My buddy Dale had been telling me for two years to come down to Texas and shoot some pigs. “They’re everywhere,” he said. “You can’t miss. It’s not hunting, it’s pest control.”
I believed him. I’m not proud of that.
I drove sixteen hours from Missouri to a patch of public land near the Red River with a .308 I’d zeroed at a hundred yards off a bench, a Walmart headlamp, and the kind of confidence that comes from having never done something before. I figured I’d be back at the motel by noon with a cooler full of pork.
I was not back at the motel by noon.
Day One: The Wind Said No
I got to the trailhead before sunrise, which felt like the right move. Real hunter stuff. Nobody else was parked there, which I took as a good sign. The place was all scrub oak and mesquite, flat enough to walk but thick enough that you couldn’t see more than fifty yards in any direction.
I walked for maybe an hour, scanning with my binoculars, feeling like I was in a hunting magazine. Then I found sign. Lots of it. Rooted-up ground everywhere, like someone had taken a rototiller to the dirt. Fresh tracks. I got low, moved slow, chambered a round.
Nothing. I sat against a tree for two hours. Then I walked some more. Then I sat again. By three in the afternoon I was sunburned, covered in sweat, and had seen exactly zero pigs.
It took me until the drive back to the motel to realize what I’d done wrong. I’d been walking straight into the wind in the morning, which was good, but when I changed direction around noon I never adjusted. The wind had shifted south, and I was walking straight toward where the pigs probably were with my scent blowing ahead of me like a damn foghorn. They smelled me coming from a mile away and were probably watching me stumble around like an idiot the whole time.
Day Two: The Shot I Didn’t Take
I woke up at 4 a.m., determined to do better. I’d mapped out the wind on my phone. I had a plan. I got to a spot overlooking a dried-up creek bed, set up behind a fallen log, and waited.
Around 7:30, I saw them. A whole sounder maybe two hundred yards out, moving through the brush. Sows, piglets, and one big black boar that looked like a refrigerator with legs. They were coming toward me.
My heart started hammering. I got the rifle up, found the boar in the scope, and… couldn’t settle the crosshairs. I was on him, then I wasn’t. Breathing too fast. Reticle bouncing like a drunk. He was moving, the brush was thick, and every time I thought I had a window, he’d step behind another mesquite.
Then he stopped. Broadside. Eighty yards. Perfect.
I didn’t shoot.
I don’t know why. I had the rifle on him, I had a clear lane, I’d practiced this exact shot a hundred times at the range. But the range is not a creek bed at sunrise with a real animal in the glass and your brain screaming at you to not screw it up. I hesitated maybe three seconds too long, and the boar trotted off into the brush like he had somewhere better to be.
Day Three: The Noise I Made
Third morning, running on gas station coffee and wounded pride. I decided to still-hunt a different section of the public land, moving slow, stopping every ten steps to glass and listen.
This actually worked better. I was seeing more sign, fresher sign. I found a wallow that was still wet, mud dripping off the edges. They’d been here this morning. I was close.
I crept forward, rifle ready, eyes scanning. Took one step, then another, felt a branch brush my leg, and then — CRACK.
The branch was dead and dry and it snapped like a gunshot. Forty yards ahead, the brush exploded. I caught a flash of black hide, a grunt that sounded like a diesel engine starting, and then nothing. Just dust and broken branches.
I stood there for a minute, breathing hard, listening to the silence come back. A single step. One branch I didn’t clear with my foot before I moved. That was all it took.
What I Learned
I didn’t kill a pig on that trip. Drove sixteen hours back to Missouri with an empty cooler and a lot of time to think.
Here’s what nobody told me about hog hunting: it’s not pest control. The pigs have been hunted hard, especially on public land. They know what a human smells like. They know what a bootstep sounds like on dry Texas dirt. They’re not stupid, and they’re not passive. A sounder can vanish into cover that you’d swear couldn’t hide a rabbit.
I also learned that there’s a gap between shooting paper and shooting an animal that I didn’t respect enough. At the bench, you control everything: the rest, the breathing, the timing. In the field, nothing waits for you to get comfortable. The window opens and closes, and if you spend three seconds second-guessing your hold, the window is gone.
Dale was wrong about it being easy. But he was right about one thing: the pigs are there. I saw them. I just wasn’t ready to close the deal.
I’m going back this fall. I’ll check the wind better. I’ll watch my feet more. And next time that boar steps into an opening at eighty yards, I won’t let my brain get between me and the trigger.
Probably.