Pig hunting Hawaii style

[EvBouret]

Uncle Ji,

Those surplus military bayonets make excellent pig pokers...I used one for a few hunts then left it where we were skinning the hog. Couldn't find it the next time we went up. Only problem I had was that it was long and caught on brush.

My favorite pig poker is my Buck 119, then one with the blood channel. I think it has a 6" blade and kills em fast.

 

[foldeminflight]

Hey Doc Cherry,
I'm in, color me there, whateva. My mom live is Volcano area and I'll be flying into Hilo. Do you have all the current regs for birds? I certainly would like to hunt with you while I'm there

 

[Wailer]

Spears and cane knives (long handled machete) that what use in the Fiji Islands, a swift chop to the back will drop um. Imagine this waiting in a trail, with dogs and hunters driving them to you, with spear in hand.

 

[doccherry]

foldeminflight:

The bird season ends a week from Monday. From then until November, it's pig, sheep, goat, and spring turkey. The best time to come to the Big Island to hunt, in my opinion, is November. You can hunt 3 kinds of francolin, 3 kinds of pheasant, several kinds of quail, chukar, one turkey per day, and the big mammals. Where I hunt on Mauna Kea, you can reasonably expect to get a couple pheasants, 3 large Erkel's francolin, several quail, a couple chukars, and a 50% chance of a turkey on a single morning hunt if you're willing to walk. Then, on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday, you can hunt mammals or you can go to Laupahoehoe on Saturday or Sunday and hunt pigs. It's an easy drive from Volcano, easier than from Kona, to get to Laupahoehoe You'd have a ball and I'd be happy to show you the ropes.

 

[Nic Barca]

This was by far the funniest topic I have read today.

We call boars like that "legends". The hunters you encoundered either used the machettes to stab them as Evan said, or more likely had smaller knives in there pocket to stab them. Another option was that one of them had a gun, noticed you coming and stashed it in the bushes.

Don't ever try hacking an animal with a macheti! You can traumatize yourself for life. I tried it on a wounded goat onetime and not only was it a crazy bloody mess but it didn't even kill the screeming goat. I still had to take out my skinning knife to kill it. Personaly I think a machetti would barely pierce the hide of a pig if you tried to hack it. You might also hack one of your dogs on accident.

 

[Nic Barca]

We have dogs get cut up all the time, like once every few trips. We usually do not take the dogs to a vet. That would cost way too much money. Instead, if it's really bad, we might staple it shut or stich it and give the dogs some antibiotics. Once or twice we even cauderized the wound with a heated knife in order to save the dog's life. I can't recall a dog dieing lator on due to it's wounds. If the pig doesn't kill it on the spot, it's got a good chance of surviving. Even dogs with their guts hanging out can usually be saved so long as nothings been damaged inside. There's only been a couple instances where we felt we needed help and took a dog to a vet. The vet showed my friend a lot of what he now knows about treating dogs.

There are a few ways to hunt with dogs but the basic dog and knife scenario is that you have a pack of dogs, cut vests or not (we don't use cut vests and we loose very few dogs), and the best dogs search for the pigs while the junker dogs stay near you. You need to lead the dogs to the areas with fresh pig sign. At the first bark, the other dogs will answer and run in the direction of the bark. You wait to hear the grab before moving in that direction. When it sounds like they have the pig stopped, which you can tell by hearing multiple dogs barking excitedly at once, or by screeming or roaring of the pig or by dogs crying when the pig hits them, or dogs growling while they bite. You run like hell in that direction and when you get there, if the dogs have it "pinned" you move in from a safe angle, wait for an opening between two dogs and move in for the kill. If the pig can still move around, then the first hunter there needs to grab the back legs to imobilize it. Another hunter inserts a knife in the armpit where there is no pad and cuts up into the heart. A five inch knife will have a pig dead just as fast as shooting it through both lungs will. The pig falls and then you calm the dogs down to get them to stop attacking. Or most people will hit the dogs but we feel we might be scolding them for doing what we want them to do. That's on Kauai.

On the big island, seems like a lot of hunters use bay dogs because the pigs do not know what dogs and people are and will stop to fight rather than run miles. People I hunt with just shoot the pig. If it is a big boar, the dogs just bay it. Interestingly, their dogs back off on command allowing for a clean shot, something most of our kauai dogs would never do.

In any case, pig hunting with dog and knife is not for the faint of heart. We have very little fear of boars (although I would have some fear for the pig you mentioned, haha) and one friend of mine has freebladed a boar running past him and never got it, actually killed another boar with just his knife when it cornered and rushed him repeatedly, somehow giving him only a scratch on the rist, and I heard he did it again a couple months ago. I have crawled in caves to stab pigs and been face to face with them while no dogs on more than a few occasions. Sometime's it is like fighting, you need to know when to move in when an opening presents its self.

