Golfing For Pork

Golfing For Pork by Razor Dobbs
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I crash onward through the seemingly endless entanglement of south Texas thorn scrub toward the huge fight ahead. Thorns scratch at my clothes, hands and face.

The saber punishment, which would be a deterrent on any other type of escapade, is an instigator of excitement, like a motivational speaker via Mother Nature’s acupuncture. The pain barometer tells me I’m alive and feeling everything.

Briefly my hair is caught in a twist of black brush and I pull it free. I hear a laugh from behind me, it’s Paul our videographer. He’s got the video camera tucked at his side like a football, plowing behind me through hell’s maze. I’m sure he’s somehow keeping the camera steady and rolling like he has many times before.

The dogs wail and circle a black mass that’s under a canopy of cat claw and mesquite twenty yards ahead. As we close in to 10 yards the black mass takes the shape of a boar. A huge black boar.

The boar charges one of the yellow dogs, swiping his tusks using them like the horns of a rodeo bull. The dog cuts left and the boar cuts right and black beast makes his escape.

We make a quarter-mile semi-circle when the dogs bay the boar again and clamor the beast with ear ringing barks. The boar looks confused, spinning in circles like a tusk and meat tornado breaking branches like matchsticks. He stops, as if to catch his breath, then begins to chomp his jaws together as if sizing uphis adversaries.

The chatter of his gnashing tusk shoots me a full dose of adrenalin and it kills my exhaustion. My eyes now so wide it feels they will bleed or pop out of socket.

I knock an arrow to my bow string and push through the scrub until I find an open shot just six yards from the boar. I can feel the thorns pulling and tearing at my skin but I’m feeling no pain.

The boar charges at the white dog then breaks into a mad spin wheeling his tusks like butterfly knives. The yellow dog nips at his rump and he twist back in a fraction of a second slashing and grunting.

I pull the arrow back to the corner of my mouth. The boar suddenly freezes like a statue. Through a football sized opening in the brush, I pick a spot just at the crease of the boars shoulder then release.

The pink fletched arrow vanishes in the darkness of the beast. Upon impact the boar lets out a loud grunt and runs directly at four of the dogs scattering them like chickens.

As the blood spills profusely from the apparent double lung arrow hit the boar cuts back and charges me dead on. There is no time to draw the Glock 10mm handgun holstered on my hip. I bend at the knees and put my hands out like a defensive back preparing to zig when he zags.

With the boar less than 3 feet away and closing, I bail to the right behind a narrow oak tree. Jesse, my guide, grabs Paul by the shoulders and throws him to the side just in time to escape the tusks of the arrowed beast.

The boar vanishes into the heavy south Texas vegetation with the dogs hot on his tail. “He’s dead on his feet,” I yell to Paul.

We push through 60 yards of blood stained vegetation where we find the dead boar piled up.

At the truck, over a round of water, I look at my thorn littered pants along with the scratches on my face and hands. The allure of it all rejuvenates me.

I’m ready to hunt for another hog, then maybe another and another.

I smile as I pull a thorn from my thigh. “This beats the hell out of golf,” I say to Paul.

“What’s golf?” Paul replies.