Sunday, October 18, 2009

Hog Hunting

I picked Jack up before daylight, in a cold drizzle, for the Buzz Fest book signing. He was full of enthusiasm about the success of the hog hunt that had been ongoing in his lower garden plot for several months. Jack and his brother Charles were still picking corn, even though the weather is getting much cooler and the days significantly shorter. They were looking forward to enjoying fresh corn until first frost -- until last night when a hog stripped the stalks.

Cotton kept finding hog tracks and signs of thievery in Jack’s garden, so he decided to catch him a hog. He spent many a night hour perched on a ladder against a tree, waiting and watching for Ms. Piggy -- to no avail. Some semi-professional hunters in the area set a trap in Jack’s field, and waited. The "bait and wait" method may be less exciting than the active hunt, but there’s little danger to the hunter.

I hear that there’s nothing more dangerous than a cornered wild hog. Jack told me of a hunter who had six of his hunting dogs sent to the veterinarian after a hog being pursued gored the whole pack. He also told me about a hunter that fell out of his tree stand onto a wild hog and had to ride its back until the hog threw him off because he knew the hog would kill him if he attempted to dismount the hog’s back on his own.

Jack’s semi-professional hog-hunting neighbors finally caught the hog suspected of feasting on Jack’s garden, but not before the hog ate all Jack’s late-season corn. The thing that finally “done her in” was her greed. She had already eaten all Jack’s corn from his stalks, but couldn’t resist the few additional ears that lay in the trap set by Jack’s neighbors. In went Ms. Piggy and down went the trap door. The hog hunters are looking forward to a pork fest. Maybe the hog knew that corn finishing was the preferred method of fattening livestock before the kill. Jack’s happy that the hunters’ catch is a sow. One less corn thief breeder means less corn thieves next year, he says.

We got to the festival grounds with great hopes and a couple of hundred books. Based on numbers from three previous Buzz Fests, the organizers were anticipating a crowd of four thousand. They were looking forward to making a sizable donation to this year’s beneficiary agency, “We Got Your Back,” that assists families of deployed National Guardsmen from our local area. But cold, wet wind blew steadily through the pavilion where the festival stage was set. And the cloud cover was so heavy that the whole park was gray.

Many families braved the weather for the children’s beauty pageant that opened the festival – the most popular festival event. Unfortunately, their children’s costumes weren’t good cold weather attire, so most left immediately after the pageant.

The lack of success of the festival certainly wasn’t for lack of the organizers trying. The food vendors were plentiful, and their products were good. There was a precious patriotic music show put on by an area Christian school – very hometown Americana. The band, Dixie Highway, was great. It had all of us toe tapping and completely caught up in the music. This was a mixed blessing. While Jack and I grooved to the music, a human hog walked off with my camera and our money.

I comfort myself with the fact that, due to poor turnout, we had few sales. We’d have lost a lot more had thieves visited us at last week-end’s festival when our money pouch was bulging with bucks. The organizers of the Buzz Fest lost more than money. Their weeks of effort, I suspect, will produce no return on their investment which translates to no money for their cause.

I’m not complaining, but I do wish the thieves would return my memory card with photos of our trip to Glacier National Park and my niece and her family.