Alright, we haven’t been talking too much about Plott hounds and hunting lately with the holidays and me in timeout so let’s talk about wild boar hunting. David is going to go boar hunting over in Graham County shortly with an old friend of his. Graham County is where the Russian wild boar first came in to this country in 1912. They put a hunting preserve on Hooper Bald, which is not too far from Robbinsvile, with all kinds of animals not native to this country. After a while the only animals left were the wild boars and they did really well from a survival standpoint and are now all over the mountains.
Boar hunting with hounds is dangerous for both the dogs and the hunters. Mr. Junior used to guide boar hunts over in Graham County and has a lot of stories of dogs being hurt or even killed and a lot of humans climbing up a tree to get out of the way. Mr. Von Plott wouldn’t hunt boar with his Plott hounds saying that: “Boar hunting was a good way to get out of the dog business in a hurry.”
Since the boar doesn’t climb a tree, the dogs have to bay the hog and one of the dogs is specialized as a “catch” dog. And that’s exactly what they do, they catch the hog and hold on for dear life until the hunters get there. A lot of times, the catch dog is not a purebred hound but will have some pit bull cross to give it a stronger bite. Think of what it takes to hang on to an angry hog that weighs more than twice as much as the dog.
Just to give you an idea, here’s a picture of a wild boar mount so you can see of how well armed they are: 
They have really sharp tusks (folks out here call them “tushes”) and can use them really well to slash a dog or hunter. The upper tushes are called the “whetters” and the lower tushes are the “cutters.” They keep the cutters sharp by honing them on the whetters and you can’t believe how sharp they are! They can really run fast too and have a lot of endurance so they are quite a big game animal.
Since the wild boar is not native to this area there are some people that want to get rid of them since they compete with bears for food. Both bear and boar eat acorns and nuts but the boar are really good at what they do and can clean an area up in just a little while and leave nothing for the bear to eat. It’s pretty easy to tell if wild boar have been in the woods as you’ll swear that someone brought some big piece of earth moving equipment out there. This is why there needs to be a hunting season on them. They don’t have any predators and they can reproduce quickly so if there were no hunters, hogs would take over and drive out bear and deer.
Oh yeah, just in case you were wondering, David is not going to take me boar hunting (EVER!). It’s not legal to hunt with dogs now so he and his friend will be still hunting for them. We’ll give you an update on a later post.
Nannie