We were 40 to 60 miles west on Alligator Alley and the imperceptible rise in elevation was beginning to replace the monotonous sawgrass of the Everglades with Cypress trees and bromeliads. Occasionally, off in the distance we would glimpse pine islands, or hammocks, as we drifted into the warm afternoon January sun of south Florida. The Big Cypress swamp was engulfing the ribbon of asphalt, paralleled by two canals filled with cattails and water hyacinths. Flock after flock of white ibis, great blue herons and bitterns traded lazily over us like slow moving dragon flies.

The jeep pickup was loaded with three of us, a fifteen foot canoe, a weeks worth of food, gear and six dogs of various shapes, sizes and dispositions. Our guide was Charlie Coker, a locally famous dog breeder and swamp hunter from Homestead who specialized in running hogs and deer, often simultaneously.. This trick required hog hounds that were generally lab, plott and beagle mixes, catch dogs that resembled german shepherds, rotweillers and pit bulls. Beagles crossed with plotts, rounded out the deer chasing side of the pack.

These dogs were fourth generation products of animals that ended their lives to be buried on pine islands that dotted the expanse of the Big Cypress. Over the course of the next few days we visited many dog graves marked by collars nailed to trees. At each spot we heard of the demise of these well bred dogs, which were generally done in by one of three things native to the island. Big hogs, big snakes or big gators.

But I digress.

The drone of Alligator Alley under the wheels of the jeep was interrupted by the guide's direction to slowdown. He was searching for a turnoff and I was communicating telepathically with my buddy from south Georgia about how there was no way to turn off of this road without lunging into one of the snake infested canals that flanked the straight as an arrow strip of asphalt between Palm Beach and Naples.

Three or four miles later we turned to the right and starred the dark sinister canal in the face.

"Get out and open the gate, here is the key."
"Get out and swim?"
"No! just wade across the canal and open the gate."
"Is there a road?"
"Sure there is a road."
"Where?"
"Just drive on in, it is not that deep."

The floor mats floated as we pushed a wake in front of us through the weeds and stumps and after about a mile he said, "Pull up on that little rise there to the left and we'll get your chunk out the water." "Rise? Rise hell, I haven't seen dirt for two miles! What rise?" "Just pull over and park. It's getting dark"

The dogs began to howl when we cut the engine and drained the floorboard.

When we opened the dog boxes the beagles were swimming around us like otters and I quietly hoped that any gator lurking nearby would target them first. It was getting dark as we loaded the boat with our gear. Charlie and the dogs had splashed their way down a ditch in the weeds towards camp and my buddy and I were left alone to pull the boat by flashlight through a series of waist deep potholes and some of the snakiest real-estate known to man.

After another mile of anxiously searching for our guide and gators we stumbled into camp. Camp was a collection of hootches on stilts. The island was a postage swamp littered with years of weathered construction projects, dog boxes, and generally fine places for huge rattlesnakes and water moccasins to raise generations of healthy pit viper families. There was some measure of comfort in the fact that it was January and the two tons of snakes that lived under the floors of the hootches were supposedly dormant. Every corner, bunk and horizontal surface was constantly surveyed by flashlight before a fitful sleep descended on the island.

Before daylight we eased into the cold grayness of the swamp and followed the pack of swimming dogs as they splashed through the ferns and cypress stumps after deer. The dim rays of dawn illuminated a bewildering jungle of sameness which was compounded by an uncharacteristically dense cloud cover. We had been given general directions about deep water and island orientation and gator holes and within an hour or two I was hopelessly lost. The dogs had run something out of earshot and my compass was back at home in a drawer somewhere. This would never happen again. Orienting in a swamp the size of Delaware is a genuinely bewildering concept at best.

By noon I was calculating the hours of daylight left and trying to find a place to spend the night out of reach of gators and snakes. By 14:00 hours I had settled on a large stump and had begun the process of visualizing a long night of gator attacks interspersed with waves of stump loving, leg long, cotton mouths when cries of the dog pack filtered through the cypress. The hounds ran by me in the distance and I fell in line whistling and hoping they would lead me out the impending nightmare that was sure to end in a life of leg-less diversity.

The guide heard me screaming at the dogs and eased over to me, "Did you see the deer?" "Nope."
"Did you get turned around?"
"No, I was damn well lost though!"
"Don't those dogs sound good?"
"They sound better than the Mormon Tabernacle Choir!"
"By the way, which way is camp?"
"That way, about two miles."
"I thought so," I lied.
I was 180 degrees out and headed for deep water. I never lost sight of my guide after that.

At dusk we slogged back to camp and dry land. Another hunter had entered camp with a positive ID on a huge hog on an island about three miles to the north. He was deer hunting and did not shoot the large pig because he said the hog was too big to carry that far. He figured the hog to be somewhere between 300 and 400 pounds. We fed and chained the dogs and made our plans for an early island assault.

When we jumped the tusker the next morning he ran into the worst palmetto thicket ever grown. It was so thick the you couldn't see two feet and we were trying to run through this stuff to save the dogs.

From the sounds of things in the densest part of the thicket the dogs were taking a terrible mauling. Charlie was yelling, the dogs were sounding hysterical and every time I stopped and tried to center-up on the melee I could hear tusks snapping and dogs screaming from being gored in the palmettos. At twenty yards and closing I heard a shot. The dogs sounded like they had moved in for the kill and they sounded especially mad.

When I parted the palmettos the dogs had the hog by the jowls, all four legs, the tail and Charlie was astride the big hog's back slitting the beast's throat. Blood and hair and dog parts were everywhere and the guide was screaming, "Get Otis and Poot off them hams!"
"Do what?"
"Grab them dogs by the tails an twist 'em till they let go! Then tie 'em up!"
"Grab em by the tails? Are you out of your mind? Look at how mad they are, they're foaming at the mouth!"

Now the knife wielding guide was mad and Otis and Poot were messing up his Christmas ham.

Otis looked like the least likely to rip my arm off so I took my five foot long, snake killing cypress pole and jammed it into his snarling mouth like a crowbar. Otis was momentarily perturbed by this gesture as he chomped his way up the pole, splintering it like a cheap toothpick. I finally tied him to a nearby palmetto with a piece of nylon rope which he began to frantically chew like his very life depended on it.

Poot was wild-eyed from his killing frenzy and he was emphatic about having his tail twisted but he did momentarily relax his grip on the hog's hams long enough to take a series of viscous shots at my throat. Old Poot received a couple of soccer style kicks to the gonads that seemed to settle him down long enough to get him belted to a nearby tree.

After the rest of the dogs had been cleared with similar finesse and much screaming and shouting we admired the huge dead monster there in the dense thicket, shot at a distance of less than two feet.

We checked the snarling tethered dogs for damage and rested, retelling our stories before we hoisted the big hog on a pole and slogged off the island. "Which way is camp Charlie?"
"That way."

I was 180 degrees out again as we shouldered the weight of the pole and struggled into the water of the Big Cypress.



Copyright ©2000 The White Oak Mountain Ranger