Squirrel Hunting With Wild Bill

It was a crisp cool fall day in Charleston and we had a three day weekend ahead of us and I was ready for one. Just a little more background about what we did in Charleston. You see this base is where the Navy restored and stored the Poseidon and Trident missiles that the submarines carried, Google um there pretty cool. Anyway these missiles also happen to carry nuclear warheads and that made this base a very high security area to say the least. 


To make a long story shorter the Marines on the base were in charge of the security.....We were the MP's. We were on a rotating shift of 24 on and 24 off and when on duty we were locked in the area where the missiles are stored. On our duty we were 4 hours on and 4 hours off and when we were off we were still in the middle of the secure area in an old Strategic Air Command train car with all the comforts of home. TV, bathroom and bunk beds, oh and it almost has AC. Every third weekend we had duty weekend that was Friday, Saturday and Sunday locked in the cage 4 on and 4 off for three days so the following weekend we had OUR three day weekend. Needless to say we enjoyed our three day weekends.

Bill had been planning this weekend all week we were going squirrel hunting. I had been squirrel hunting before but it was mostly for fun, I can hear the animal rights people now gasping and saying "You killed poor defenceless squirrels for fun"? Yep, there rats of the woods get over it plus it gave the other animals something to eat. While I had been squirrel hunting for fun I'm pretty sure Bill had been squirrel hunting for dinner and more than once but, I never ask.

We kicked back and did not much of anything on Friday but we did drive around to find a good place to hunt Saturday morning. If you've ever been to Charleston you know you don't need to drive very far to find some heavy woods and a swamp or two if you don't watch out. We drove for a while and found a place that looked pretty good and we drove until we found the closest house to it to ask if we could hunt there. 


Well we found the house and an old man came to the door and we ask if it was his land and if we could hunt there in the morning and come to find out this old man was a World War 1 Marine Corps Vet. We sat on his front porch for about an hour just talking about life, war, the world and the Marines. He told us he owned all 800 acres around there and we could hunt there anytime we set out minds to do it.

Bill got me up at about 4;30 to go and I fussed the whole way there saying "It's too dark to see anything if it's out there". I was right we got there about an hour and a half too early. We had the same kind of rifle old Remington pump action .22's I think they would hold 14 or 15 bullets in the tube mag and that's important later on. We started hunting at first light about 6:30. We sat and we walked and we sat and we walked and I was thinking surely there are squirrels in South Carolina, then I remembered sure there are, I ran over one last week. We were out there in that old man's woods for 4 hours and we did not see squirrel one.

We started back to Bills truck that was parked up near the road when we heard something behind this giant oak tree that had fallen. Bill run up ahead to see what it was and I heard him yell "HOLY CRAP WE'RE EATING GOOD TONIGHT" then he squared away and starting shooting BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG as fast as he could get another round in he shot and at the same time I hear this God Awful scream and at first I thought it was a woman and I'm thinking "Dear God Bill what in the hell are you shooting" well in about 2 seconds I got my answer a giant wild boar came flying out from behind that tree and was heading straight for Bill. He was running and shooting and running and shooting, I was laughing so hard I could not see to shoot straight. Bill sounded a little like Jerry Clower when he was yelling "Help me....Shoot this thing" . 


Well Bill jumped up and shimmed up a tree and the hog was trying to get to him butting the tree and trying to climb it. I was still about 75 feet away from the action and Bill was still hanging on to the tree and shooting. I regained my composer and started shooting also, the hog had no idea I was even there and kept after Bill. Well Bill and I were both out of ammo and the hog was still standing. Don't get the idea that Bill and I were bad shots, we were both very good shots but we had little tiny bullets and this was about a 300lb pissed off hog. 


The hog had all it's attention on Bill so like a real dumb ass I'm gonna sneak up behind him and smack him with my rifle and that's just what I did. I used my best Parris Island taught Butt Stroke and smashed him right on the top of his head. He didn't move so I smashed him again and he dropped like a sack of potato's.

We dragged that bad boy about 1/4 mile back to Bill's truck and put his big butt in the bed. We started to get in the truck and the hog moved, we stopped in our tracks and looked at each other then we looked at the hog, he moved again only this time a little more in fact a lot more it seemed I had only knocked him out and he was coming to and was not going to be happy in the bed of that truck. We were very luck that day that Bill has an old Civil War Sword in his truck, don't ask me why he kept a sword in his truck, that's just Bill but that day I was glad he did. He grabbed the sword and ran the hog through his neck just as the hog was getting to his feet and that did the job. We counted 28 holes in that old hog some were entrance holes and some were exit holes . I told you we were good shots.

Well we didn't eat that hog that night but we dug a pit and cooked him for about 24 hours and there was enough hog for about 100 of us and there may have beers drank at the same time...... It was kind of a game to see who could find the most bullets in their food as we enjoyed that hog.I kept one of his tusk for years it was a little over 3 inches long, I wonder what ever happened to that thing? Good times.