving the Russian boar into the woods behind the small group.
My husband’s shoulders sagged with disappointment, as the remaining boars scattered, fading into the vibrant green undergrowth. The opportunity seemed to have passed.
The weather all summer had been unbearably hot, but today it was refreshingly cool, enough so to warrant my long sleeve Prois shirt and ducktail rain jacket, which protected me from the heavy morning dew. Despite the ideal weather, the morning had yielded no game to the members of our hunting party. However, my 16-year-old niece, Megan Smith, had downed a 400-plus pound boar the night before and that was on all of our minds when we came in for lunch earlier in the day.
We were hunting in the rolling hills around Clarkrange, Tennessee, and the brush was so thick around our afternoon stand that a hog could stand 15 feet away and still not be visible. Our ears became just as important as our eyes in alerting us to the presence of near by hogs.
Rustling came from the dense brush. “They will come back in,” I whispered to my husband Mark. I was certain that the hogs could not resist the readily available food. More cracking and shuffling came from the underbrush. The boars eased their way back into the clearing with hesitance. The posturing of the larger boars had set the groups nerves on edge. The smaller boars nosed cautiously out into the clearing lured by the available food.
Alert and wary, the Russian boar had circled the group avoiding the large gray dominant boar, he pressed into the clearing away from the others. I quickly took aim as I was centering the boar in my Hawke Deer Pass scope. I squeezed the trigger and the Lightfield Boar Buster slug struck home. Three hundred pounds of wild Russian boar dropped where he had moments before stood. The 1,000 pounds of retained energy at 125 yards was more than enough to be devastating. There was no need for a blood trail or any tracking into the dense brush. The rest of the group scattered into the darkening woods.
Dusk fell on the Clarkrange Hunting Lodge and I had my big boar on the ground. I wasn’t the only one, everyone in our group had success, in no small part due to the superior hunting available at Clarkrange Hunting Lodge and the devastating firepower of the Lightfield Boar Buster slugs we were all using. I filled my freezer with wild hog and brought home a trophy boar to show off.
