There are feral hogs that are only a few generations from their domestic ancestors and have no descent from Hernando De Soto’s pigs.
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(with personas of doggies and hoggies to some polliwoggies in mind)
Three little piggies wiggied,
outside herringbone hull.
Ole mud duster puts hold on thruster,
as thoughts wrought its thick skull.
This old pit bull sits river’s drool,
where fetch to feed remain,
but only training are eyes now framing,
instincts to their shell game.
So that’s where they came from!!! I’m not a hunter and don’t care for wild game, but my brothers did a game hunt with pistols in Tennessee. The biar meat was the best meat I ever tasted.
They were fairly large hogs, so I wonder if there was some domestic blood mixed in with the breed.
@CraigF now you can call @MohaveFlyer for your snake problems. She invites them into her house, then ambushes them.
When I was a kid, we had some sort of bovines chase us when crossing fields. They’re lucky I don’t hunt; fish are smart enough to avoid me.
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I’ve never been chased by an iguana or an aggressive cow. Just the idea of an aggressive cow sounds spooky. I’m happy to back off from any critter in an aggressive mood; I had a chipmunk stand up to me and back me down in the garage not long ago.
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Oh iguanas can look scary from a beach towel.
My dad got some black angus steer when he retired and every time I’d visit them they would take off
on an overnighter and ask me to feed them by throwing a few bales of hay out of the barn.
I know nothing about cattle and those things would see me and would come running after me, terrifying.
Did they associate you with feeding times?
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They are some fine eating . You can kill them with a .22 but have a good start field dressing with your 44.
Might not be appreciated though.
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Had a odd animal behavior incident recently - at least it was a first for me. There are a group of us who have been doing a northern WI/ MN paddle in mid-Sept in memory of DuluthMoose. This year due to low water we went to the Bois Brule River in northern WI on the way to the BWCA. This river flows into L. Superior. In the last mile or so of the river it changes character from being that of a north woods trout habitat to that of a marsh - and then it opens out to Superior.
In that last mile a beaver surfaced about three feet from my boat and swam parallel to me for maybe 20 feet. He then submerged without a tail slap or any sign of alarm. Could it be this was a beaver that was so accustomed to humans that he didn’t even try to avoid us? That they don’t avoid us or seek out boats intentionally?
I’ve noticed turtles on some rivers - the Wisconsin, Baraboo, for example - jump into the water when a boat approaches while those on more heavily traveled rivers - the Current or Kickapoo- don’t (at least not as readily). Doesn’t seem to be a matter of water or air temperature which one would expect to influence the behavior of sunning turtles. I think on heavily traveled rivers they become used to canoe traffic and are not as alarmed by it as those who have fewer canoe encounters.
Might beaver grow accustomed to the presence of humans also? These are two animals that aren’t even close in their sensory abilities. I would find it curious if they learned similarly.
But that would be a heck of a leap of logic based on the actions of one beaver…
It happened very near here - that’s Superior on the other side of that sand spit.
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I once notice that a beaver paced along side of my kayak about 4 feet away. Never experience that any other time, either there or anywhere else. That was an oddly memorable event.
Yikes!
Great story PJC. I value those 1:1 encounters where you wonder what the critter is thinking.
Good on you for honoring DuluthMoose
Cheers!
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Lucky you
I’ve had a muskrat do the same. Maybe we’re being escorted through their territory.
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We saw these huge fat things in the river in Prague, I try and find the picture for an ID.
I’ve often paddled Pennsylvania rivers with beaver populations. Due to our topography, there are lots of feeder streams that come down through densely treed ravines and canyons, so when we get storms and heavy rain, a lot of deadfall gets swept down and collects in the main channels. I have seen beaver approach free-floating logs and, after doing a sort of inspection, push them towards where they are building a lodge or dam. A lot less effortful than having to gnaw down standing timber, and easy to float a major structural element into place.
So I wonder if, from the surface or underwater perspective of a beaver, a canoe or kayak appears at first to be a potential building beam.
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Willowleaf, I believe you might be on to something there. There was a good deal of dead-fall collected across the river not far downstream from where the encounter occurred, though there was an easy path through.
Now that you mention it though, I also saw another beaver on this same trip that appeared to exhibit exactly the opposite behavior when we got to the BWCA. My campsite there had a large rock outcropping that separated the site from Gull Lake (and sheltered from winds off that lake). I got in the habit of drinking my first morning cup of coffee on that rock shortly after dawn. One morning I saw a beaver swimming the length of the long, narrow arm of the lake in view of that rock. He swam arrow straight down the lake as though “on a mission”. There was a bit of a branch floating in his path and he diverted around it in a nearly perfect half circle, keeping a constant radius from the branch. At a point that appeared to be exactly in line with his previous straight course he resumed on his previous heading. It was like he was averse to being in the branch’s proximity for some reason. Is this a case of two critters of the same species displaying differing individual personalities?
A view from that rock (but, alas, I didn’t have the camera with when the beaver swam by):
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Biologists say that domestic pigs take 7 generations, so there are some varieties there. Texas hunt clubs also imported some Russian Boars for canned hunts and some of those have interbreed with other wild hogs. There is a huge difference between wild and feral that goes all the way to muscle and bone structures.
Many, many moons ago, when I hunted we had an old boar run through camp and start ripping at the tents. I put two rounds of double ought, and then two rifled slugs into it and it kept going. It didn’t drop until I buried an axe between it’s eyes.
I would not go after a boar with a 22, but some south Florida boys go after them with dogs and a hunting knife, maybe the origin of the Floriduh Man.
@MohaveFlyer, if it was in Prague it was probably a Wels Catfish, they can get up to 15 feet and are aggressive hunters.
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While I think your assertions about hogs and snakes are incorrect, I’m not going to continue to debate biology/zoology on a paddling forum.
Being fortunate enough to live in the PNW I get to see Humpbacks and Grey Whales more often than many paddlers. They strike me as gentle giants and I have had several close encounters with both. Perhaps the most remarkable and indicative of their personality was a conversation I enjoyed with one in 2017.
I was on a solo trip and southbound to Port Hardy. After crossing Fitz Hugh Sound from Calvert Island I was hugging the steep rocky southern shoreline of Addenbroke Island that the glassy smooth conditions were allowing. Suddenly a Humpback gently surfaced next to me and blocked my path. I was about 10 feet from the shore and just a tad further from his/her body. Humpback pectoral fins run up to 1/3 the length of the animal which put me well within their reach so I stopped quickly to see what would come next.
There was no tension on the part of the whale as it just hung there partially submerged taking occasional soft breaths. New experience so I spoke as calmly as possible and just said stupid stuff like “Hello, how’s your day, where you headed”, totally banal one-sided conversation. The animal was just looking at me, moving a bit up and down and side-to-side slowly.
I was afraid that if I tried to move we might bump into each other plus I didn’t want the experience to be over. Wasn’t really sure what to do so I pulled a ProBar out of my pocket and began snacking. Between bites I read the ingredients out loud to it. Like I said, banal.
About 20 minutes passed and it was getting late. I needed to find water and a place to camp and hoped that it would let me be on my way. I tapped both hands on the sides of my Tempest and asked if I could go now. The whale took a breath and slowly nosed down, gently lifted its tail and slid beneath the surface.
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