Hunt Lake Manitoba Narrows

Before dawn , as I crept to my stand in the big timber behind the levee along the Mississippi  I kept stumbling over rough places where fresh earth had been rooted up.  I knew what it meant and because I was also remembering the story related to me by the turkey hunter , I was mildly uneasy.  I did not want that kind of trouble.

It was the spring gobbler season in Mississippi .  The dawn woods was cold and damp.  I sat now with my back against the bole of a large tree , shivering listening intently as the sun began to break through.  The evening before I had put a big gobbler to bed in this area.  I was hoping to hear him fly down down from his roost and speak to his hens

Presently I heard something.  Not the sound of wings.   To noisy for a deer.  Then I saw it , as rough looking a customer, as anyone would ever care to meet.  A long snouted hog, with sizable  tusks curling out of its distended lips , was mashing its way through the undergrowth.  Its bristles were long and almost shaggy.  It was a leggy mean beast,  and I knew that it was sure to have an unpredictable temper.  I was sure whether from smallness of brain or from the knowledge of its own brute power, it feared nothing.  Sort of like a lost criminal or a most foolish person who always had to win and might have the refrain ” I don;t work for free,,,, I don’t work for free”.

The 20 gauge in my hands, seemed awfully small right then.  The hog came on , turned to screw up its tiny eyes and stare towards momentarily.  I guessed and estimated him or it at 150 lbs.  Presently it emitted  a small grunt and went on its way. coming out of cover and moving across the open woods. I was most amazed  at the stealthy quiet with which it drifted away.  And to my memory I could hear my turkey hunting friend telling his fabled story.

Hunt Lake Manitoba Narrows

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