Chuck and Omar's 180 lb
Wild Razorback Boar Video!

Caution! Adult Language! If you are under 18 years of age or object to some profanities, do not view this file!

This video does not actually show the killing shot (because Omar was hunting elsewhere), but does show the recovery and some dressing of the hog.

For images of us standing around and dressing the hog, just click on the thumbnails below to see the full sized images!

Chuck and The Hog Chuck and The Hog Omar and The Hog Chuck, Omar  and The Hog

Chuck Sr, Chuck Jr and Omar Chuck Sr, Chuck Jr and Omar Chuck Sr, Chuck Jr and Omar The Hog
The Hog Chuck and The Hog Work Work
Work Work Work Work
Work The Hog Lucky and Chuck Omar Cleaning...
Almost done!

Hog Hunt Runs According To the Script

By Chuck Manetta Jr.

It was a cool and damp morning in the swamp of The Everglades National Preserve when Omar and I set off to our pre-designated trees with our climbing treestands. Due to an unfortunate late wake-up, our trek had to be made with great stealth. The sun was now rising fully in the eastern sky. We reached Omar's setup at around 7. He chose this pine tree because it strategically faced the wall of a large hardwood oak stand. By the time I reached my pine tree, it was roughly 8.

Trying to stay quiet, I climbed slowly. The higher I got, the more fresh tracks became obvious criss-crossing the landscape below me. Although we scouted this area the day before, these tracks appeared to have been made overnight and were very encouraging.

While going up with my two-piece climber, I would quietly lift and securely set each piece against the tree, then wait and listen for any sound of animal movement. The only thing that I could hear clearly at this point were the roaring engines of airboats three to four miles away as other hunters set out for their morning hunts. With the subtle morning breezes and the stillness of the Everglades, they sounded as if they were right over the next wall of trees. When I climbed as far as I could before running into branches (around 30 feet), I was able to get a good look at my options and shooting lanes.

The pine tree that I had chosen offered a great view of the same oak stand Omar was watching, but farther west. Separating the oak and my pine tree was a narrow strip of waist-high grass that flowed off to the west then turned southwest to my left. Behind me to the south and east -- the area I had walked through to get to my stand -- was full of palmetto scrubs and pine trees. I took in the view and decided I was in a great spot.

It was 8:58 in the morning and starting to get warm. While slowly taking off my jacket liner to get more comfortable, I started to hear the sounds that I had been waiting for. You know, those few plopitty-plop sounds of something walking in the mud. I put my jacket aside and brought up my Winchester .338 Magnum. I put the scope on a 3-foot clearing in the grass where the sounds were coming from.

Sure enough, at exactly 9 on my watch, the broadside of a razorback wild boar filled my scope. I had the crosshairs on his kill zone when a thought crossed my mind: "Is he the legal 15 inches tall?" At 100 yards, it was hard to be sure. For a split second, I concentrated with my left eye to get a better perspective of the distance and his size.

Not wasting another second, I decided: BAM! "One Shot, One Kill!" (Our family motto.) The hog went straight down to the ground. The 250-Grain Nosler Partition went smashing into his left shoulder, snapping his leg in half, continued through the kill zone and exited the opposite side of his body. After locking and loading the next round (just in case), I watched through the scope until I was sure he was down for good. I wasn't about to let this guy get up and run into the swamp!

"Omar," I whispered into my Motorola Talk-About lapel microphone.

"Did you get something?" he asked.

I said, "Yep, a hog! So get over here. Our work has just begun!"

Sure enough, this became an all-day task. After getting down and reaching the hog, another question ran through my head. Did I really want this thing to be so big? WHOA! This was a 180-pound monster! It certainly didn't look that big at 100 yards. Regardless, now we had the task of dragging him out.

We were more than a third of a mile away from the car and the road, so we spent a few minutes putting together a drag cord. We tied one end of the rope around the hogs legs and the other end around a section of tree branch about a foot long. I grabbed one side of the branch and Omar grabbed the other. Side by side we proceeded to drag this beast through thick brush, over rocks and sometimes through the mud. It took us two hours to get to the car, but the struggle wasn't over yet.

We had been using my father's Lincoln Continental to go back and forth from our Coleman pop-pp camper and our hunting expeditions. The main problem was that the only place to put this monster was in a roof-mounted Yackima rack used for hauling extra gear and game. The rack had worked great for Florida deer, which are usually around 100 pounds, but I had no idea how we were going to get this monster up on the roof. It took some brute strength, along with a little bit of tusk dragging across the paint job, but we did it.

Just when I thought my work was done, I realized we had yet to skin and process this huge pig. Well, we eventually decided that could wait until after a few stories and a well-earned beer.

Charles Anthony Manetta Jr.