Baying Pigs All By Myself!

While everyone was hunting deer during deer season, the baby pigs were still running around all over the corn field, and now down along the creek and through the swamp as well. There were 10 of them, and they were sure making a mess over there! Mommy and Daddy knew they were going to have to shoot them, but they were still so little that there wasn't much point in doing it just yet. But then, during deer season, a kind of bad thing happened. One morning Daddy had to go to St. Cloud, a town about 100 miles away from our farm. Bill was still here visiting us, and he went out to his deer stand early in the morning. Mommy was in the house waiting for Daddy to come home. All of a sudden, Bill heard a gunshot and saw some men in our corn field. They were shooting the baby pigs! When Daddy got home he and Mommy were so mad that they called the game warden. By the time the game warden got here the men were gone, along with two of our pigs!

Mommy decided that it was time to shoot the rest of the pigs, so we started hunting them again. I could find them with no trouble, but they were SO fast that they always ran back into the corn before Mommy and Daddy could catch up with me to shoot them. We kept hunting and kept hunting and kept hunting.

Mommy finally decided to go out without me to see if she could find them and sneak up on them. One day she went out really early and drove over to the other side of the creek. She waited and waited, but no pigs showed up. Then Mommy decided to come home so she unloaded her guns to put in the van. As she was driving home, almost to the creek, she saw those darn pigs down in the ditch next to the road. She quick grabbed her 9mm handgun, loaded it up, and got out of the van. She shot two of the pigs before the rest ran off, but only one of them died right away. The other one was shot in the back leg and ran into the corn where Mommy could not find it. Deciding that she needed backup, Mommy drove home to get me and Daddy.


When we got back to the field Mommy took me down into the woods where she had last seen the wounded pig. She pointed at a drop of blood on the ground and told me to "Go Find". As usual, off I went, so fast that Mommy and Daddy could not keep up with me. I ran out of the woods and into the corn field and I tracked that pig down so fast! But then, where were Mommy and Daddy? Usually Mommy held onto my long check cord so that she could keep up with me, but when I was running around in the corn it was too hard because the line kept getting tangled up around the cornstalks, so this time she just turned me loose all by myself. What was I supposed to do now? I wasn't sure at all, so I just kept following that pig. I could hear Mommy and Daddy calling me, but I could not see them through the corn, and I fgured that they couldn't see me, either. I knew that it would take them forever to find me if I had to keep chasing after the pig, so finally I just stopped and bayed that pig up right there in the corn!

I made him stop and stay in one spot, and then I opened up my mouth and made the loudest sound, and it wasn't like when I bark at all. Mommy said later that she knew the moment I had that pig bayed just by the sound of my voice- she said it was such a beautiful sound to her ears, better even than music! Once I had bayed the pig up, I just stayed in one spot and kept hollering till Daddy came through the corn and found me. Then he waited till Mommy got to us and then he shot the pig.

Here I am with my first bayed pig, and I did it all by myself when I was barely 9 months old and no one even taught me how! Mommy said that it didn't even matter that it was a little pig because I still have plenty of hunting instinct and I know how to use it, and that's what counts!!!