Joe Dabney at Large
The Revenge of a North Georgia Wild Hog   

By Joe Dabney

One of the really great mountain men that I got to know during my years of tromping the hills and valleys of the Appalachian mountain country was the late Arvill Wilson, a jolly outdoorsman and winemaker who lived in the Cohutta Mountain foothills northwest of Ellijay, Georgia.

From his youth, he became so famous in boldly hunting down wild critters, including bears, that his friends nicknamed him "Crockett" after Tennessee's Davy Crockett.

He was a great storyteller as well and he loved to sit on his front porch rocking chair on hot summer afternoons, drinking his homemade cherry and scuppernong wines and amusing his friends and visitors with tall tales about his forays into the wilds. I count it one of life's extras that I was able to visit with Crockett many times before he passed away and I feel indeed fortunate that I was able to record many of his memories on audio tape.

One of the tales he told me was the time decades ago when he was paid a visit by a divorced Yankee who wanted to get away from it all, who fell in love with the vast Cohutta mountain range of north Georgia. He moved into a cabin near Crockett's home and asked him to take him under his wing.

"So here he came," Crockett recalled. "Nice guy. He liked my stories about life in the woods and the wilds. He came and said, 'I wanna go with you the next time you go deep into the mountains."

So the following fall, Crockett invited his friend to join him on a "sang hunt," looking for ginseng roots. He had in mind a patch he'd been saving up for such a dig. "So I took him with me; we went to a cove near Lake Conasauga."

After about a mile into the woods, Crockett noticed wild hog sign everywhere...dirt rooted up like it had been demolished by a double-bull turning plow pulled by two stout mules.

"What's that I smell?" the Yankee asked.

"That's jest wild hogs," Crockett replied.

"WILD HOGS? GOOD LORD, LET'S GET OUT OF HERE!"

"Calm down, friend," Crockett reassured him, "I ain't a'goin' nowhere. Them thangs can't do nothin' to you. Might run ye up a bush, but don't you worry."

As they walked on, he kept being pestered by the visitor who kept wanting to beat a hasty retreat. But Crockett urged patience.

I ain't a'lettin' no hogs bother you," he told his visitor again.

The Yankee reluctantly followed Crockett down an old road into a hollow.

"All at once," Crockett recalled, "we saw what we'd been a'smellin'... the holler ahead of us was full of them Russian wild boars. Big old sow just standin' up there you know... a BIG old black sow. And they was about thirty or forty shoats with her, weighing anywhere from 40 to 75 pounds apiece.

"It was a sight to behold, a whole holler-full of hogs; no wonder we could smell 'em. It had been a dry summer. Little wet springs just barely had a seep and them little old shoats didn't know we were there as they came rootin' down that branch flipping rocks, catching crawfish and spring lizards."

"LET'S GET OUT OF HERE, CROCKETT!!" the Yankee whispered, dancing backwards all the time.

"Crockett put a reassuring arm around his visitor and whispered, "Be real quiet now and don't say nothin'. Be real still."

The Yankee's worries continued to mount, however, and he could see his face was twisted with torment. "Crockett, please don't you go off and leave me," he said.

"I'm not goin' any place," Crockett repeated. I won't let nothin' hurt you."

"What're you gonna do, Crockett," the visitor whispered.

"I'm a'gonna climb up on top of them boulders ahead," he whispered, "and I'm gonna catch me one of them pigs."

Straight away, Crockett quietly mounted a six foot boulder where he could get a good view of the army of shoats crossing in front. All at once, he took a flying leap into the middle of the herd and tackled a 40-pound boar.

"It was me-and-him!" Crockett laughed later. "Just like a hound dog catchin' a coon. You talk about a tussle! Around and around we went and him a'squealin' to the top of his lungs."

Crockett quickly grounded the pig and tried to clamp his knee on his back. All the while his Yankee friend was watching the action from up on the boulder.

"That shoat went to squealin' even fiercer," he remembered. "WHEEEEE....WHEEEEE! I grappled him with both hands by that long hair on his side and throwed my knee on him again. WHEEEEE, WHEEEEE! His squeal was awful. I knew that with much more of that squealin', that old sow would turn and come up on us and I'd have to beat that old sow up, too. Next time he went to squallin' I clamped his mouth shut. He just kicked and kept on raising hell."

I could tel the pig was older than 16 weeks," Crockett said, "since he'd already shed his stripes of youth, just like young fawns do."

Meanwhile, the rest of the herd took off. "You never heard such a racket in all your life," he remembered. "Sounded like a train roarin' down through thar. They all run like crazy."
He held on to the little shoat until he finally gave up, "And I helt its mouth so it wouldn't squeal. I tied him up with my shirt."

The Yankee breathed easier when the sow and the other shoats hurried out of sight up a nearby trail. The visitor pulled out a pen knife, opened it up and handed it to Crockett.

"What's that for?" Crockett asked.

"I thought you'd want to stick him with it," the Yankee said.

"Naw, friend," he replied, "I ain't gonna stick this little thang. I'm gonna take it home. We'll fatten it up."

Back at his farm in the Mountaintown district, Crockett placed the wild boar in a half-acre pen, feeding him generously with hog slop. It was obvious from the start, however, that he was too old and too wild to tame. Even so, under his captor's care, the boar grew to 150 pounds.

During the intervening years, Crockett kept a constant vigil on the animal. Every day, just for the pure fun of it, he would go down to the pen and catch the boar and harrass him, wrestling him down to the ground to show him who was boss.

One day, however, after one such wrestling lesson, the hog, always looking for revenge -- saw his chance and slashed a deep wound in Crockett's arm with his tusk.
Some time later, Crockett decided it was time to let his pet go and sold the old hog for $400 to a visitor eager to get a wild boar to service his sows.

I often wondered whatever happened to the north Georgia razorback. I imagine he never did forget Crockett Wilson, his old wrestling coach, and it's not difficult to imagine his joy at getting sweet revenge after years of humiliation and ended up in hog heaven (servicing sows).

Joe Dabney is a writer and speaker whose recent book, "Smokehouse Ham, Spoon Bread and Scuppernong Wine", won the James Beard Award as "Cookbook of the year" and is now in the 11th printing. It contains many additional stories of Crockett Wilson. He can be reached at joedabney@aol.com.