The "Demon Pig"

Today suspense author Rick Acker has a hard-to-believe but true hunting tale for us. Here's his story of the "Demon Pig."
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My family owns timberland near Possumneck, Mississippi. Every year, my father, my little sister and I go down to visit with friends and keep an eye on the place.

Last year, we were talking to our foresters when we heard a couple of clusters of gunshots in the distance. Hunt clubs rent the place, so we weren't alarmed. Then one of the foresters got a call on his cell phone. The conversation went on for about ten minutes, and his end of it consisted almost entirely of versions of, "No, really?" After he got off, he told us that we'd be getting an interesting story over dinner.

Flash forward to dinner with the local game warden. He begins by telling us that he had noticed a lot of "hog sign" on our land, which bothered him. He's a member of one of the hunt clubs, and hogs compete with deer and other game for food. They also eat turkey and duck chicks and even fawns. So he issued a "depredation permit" to allow a hog hunt by some "boys who live out in the county. You know, rednecks." Apparently, the sporting way to conduct such hunts is to use only dogs (pit bulls preferably) and large knives or spears. So these guys went hunting and the warden went along to make sure things went as planned. Which did not quite happen.

The dogs had no trouble finding hog scent and were soon running through the forest with the warden and owners behind them. Pretty soon, the pack flushed a truly enormous pig out of the brush. The warden pulled his .40 caliber service pistol and shot the pig three times. It veered off into the woods, followed by the dogs.

A little while later, the dogs chased the hog into a clearing and managed to surround it. No one saw what happened next because the animals had gotten several hundred yards ahead of the men, but it must have been quite a fight. By the time the warden got there, the hog had killed four pit bulls and injured two others.

Once the hog spotted the men, it charged straight at the warden. He shot it five more times and it veered off at the last second. It hit one of the other men and "tore his jeans near off." He fell, and the hog put its snout down so it could disembowel him with its tusks.

The warden shot it point blank in the side of the head and it stumbled off of the man. The other hunters then tackled it and started stabbing for vital organs. That finally killed it.

After hearing this, we must have looked a little incredulous, because the warden then said, "Y'all want to see the head?"

So after dinner my dad and I (my sister stayed back in the restaurant for some reason) went out to the parking lot with him. Sure enough, he pulled out a 20-gallon bucket containing a gigantic tusked pig head bearing several bullet and bite wounds. I could have sworn I heard it whisper, "My name is Legion."

After that, we considered carrying guns on our next trip, but we decided against it. If a .40 caliber just makes one of these things angry, what would you need to stop it? A bazooka?
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Check out Rick's latest novel, Blood Brothers, here.