Queen Donna – Louisiana Huntress

Let me begin by saying, I have been around hunters all my life. After all I was born and raised in Louisiana, the state known as the “Sportsman’s Paradise.” Everybody in my family hunted something, squirrels, rabbits, deer, duck, fox, you name it, and somebody in the family hunted it. When I say “somebody” I strictly mean the men, because after all hunting was simply not lady like, or so I was raised being told. Ladies don’t hunt and Ladies don’t shoot guns and I was a lady.

Many years later I met my husband who, when we met, was very passionate about deer hunting. If he wasn’t in the woods hunting deer during deer season, he was thinking about deer hunting. When it wasn’t deer season he was planting food plots, planning on hunting, reading about hunting, and always learning about new products for deer hunting. From the day we met my husband asked me to go hunting with him. Of course, I never went hunting with him, because after all, it simply wasn’t lady like. Well somebody forgot to clue my husband in on this little fact, because he never stopped asking.

My husband’s passion for deer hunting morphed into a passion for hunting hogs with dogs. Years ago I agreed to go on a hog hunt with my husband. It was a cold morning so my husband dressed me in a pair of his old coveralls that were way too big (the zipper on one leg was broken and the crotch hung down to my knees) and a pair of kids’ rubber boots. So I wouldn’t trip on the one pant leg as we trekked through the woods my husband poked a hole in one side and used a shoelace to wrap around my leg like a gladiator sandal. I looked like a camo-clad gladiator, gangsta with my pants sagging, walking through the woods that day. At this point in time, Patch, our 120 pound pit bull, that normally would almost drag my husband through the woods, was being drug through the woods by my husband because Patch refused to leave me behind. Suffice it to say, when this hunt was over I told my husband I would never, ever go hog hunting with him again. Even this experience never stopped my husband from asking me to go with him every time he went on a hunt.

I spent the next ten or so years listening to my husband talk, tell stories and after the fact, laughing about some of his hog hunting escapades with his friends. This was an activity that truly made my husband happy. So about a year ago, my husband asked me yet again to go with him hog hunting, this time I took him up on his offer to go. Little did my husband know what he was getting himself into bringing me hunting with him. But, if you ask him, he will tell you he never regretted a single time he asked me to go hunting with him.

After all, how hard could it be? I mean I knew the lingo, I knew the process, I knew what the dogs’ jobs were; I had listened to my husband talk about it for years, I could do this. Little did I know hog hunting is so much more! You must know how to suit up the dogs in tracking collars and cut vests for their safety, you have to know how to read the dogs’ barks and bays so you know when to turn them out, you have to know when to let the catch dog go into the bay, how to use a GPS to track the dogs, and the list goes on.

My next hog hunt was in the marshes of South Louisiana. What had I gotten myself into? I was way out of my element, but I persevered. The dogs wind from the boat, we pull in and turn the dogs out to go find the hog. The next thing we know, the hog has jumped and was swimming across the bayou, with the dogs in hot pursuit. My husband whips the boat around and heads straight for the hog. As quick as we head towards this hog so does the other boat we are hunting with and they grab the hog out of the water and drag it into their boat. At this point, swimming straight towards me is a dog swimming looking at me as if to say “please pull me in the boat.” Two things run through my head at this point. This isn’t our dog, so do I grab him up and drag him into the boat? Do I shoo him back to the bank to head out for another hog? I grab the dog and drag him into our boat, because he looks like he’s about to drown due to exhaustion. As quick as it started, it was over, first hog down.

We move to another island, this time much closer to the Gulf of Mexico, and turn the dogs out on a different island. We wait on one side of the island while the other boat waits on the other side of the island. All of a sudden someone hollers, “The hog is swimming!” Sure enough, this huge boar is swimming from one island to another. My husband lays the throttle down and we give chase to cut the hog off before he gets to the island he is swimming toward. The two friends riding in the boat with us snatch this huge boar out of the water and wrestle him onto the front of our boat. At this point my husband makes a keen observation that we didn’t even have a knife between the four of us in the boat when realizes that he has one on his holster that he wears. My husband hands me the knife, I have no idea what I am doing, I have no clue where to stab this nasty boar to kill it, all while these other two friends are battling to keep this boar in the boat. My husband and I have a quick discussion and I quickly tell him, “You kill it.” I was greeted with a chorus of three telling me to kill this boar, they had this hog held down and it wasn’t going anywhere. My husband shows me exactly where I need to stab this hog to kill it. I plunge the knife in just below the front leg of this wild boar and hit the heart, I HAVE JUST KILLED MY FIRST WILD BOAR. What a rush of adrenaline, and I think, “Why have I not gone hog hunting with my husband before now?”