THE BOAR HUNTERS
By: Steve Boehne

In 1970, I was studying at Cal. State Fullerton full time and shaping surfboards; part time – winter, full time – summer. The guy I worked for, Bob Highsmith owned three surf shops; Plastic Fantastic, Soul Surfboards and Surf Craft Hawaii. The boards in each shop were all priced differently, according to the strength of the name, but I shaped them all from the same blanks. Bob’s Glasser, Gary Turnagel was a “big hunter.” He invited Bob and I to join him Boar hunting up in Big Sur, Northern Calif. Bob was all over that idea; he went to the army surplus store and bought camouflage fatigues and combat boots. This was before the arrival of “goochie” hiking boots. He also went to the gun shop and bought a gazillion dollar 357 magnum-hunting rifle and an automatic 12 gage shot gun. I told Gary I didn’t have a hunting rifle and he said don’t worry; I have an extra one you can use. I put together some old ski clothes because it was February, dead of winter and I knew it would be cold up north.

We left Huntington Beach about noon in Bob’s new Ford Van and got into Big Sur a couple hours after dark. Big Sur is between Morrow Bay and Monterey Bay. It is one of the most beautiful areas of Calif. Where Hwy 1 zigzags along rugged ocean cliffs and the coastal mountains are wild. We took a side road off of Hwy 101 and drove deep into the mountains. It was a cold, dressily night with a thick ground fog. Gary knew an old hunter’s lodge where we could have dinner. We parked next to a few rusty old pick up trucks and walked into the log cabin style building. It was fairly dark inside with a long whisky bar and fat, bearded bar tender. There were a few tables and two pool tables. Country music was playing from an ancient radio sitting on the bar. Up on the wall, around the entire perimeter of the musky room were mounted nasty looking boar heads, big buck heads with massive antlers and big mountain trout. The boar heads were particularly ominous looking because of the little black eyes, long bristly hair and the big tusks curling up out of their mouths. Several very crusty guys were sitting at the largest table eating dinner and drinking bottles of Bud. We took a table and naturally, ordered 3 Buds. The place only offered Coors or Budweiser. The menu was pretty small, but exotic. You could get beans and cabbage slaw with beef, buffalo steak, boar burgers, or venison (seasonal). To get into boar mode, we all ordered boar burgers. One of the crusty old guys asked: What-a yawl guys doin up here? Gary was 6’4”, 240lb. and looked pretty crusty himself because he had grown a neck beard especially for this occasion. He had shaved down to his jaw line and the beard looked like moss growing under his chin. Gary answered: We're goin boar hunt’n up at deep creek. The guy answered: yawl be careful, them boar can charge and tear your guts out with them tusks before you can even see’um in the bush. One of the other guys said: Ya, I put six slugs in that one’s head before he quite chargin at my ass. He pointed at a monster head up on the wall. Gary and Bob were really getting into the place, drinkin, huntin tawk and what-all. Finally, several hours later, we drove on up to Gary’s secret spot at Deep Creek.

Gary parked on a ridge about 50 yards above the creek. We climbed into our sleeping bags in the back of the van. It was decided that the two of them would face the front and I would sleep between them facing the rear. I didn’t sleep much that night thinking about charging boars plus Gary’s 30-second blubber farts were worse than Bob’s snoring. At 5 am Bob’s alarm wristwatch went off and we swung into action. They put their camouflage on and I found an old green sweatshirt. They unwrapped their powerful weapons and handed me an old army rifle. I said: What’s this? Gary said that’s a semi automatic M1 carbine from WW2 with a 30 shot clip. He showed me how to load the big, long magazine and stick it into the gun. Man, I was set. From up on the ridge, through the glow of first light we had a perfect view of the watering hole. Gary and Bob unloaded two cases of beer, sat down in their “hunting” chairs and started drinking. I was perplexed, let’s go get the boars I said. They just answered we’re gonna wait here for’um. I stood there for about 10 minutes then couldn’t take it anymore. I said: well, I’m going down there and find the boars. I slithered quietly down the path to the creek and found that the boars had already been there and left. There were black, steaming boar turds everywhere, they couldn’t have gone far. I saw a tunnel through thick underbrush heading up the opposite bank. I crossed the creek and peered into the dark tunnel. Well, you don’t shoot no boars waiting for them to come to you, so I chambered a bullet, took the M1 off safety, got down on my belly and started crawling up the underbrush tunnel. About 20 yards up the bank, I came to another tunnel running right and left. I made a right. The ground was a mixture of mud and mashed boar turds, but I couldn’t stand up because the underbrush was too thick and prickly. The whole hillside seemed to be a maize of boar trails. I was crawling towards the next intersection when a big black, hairy, ugly boar came charging down the path towards the creek. In a millisecond he was gone. I don’t think he ever knew I was there. I rushed forward, pointed the M1 down the tunnel, but he was gone like a phantom.

