First published on The Upland Soul.
When I let slip to the uninitiated that the hunt I look forward to the most each year is rifle javelina in February, they usually look at me with a mixture of curiosity and blind confusion, as if I had finally assumed the final form of radiation-basted Nevada desert dwellers so accurately portrayed in The Hills Have Eyes. But as the Harley-Davidson Motor Company infamously said… “if I have to explain it, you wouldn’t understand.”
We were as surprised to see a truck full of miners staring daggers at us as they were to see two mugs in camo, slow-roll glassing out of a lifted Toyota on the big bladed mine roads. This was our stomping grounds for years, ever since my Dad started flying out for a few days each season to chase pigs with me in the Sonoran. Sometime in the last 365 days, the mine had bought up all of the state land that used to be wide open to anyone with a hunting license… and we were informed we’d need to find somewhere else to hunt. We turned around, made camp on some nearby BLM and studied maps over two elk steaks as the sun ducked bloodred behind the smoketrees to the West.
One of the benefits to hunting this area in the past was a well-maintained road system, perfect for a hunt with your old man who lives back east, at sea level. Drive, glass, and repeat. Now that things had changed within the unit, it was obvious tactics would need to be adjusted — hoofing it would be an unfortunate requirement.
The next morning we made our way to Plan B, down the road from a well-used stock tank. Two options presented themselves here; one glassing knoll off the road overlooked a wide and rocky wash, and on the other side, steeper foothills covered in cactus but ripe with promise. We split up — Dad would go to the knoll to glass, and I would still-hunt up the topography to look for something in need of a bullet. He took his old scoped .30-30 — I was responsible for bastardizing it with a long eye relief scope — and I took my trusty 7 Mag and we headed our opposite directions.
Coming to the first rise, I could see a thicket of live oaks halfway up the mountain and knew that this must be the place… the tingling of a primordial fold in the brain usually lying dormant in modern man. Once I reached the edge of them, I took the sling off my shoulder, chambered a 150gr copper slug that I figured would probably do the job on a javelina, and began to slink my way thorough the scrub.
I heard them before I saw them… somewhere maybe ten, fifteen yards away from me. Visibility was nonexistent among the oaks. A woof, woof sound that browsing javelina make that is so impossible to describe to the uninitiated, but immediately and unmistakeably arresting.
An intrepid javelina hunter should never go without their predator call of choice. What the hell,I thought. Here goes nothing. I ripped on that closed-reed call and after the opening salvo the sound of hooves on the ground drew closer; two of them homed in on the distress call, loaded for bear. In the thick and shadowed vegetation I could only make out the murky forms of two peccaries, both running full speed towards me. I snapped the big 7 Mag up to my shoulder and cracked off a round without aiming. Right over the top, as is family tradition.
The two javelina turned around and headed back to camp, much like you’d presumably do if you were almost shot in the face by a large-caliber rifle. I tried to catch up to them with no avail. If there’s a creature that can disappear into the myriad crevices and caves dotting the desert face like they can, I’ve yet to witness it.
The next day and the day after that we hiked and glassed around that mountain, trying to bust them again and coming up empty each time. It’s just a javelina tag, so we ambled back to camp a little early each day to enjoy some camp food, quality bullshitting sessions around the crackling fire, and the eerie quiet that carries you to sleep on the nighttime desert winds. We scrambled this past year and came up empty for it, but everything that came with it is worth much more to me than a few extra pounds of meat in the freezer and another skull on the shelf.
If I have to explain it… you wouldn’t understand anyway.
