Now in those days, my food came from the school and the only money I
had was well-spent on necessities and women at a little place in
Memphis called Alex's. What in the world was I going to do with a
dead rut'n buck in the trunk of my car? (Never mind the fact that I
kept my '.06 under my dorm bed on campus) I checked in the deer and
gave it to the guy at the hunting store. Guess what? The guy never
sent me my antlers. A week or so later, I returned to AT WMA and
still hunted along the same road. 30 minutes before dark, I killed a
small tree and missed the largest buck I've ever seen there. Now, you are probably wondering what does this story have to do with
wild boars? Well after I missed my buck I heard about 5 shots fired
over a 10 minute period. When I got back to the parking area, some
hunters were waiting on their buddy to come out of the woods. We
waited for a while and when he did not return, we went after him. We
bumped into him on his way out. The hunter said that he thought he
had a big grunting buck coming toward his stand when the hog came out
of the thicket just under his treestand. He had to keep shooting the
boar at 20 yards until he ran out of ammo, and it still would not
expire. After dark came, he was afraid to come down from the tree
until he felt safe from the boar's rage. For some reason, he did not
want to dress it. We tried to drag the swine, but it was too hard.
Somebody got the bright idea that we should cut a small tree, tie the
hog like a rodeo calf, and carry it across our shoulders like the
Native Americans carried deer in old paintings. So, that's what we
did. I will never do it again. Imagine 5 hunters carrying a
bristle-haired boar hanging between a pole through a thicket with one
weak flashlight! According to the TN big game harvest reports, that
was the LAST wild boar killed at Anderson Tully WMA. The hunter
mailed me a picture of the boar and offered to give me some meat, but
I was busy with school so I never tasted the fruits of our endeavor.
I am sending Dennis a copy of the picture. My hope is that someone
might recognize the hunters in the picture if the webmaster could
post it. I would love to get in contact with the group and relive the
memory one more time. The boar was aged at only 2.5, and it weighed
242 lbs. I honestly don't know if that was dressed or not. I feel
sorry for those Northern hunters who have to drag heavy bucks. I
contacted both the area manager and the TWRA two years ago. They said
that the harvest records were boxed up somewhere and, of course, NO
ONE would like to volunteer to search for the tag. The hunters were
from the Memphis area. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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