Upon second thought, I decided that an encounter with a charging boar in an underbrush tunnel was not the best way to hunt boar. I crawled out of the tunnels and headed back up to the great “chair hunters”. When I got there, they had a pretty good pile of beer cans going and they were laughing at me. I said: What are you laughing at I just about got a boar. Gary said: Shoot your gun. I said: I don’t want to shoot the gun and scare away all the boars! Gary said: Well, just shoot it anyway. So I aimed it at the creek and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened; the damn thing was busted. Those guys thought that was so funny. Since the great “chair hunters” each had their expensive gauche rifles across their laps, I grabbed Bob’s Semi automatic 12 gauge shot gun and headed out of camp.

I followed a long footpath up to the top of a high mountain peak. When I got to the top, the sun was just above the horizon; the valleys were full of fog and the ridges stretched up into the early morning sky. The view was beautiful. I sat against a big granite bolder to just enjoy the quiet scene. After I was there for about 30 minutes, I heard quiet movement behind me. I stood up slowly to peer around the bolder. Just on the other side of the bolder, not six feet away from me stood a big buck with massive antlers. He saw me, but because I moved so slowly, he froze. I could have hit him over the head with the gun he was so close. His eyes were big, deep and dark. I truly believe that he knew it wasn’t deer season, because he slowly turned and walked away.

I wondered around in the woods for a couple of hours and eventually went back to see what the great “chair hunters” had done. They were napping after their tough morning of chair hunting. We decided to move camp to a small river running down the central valley. As they were setting up camp I decided to shoot some ground squirrels for dinner. There were hundreds of them everywhere. They had dug thousands of tunnels to the point that even the paved road was caving in from the excavation. I blasted four of them with the shotgun and brought them back to camp. I wasn’t sure how to clean them, so I cut their bellies open, pulled the guts out and threw it into the river. I thought I should skin ‘um so I cut the skin around their necks, grabbed hold of their heads and pulled the skin off one at a time. Well, let me tell you, it took about 200lb. of pull to part those squirrels with their skin. By the time I was done I had squirrel blood running down my chest and arms. It was nearly dark and getting pretty cold. I decided to just jump into the freezing cold river and get the bath over with as quick as possible.

The boys had a nice bar-b-que fire going and they were preparing mushrooms sautéed in wine and corn on the cob to go with their thick steaks. I didn’t care, I was having squirrel for dinner. When I put the squirrels on the fire they smelled bad, like something wild. When I tried to eat one it was exactly like biting into an old leather boot that was full of dead bugs and then charbroiled. Luckily, there was another steak in the cooler for me.

The next morning, I decided to shoot some more squirrels. I was kinda pissed at them anyway. I was blasting away when the game warden drove up in his green pick up truck. He stopped and asked me what we were doing up here. I said we were boar hunting, but since we hadn’t gotten any, I was hunting ground squirrel. He said please shoot all of them you can. They are under cutting the road and even killing the oak trees. I said I’d do my best to help. He said: they’re no good for nothing, you know last week a couple of guys even tried eating those nasty varmints. I laughed knowingly and said: That’s the most stupidest thing I’ve ever heard!