“You want to shoot it or stab it?” Fischer asks me on the phone as I’m arranging my custom hunt. “Most people want to stab‘em.” Days later, in the back of a mudsplattered 4WD pickup, dogs whine and scrape at the doors of their cage as we pull to the side of a rutted dirt track. Joe Fischer and Phillip Dickerson, local hunting guides of the good ol’ boy variety, train these dogs from birth for a single purpose: tracking feral hogs. And they live for it. When Fischer cracks the door to the cage, the muzzles, tongues and paws of a seemingly uncountable number of canines push through the cracks, and when he lets it fly on its hinges, the barking mass spills onto the ground. As a pack, they’re on the scent before they even catch their balance. “Let ‘em go,” Fischer says. “When they start barking we’ll know they’ve got one.” It’s maybe 7 a.m., already a little late for hog hunting—these nocturnal animals are often well on their way to bed by this time of day—but within just a few minutes, I hear what he means. When the pack catches up with its quarry, the dogs “bay” the pig (surround it), usually in a clump of Lowcountry swamp brush, and bark at the top of their lungs from all sides to keep it penned into the area. The change in the dogs’ cries is unmistakable, even for a first time hunter such as myself. The hunt has already begun.

Once we slip into knee waders and collect our hunting gear—a four-inch hunting knife, .357 revolver and one muscle-bound pit bull on a chain for backup—we ford the roadside canal and push through the low-lying shrubs and spider webs, making our way toward the frantic barking. Ten minutes of slogging through the swampy forest that surrounds the private cornfield that we’re here to protect and we’re getting close. Fischer stops short, looks at me with a furrowed brow and puts his finger to his lips in the universal signal for, “keep your mouth shut, noob.” Then he slips the revolver into my hand. “We’re gonna creep around this side,” he whispers, gesturing with his left hand. “When you see the hog through the bushes, make sure you’ve got a clean shot, and take it down.”

We move around the perimeter and the telltale snout comes into view, then the light tan body begins to take shape through the leaves and branches. Almost 150 pounds of sow now stands before me, frozen momentarily, as dogs stand jumping and barking all around her. With a mixture of relief and regret, I lower the pistol to my side. I came here to shoot a pig, not a dog, and I decide I don’t want it bad enough to risk a shot with the dogs so close.

Just as I turn to explain my dilemma to Fischer, a hole opens up in the pack, leaving the pig a clear escape path away from her canine captors. She bolts for the one thing standing in her way: me. With visions of cloven hoofprints dancing across my chest, I raise the pistol, crack off a shot from the hip and the charging sow takes a nosedive not ten feet from my knocking knees. Fischer slaps me on the back. “Nice shot, John Wayne,” he says with a laugh. My voice cracks with the complete opposite of confidence when I ask what would’ve become of me had I missed. “Aw, she probably would’ve just bumped into you—it ain’t like she’s got any tusks or anything,” Fischer answers in his jocular Georgia drawl.

This is hog hunting, Lowcountry style. It’s an activity of necessity as much as it is one of sport. These swine are invasive, omnivorous pests that will eat just about anything—from grain, roots and acorns to carrion, livestock and earthworms—they’re pigs after all. “They turn over food plots and front yards, damage roads and destroy endangered native plant species and the natural habitats of native animal species in their hunt for food,” explains David Mixon, game management supervisor for the Department of Natural Resources (DNR). “And the hog population grows fast. One female can produce three litters annually, with 10 to 15 piglets per litter.”

Hogs aren’t actually native to North America, so all of our hogs today, feral or otherwise, are descendents of livestock brought over from Europe as early as 1498. Different colors, shapes and sizes—from squat, fat farmstyle piggies to the lean, longtoothed razorbacks of Southern lore—can be found running wild all around Savannah’s perimeter, across Georgia and much of the U.S. for that matter. These days, they all fall under the blanket term—”feral hog.”

Adult hogs usually grow to be about three feet in height, weighing anywhere from 100 to 500 pounds depending on their access to food and how hard they have to work to get it. And while they range pretty much anywhere they can find food and shelter, feral hogs generally prefer the cover of dense brush for protection. When the temperature rises, however, the swine spend much of their time wallowing in swamps, wetlands, ponds and streams close to protective cover.

As a sport, hog hunting comes in many flavors. The hardcore outdoorsman can crawl through the brush of late dusk or early dawn, examining pig signs and stalking prey on their wits alone. Pigs can be hunted from a blind with a hunting rifle or bow and arrow or on private land, with the appropriate permits, they can be attracted by bait at night and shot under 12-volt lighting. One of the most efficient and effective ways to hunt hogs is with dogs. Hunting guides like Fischer and Dickerson, or any of the hunting plantations scattered around the Savannah area, use well-trained hunting dogs to offer softer-skinned stalkers with a penchant for pig sticking a virtually guaranteed, customized killing experience.

Shoot or stab? I ponder my decision and see the dog-hunting technique first-hand when Fischer loans me a DVD of some of his past hunts. There are two types of dogs: “bay” dogs, in my case Catahoula and Parker Curs, and a fiercer breed, like a pit bull, known as the “catch” dog. Bay dogs can pick up a scent as old as four hours and the hunters amble through the forest until the dogs have cornered or “bayed” the prey. Then, the catch dog is unleashed—taking the hog down and pinning it to the ground. This allows the guides to grab the swine by the legs and hold it belly-up while the hunters make quick work of the beast with their weapon of choice. In my pre-hunt
DVD, the killers are clad head-totoe in camo and whooping encouragements like “git ‘er done” and “stick that pig” before thrusting their knives up to the hilt to the tune of Deliverance-style pig squealing and licking the blood from their dripping blade.

“I think I’ll shoot it if you don’t mind,” I decide. “I understand,” Fischer says as we walk through the forest. “Honestly, I get worried that some of those guys will go home and stick their wives afterward. And all that blood licking, that’s disgusting. I bet those people get sick something awful.”

Having dispatched my pig with what I hope is a minimum of pain, suffering and squealing, it’s time to
take on the task of dressing the animal; getting it home and butchered before the flesh goes bad in the sweltering Georgia summer heat, which Fischer explains can happen in as little as an hour on a hot day. Because of restrictive USDA regulations, it’s almost impossible to find a butcher in the Savannah area willing to dress a wild hog. Hunters mostly take on this duty themselves—and hunting guides will often butcher the pig as part of the experience.

Fischer doesn’t have any qualms about undertaking this role. With a hunter’s skill, he makes a slit up the belly and deftly removes the guts before looping a chain around the upper jaw and dragging the carcass back to the truck. Back at the house we toss a rope over the low-hanging branch of a tree, hoist the hog up by its hind legs and hose it down while it spins spread-eagle. Fischer makes cuts in the skin around each of the four legs and peels the hide down over the hindquarters, slicing through the fat that connects it to the muscle. With the skin hanging inside-out like a macabre cape, he uses a hefty butcher’s knife and hack saw to remove the backstrap (the loin running on either side of the spine), shoulders (front legs), hams (back legs) and ribs, and puts them on ice in a large cooler.

The majority of the meat stacked neatly in the freezer, I set about making my first meal. A wild animal, the meat of a feral pig is less fatty and much tougher than farm-raised pork. This makes a stiff marinade and a slow cooking process a requirement not to be ignored. After soaking the backstrap in an orange and lime-based Cuban Mojo sauce for 48 hours, I pop it in the oven on low heat until the meat reaches the requisite 170 degrees (to kill any risk of trichinosis) and sit down to a dinner that puts every pork chop I’ve ever tasted to shame.

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