California Hunters Go Hog Wild

BOONVILLE, Calif. - "Oink," was the message on my voice mail.

The meaning was clear - I had finally made a pig connection and my dream of pork sausage was about to be realized. All I had to do was slay a wild pig.

So at 6 a.m. Saturday six of us were standing in pre-dawn darkness on a 5,000-acre ranch near Boonville, unpacking guns and getting ready to hunt. It was pouring, a steady, drenching rain.

"Are you sure you want to go ahead?" our guide, Craig Van Housen, was kind enough to ask.

We split into two three-man groups and Van Housen sketched a map of the area we would hunt. He would drop each of the groups off and allow us several hours to slowly hunt our way through the areas where the pigs should be located.

If we didn't have pigs by the time he picked us up, we would try another area in the afternoon. Van Housen, a California Highway Patrol officer who guides on his days off, offers two types of pig hunts on three Boonville-area ranches where he leases hunting rights. The first, at $150 a day per person, was like ours. He shows the hunters where to go and drops them off and picks them up.

In the second type of hunt, at more than double the price, Van Housen uses his dogs to sniff out and hold the pigs until the hunters can get to the spot to kill them. Chances of killing a wild pig are much better with a dog hunt.

It was just light enough to see when we began slowly working our way down a winding road.

There was no doubt pigs were - or had been - in the area. Hillsides looked like they had been rototilled, indicating hogs had rooted through the grass. By noon we covered a dozen likely areas, but no sign of a pig.

Good news when Van Housen picked us up - two of the other group had pigs. Mark Guthrie had spotted a group of 13 pigs, but instead of shooting had waited for his partners, Alan Tegethoff and Jace Dees. Dees and Tegethoff got pigs, but Guthrie, had missed. The four of us without pigs were out again by 3 p.m.The area I was hunting looked like pig heaven. But still no pigs.

It was almost dark. Time to go home and report that there would be no wild pork sausage this year.