The previous post concerned how my defensive handgun would fare against javelina and wild boar.  Long time reader augustr had a request.

“I seem to remember a story where you were hunting in a thicket and came up against a hog. NO link?”

I thought that the post had been lost, but our friend knirirr was kind enough to suggest web.archive.org, otherwise known as the Wayback Machine.  It took some digging but I found an archived version dated November 30, 2006 10:16 PM.

There are some embarrassing mistakes in the essay.   The one that is truly unforgivable is that I confuse javelina with wild boar, and even misspell the word.  “…torn to shreds as the havelina furiously tried to throw me off.”  My only excuse is that I had only been to Texas that once, and I had heard people mention javelina.  I just never bothered to ask if they were different from wild boar.

At any rate, those who are interested can read about the day I used up all of the luck God allotted me for my entire life.

In a previous post I spoke about a woman who had been attacked by a pack of javelina in a suburban setting.  (I erroneously said she had been attacked by wild pigs at first, now corrected.)   I also mentioned that I accompany my dogs when I let them out into the yard to make sure that they are not attacked by wildlife.

This prompted long time reader knirirr to ask a question …

“Do you know what the effectiveness of the sort of handgun you usually carry (9mm?) is against wild pigs, if you don’t mind me asking?”

Against wild pigs?  Not very effective at all.  Against javelina?  Pretty darn effective!

The gun I usually carry for self defense is a Beretta PX4 Storm compact.  It is chambered for the 9mm Parabellum cartridge.

If the make and model don’t mean much, then don’t let it bother you.  Just keep in mind that it is a modern semi-auto handgun, using medium powered ammunition, and it has been optimized to be carried while concealed by making it smaller than a standard handgun.  The barrel and grip are both shortened a bit.  Each magazine of ammunition holds 15 rounds, and I always carry a spare magazine.

The woman in the article I mention above was attacked by javelina, which are pig-like animals native to North America.  They have really nasty and sharp tusks that they can use to tear someone up, but they aren’t very big.  The average size for an adult is about 45 to 90 pounds (20 to 40 kg). For comparison, that means most smaller adults weigh as much as a bulldog while the larger weighs as much as a Doberman.

Except, of course, the javelina have tusks that are sharper and longer than the teeth of dogs.  They also run in packs of up to 40 individuals, with about 20 animals being the most common.

Another piggy menace is wild hogs, also referred to as razorbacks or feral pigs.  They are considerably larger than javelina, weighing in anywhere between 100 to 400 pounds (45 to 180 kg), with an average around 200 pounds (90 kg).   They are so dangerous that for thousands of years hunting them has been a mark of extreme bravery, and specialized weapons were developed to bring home the bacon without the hunter being ripped apart by the prey.

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What is it?  A magazine about Australian women hunters taking on dangerous feral hogs.  Seems that is a big problem Down Under.

What does it look like?

Oh, hey!  They got a Facebook page!

Don’t know if the magazine is still published or not, but it ought to be.  After all, there is a decided dearth of magazines devoted to female hunters from Australia.

I’ve done my fair share of backwoods backpacking in my youth.    I didn’t exactly go where no man has gone before, but I did walk without fear where it would have probably taken a few months for someone to stumble across my remains if I had broken a leg.

Let me just say that people who have never been out in the wild are fucking stupid when it comes to the animals who live there.  Case in point is this story from a few years ago of a woman who was badly injured during a javelina attack while walking her dogs in a suburban neighborhood.  And how did these notoriously wary beasts lose their natural fear of man?  Because the neighbors were feeding the hogs, probably because they thought they were just so cute and cuddly.

Like I said, fucking stupid.

Got dogs?  I do!  Love em’ to death!  Mainly because they love me back.

They are both about 50 pounds (22 kilos).  Not small, no.  Even so, I go out with them every single time I let them into the yard to water the bushes.  Why?  Because there are coyotes about!  You can hear them yipping and howling in the wee hours of the night if they should happen to catch and kill something.

What would one obese man who is in advanced middle age do if three or four coyotes should hop the fence and be in the yard when I and my beloved dogs should venture forth one fine morning?  Shoot them, obviously.  I am always armed if it is legal to be armed, after all.

So my dogs are medium sized, and cannot be snatched up by a coyote on the run.  What about people with smaller beasts?

You would have to be some sort of quick draw artist, as well as one fine shot, to be able to gun down fast moving threats on the fly as they close in on your fuzzy darlings.  Most likely the predator would maim or kill the dog even if you were a modern shootist.

Thanks to the Southern Rockies Nature Blog, we have been given a heads up to he CoyoteVest, armor for your itty bitty pooch!

Don’t laugh!  It was designed by someone who lost their dog to a coyote attack.

What is it with that forest of brightly colored plastic spikes?  Keeps eagles and other raptors from swooping down and using their talons to sever the spine of the puppy.  Makes the lapdog look bigger too.

This really isn’t anything new.  Modern hunting dogs that go after very dangerous game, such as the aforementioned wild hogs, can be outfitted with kevlar vests to keep them from becoming eviscerated by the razorbacks.

And who can forget the scene from Conan the Barbarian (1982) where some wardogs kill Conan’s father?

If you happen to own small dogs and you live where you can hear the howl of the coyote, you might think of armoring up the pooch.  But don’t go unarmed in case the predators decide your pets are hard targets, while you look all soft and ready for the fang.