 

[larrysogla]

You knife fighters are FEARLESS!!! I appreciate the tales of excitement in rushing in to blade the boar that is fully alert and fully adrenalized. Heck, the nearest I would come to it is reading it in print. I salute you guys. You guys are A-OK!!!!! As for Larry-O and his scrawny neck, a primer, lots of gunpowder and a heavy missile blasting out of the gun barrel is the only way I would reach out and touch that crazed boar. Whoooo-boy, you guys are GREAT!!!!! 'Nuff said.

 

[Nic Barca]

Oh yeah! and I should mention that if a dog has a cut/stab, it will actually heal up very well on it's own. The dog will lick it clean and it closes up and heals on it's own pretty quickly like within two weeks it will be completely healed.

 

[bayedsolid]

Hey Nic....Maybe if you tell some more hunting stories and post some pictures of the dog's guts hanging out, us hog doggers can all keep this wonderful reputation going strong.

....and Doc....Most guys that run dogs are way full of crap.

 

[Nic Barca]

What reputation is that? Dogs will get cut on occasion, that's just the facts about it. Sorry Bayed solid. Sometimes I forget that anti's are targeting you guys. They can't do nothing about it here. It's so thick in many places here that that's the only way that works good.

 

[EvBouret]

Im not gonna get in on this because I agree with both of you, but for the record...Nic doesn't need to be full of crap. He's got stories that'll make your heart stop since he was 13.

EDIT: You're right though bayedsolid...most dog hunters I've met lie like their life depended on it, or at least exaggerate

 

[bayedsolid]

It's not that big of a deal, but most people don't want to hear the story of gutted dogs...and we certainly don't need any negative publicity. And posting those types of stories on the internet certainly isn't going to do any good for either one of us. I also wasn't refering to Nic with the comment about being full of crap. I was just telling doc, refering the hunters he ran into, not to believe every story some guy with dogs tells him. My experience is most guys become self proclaimed experts the second they get a dog even though they don't ever catch a damn thing.

 

[Nic Barca]

Yeah, I hear yah. Some of my friends seem like they are competing with one another on who is the better boar hunter. "I killed four boars this weekend with three inch ivories!" Next person says they caught five and goes on to tell a story in detail.

I've lost trust with a few of them.

Sorry about the cut dog stuff. I was just trying to save them money on taking a dog to a vet if it's wound would likely heal over on it's own. I realize now that these guys are not experienced with this sort of stuff and would gladly (and rightfully) pay a vet to fix up a gash on their beloved bird dog. Sorry about mentioning "gutted." I never told a story. I just meant it as the extreme that can still be fixed yourself. I forgot how politically correct everybody tries to be on these forums.

I really didn't read the entire topic until just now and skipped throught he coversation between rifleman and MikenSoCo, and feel I need to correct myself. so now I'm gonna sound like I was exagerating in my post.

To clarify: when "I said that I see dogs get cut up all the time" I didn't mean it quite like that. I see dogs get wounds all the time. Like once every three trips a dog will get a stab wound or a few in it's cheak or other fleshy area. I have actually only seen dogs get sliced up badly on maybe 10 occasions and they all recovered nicely without veterenary help and were coming along with us within 2 weeks to a month. That's pretty good considering I have been going almost every weekend for three years strait and my hunting partners and I have caught probably 75 to 100 dangerous boars in that time.

 

[EvBouret]

You guys took Kai to the vet didn't you?

 

[Nic Barca]

I can't remember. Which time was that? Eh what ever happened to that dog, did Bass sell her or something? Didn't he sell her while she was pregnant? I miss my Kai Baby Girl, she was a lovable mutt. So I wouldn't be surprized if he did.

 

[Hntrjohn]

Some of those roads sound familar. My Mom lived on Kahualani RD. wich is up the hill a little bit. She sold that house a year ago. Stll has one by Ocean View.

I had fun hunting hogs there when I visited her. When the dogd bayed a 30-40 # pig, we casterated it then let it go.

 

[AmericanPitBullTerrier]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Hntrjohn @ May 26 2006, 03:59 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div>

When the dogd bayed a 30-40 # pig, we casterated it then let it go.[/b]

What a Trophy!
(Note to Self: Don't wear pig costumes within 100 miles near Hntrjohn.)

 

[beastslayer]

This is my kind of hunt... rather than having my face messed up in a lousy vehicular accident.

I'll stop at going into a cave facing an angry boar though. There is just not too much room to maneuver is case of a face down with a boar with 4-inch cutters.

 

[EvBouret]

It wasn't a trophy then. But I'd imagine the thing must be giant by now. Barrs are supposed to grow much bigger than boars.