12/31/2006

Wild boar hunts never boring in medieval days

By Bruce Bischoff
Outdoor columnist

"I haven't had so much fun since the pigs ate my little brother.”

— Old jack pine savage saying

The Christmas-New Year holiday always gets me in a bit of a medieval mood.

We've all seen illustrations of hunters in merry olde England, riding through a fresh snow, surrounded by a pack of excited hounds, bringing a fat stag back to the castle for one of the great feasts that marked the season.

And venison is a fine main course for the holiday. A couple of years ago at Yule I cooked a succulent venison roast over a bed of oak coals until the outside was black and crusty. When I carved the roast, the juices ran clear and the centers of the slices were the perfect shade of pink. Accompanied by a bottle of homemade mead provided by some good friends, it was about as close to perfection as a meal can get.

But then again, I am fascinated by medieval stuff.

Another preferred main course at the medieval castle was the wild boar. We've all seen the illustrations of a boar's head, roasted whole, fearsome and majestic, being carried into the great hall with much pomp and circumstance. It was a show-stopper, I'm sure.

Now Michigan hunters and medievalists have the opportunity to bring a boar back to their own castle for the great feast. And although the time has pretty much run out for the holiday season, there's still plenty of time to take down a wild boar if you can find one.

The DNR is encouraging hunters to kill the pigs (known as "feral swine” in DNR officialspeak) in 23 of the state's counties in an attempt to halt the spread of the critters, which are considered "a threat to domestic livestock, the environment and individuals.” Nobody seems to know exactly how many wild pigs are out there, but apparently there are quite a few. It's speculated that they originally escaped from game farms and thrived on their own, surviving Michigan winters quite well and producing more broods of little wild piglets.

The story of the wild pig and its effect on our ecosystems is far too big to get into here. In Texas and California, to name just two states, pigs have devastated much of the natural habitat and encroached on more desirable native species. The case is the same in much of the nation. Even The New Yorker, hardly a journal of good ol' boy outdoors stories, several months ago published a lengthy piece on feral swine and efforts to stem their population explosion.

As usual when it's necessary to cull wildlife populations, authorities have turned to sport hunters for help. But even with the most liberal regulations, hunters are having a tough time making a dent on the pigs in the worst-hit states.

The Michigan DNR is trying to make it easy for hunters. To harvest a wild pig in the open counties, all you need is "any kind of hunting license” and some sort of open season. So if you have a small game license and rabbit season is open, you're good to go on wild boar.

Although hunters have proven they can do a good job reducing deer populations, wild boars are a different story. In the first place, they are reportedly smarter and harder to hunt than deer, as well as breeding like rats. And I'm not sure how many pigs the average sportsman would want to process and put in the freezer — one killed near Houghton Lake this fall tipped the scales at 400 pounds. That's a lot of pork, and a lot of work.

In medieval and earlier times, the boar was respected as a dangerous quarry, and a boar hunt wasn't for the faint of heart. After the hounds brought the great beast to bay, the hunters would dismount to kill the pig with a spear or even a sword. A spear for pigs had a metal disc about halfway down the shaft to keep the hogs from forcing themselves along it to get at the hunter. Now those guys were hunters. Maybe Michigan hunters could try pursuing pigs this way for a little extra thrill.

But I can imagine what it would morph into in a few years — a convoy of quadrunners would bring the pig to bay, and a hunter would dismount with his state-of-the-art spear, featuring a carbon-steel alloy blade and unbreakable graphite composite shaft in trademarked camo pattern, to dispatch the pig.

Oddly enough, I haven't seen the Humane Society of the United States and its ilk campaigning against the new boar season.

Meanwhile, if you've still got a hankering for some big-game action this winter, there's still plenty of time.

Contact Bruce Bischoff at bruce.bischoff@hotmail.com.