Friday, March 19, 2010
Boars of Benning
Feral pigs offer year-round hunting on an Army post some call Fort Big Game.
Wild turkeys are among the wildlife found at Fort Benning, a huge Army post with a comprehensive wildlife management program.
Army Sgt. 1st Class Dave Stienbach checks his map to determine his location while hunting wild pigs deep in the Fort Benning woods.
Photos by MARK TAYLOR The Roanoke Times
Army Sgt. 1st Class Lance Dement carefully walks across a log crossing a Fort Benning backwoods creek during a hunt for wild hogs in early March.
Mark Taylor is outdoors editor at The Roanoke Times.
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FORT BENNING, Ga. -- Home to a massive Army basic training program, Fort Benning sometimes gets the nickname Fort Beginnings.
But Sgt. 1st Class Lance Dement has another name for the post where he is stationed.
"I call it Fort Big Game," said Dement, a 22-year Army veteran and a senior enlisted member of the Benning-based Army Marksmanship Unit.
The sprawling 187,000 acre post on the Georgia/Alabama border has an incredible wildlife management program that supports extensive hunting programs for white-tailed deer, turkey and wild hogs.
The feral hogs are what lured Petersen's Bowhunting editor Christian Berg and me to the post for an early March bowhunt.
Like many areas in the South, Fort Benning has struggled to keep populations of destructive feral hogs in check.
The pig population has been so troublesome, post officials have at times offered generous bounties on the animals and even have established a pig eradication squad that is allowed to take animals at night, using bait and with traps. There is no daily bag limit or closed season on the animals.
Hunting at the post is open to, among others, authorized military members, retirees and civilian Department of Defense workers, as well as to accompanied guests.
Berg and Dement started talking about the hunt after meeting earlier this winter at the Shooting Hunting and Outdoor Trade Show in Las Vegas.
Though Dement and fellow members of the AMU are firearms shooters by vocation, they are diehard bowhunters.
In part, that passion stems from their desire for a challenge.
For shooters who can hit a small target at 1,000 yards with an M-16 service rifle with iron sights, there is little challenge to shooting big game at 100 yards with a high-powered hunting rifle.
Dement, who was on the U.S. 2000 Olympic shooting team, told Berg that a bowhunt for pigs on Fort Benning would be one he'd thoroughly enjoy.
A former newspaper man, Berg can recognize a good story when he hears one. He also figured the low-budget adventure might appeal to me, and he was right.
After leaving Roanoke early on the morning of March 1, I picked Berg up at the Atlanta airport that afternoon and we made the final 90-minute drive to Fort Benning.
By first light the next morning we were in the woods, chasing hogs.
Having just wrapped up working long hours putting on the All-Army shooting championships, Dement and his men were due a break. So he and three other soldiers were able to hunt with us.
Hunting at Benning is no simple exercise.
The post is divided into dozens of designated hunting sections, and each day post officials release a list of those sections that are open to hunting.
Hunters, who must have a state small game license and post hunting permit ($10 per day for guests), use a call-in system to sign in to the section they plan to hunt. The system limits the number of hunters per section.
The first morning I was paired with Sgt. 1st Class Dave Steinbach, a veteran Army Ranger who just recently took a job with the AMU.
As we headed out on the first trek in a cold rain it was clear this wasn't going to be an easy hunt.
Although dirt roads criss-cross the entire post, there are vast tracts of wild, thick woods and those are the places most favored by pigs.
On that first walk through a tangled creek bottom we found plenty of pig tracks, dung and evidence of rooting, but the sign wasn't fresh. So after a two-mile trek it was time to try another spot.
Cell phone calls and text messages helped us keep up with the progress of the other hunters, who were also seeing nothing.
That changed at midday, when Berg sent a message that he and Dement wouldn't be meeting us for lunch because they had gotten into pigs.
An hour later the report came that Dement had arrowed a 100-pound boar.
Steinbach and I stuck with it, scouting for tracks and sign while driving between hunting areas, where we walked at least five more miles through the wood and on roads.
Rain continued to fall, turning the red clay roads into soupy messes, or the "elliptical trainer from hell," as Steinbach called the slippery roads.
At 6 p.m. we were driving to one final spot when Steinbach spotted something.
"Black pig!" he hissed.
We kept driving, then turned around and circled back to get downwind of the animal, which was feeding in a grove of pin oaks.
Pigs don't have great eyes or ears, but their noses are incredible. One hint of human scent and they are gone, so remaining downwind during the stalk is critical.
Steinbach checked us in to the hunting unit, we got our gear and headed into the woods.
The hunt almost ended quickly. We had sneaked to within 75 yards of the pig when a small convoy of Humvees rattled by on a nearby road and the skittish hog took off. But we were able to eventually catch back up to it.
After a 20-minute sneak we were within 15 yards of the pig, which turned to offer me an easy broadside shot.
The hog fell within sight and Steinbach gave me a thumbs up.
Unfortunately when we recovered the young boar we found that it had been previously injured, and that the wound was badly infected. It was not fit for consumption.
That was too bad because wild hog can be great table fare when properly prepared. Dement grilled the backstraps of his hog at a cookout the next night and it was a real treat.
The next morning Steinbach arrowed a nice pig on a hunt I missed because I had taken the day off to visit relatives who live not far from Benning.
We were back at it the next day. But despite walking many more miles and scouting several more good units by truck we didn't find any pigs.
Berg, hunting with Staff Sgt. Emil Kovan, also drew a blank that day.
That was OK.
We had been assured a fun hunt, not an easy one.
And that promise had been kept.
SATURDAY Geocaching: Rockbridge Area Tourism will host a geocache training seminar at the Lexington Visitor Center, from 9 a.m. to noon. The free seminar comes as the area prepares to launch the Gems of Rockbridge Geocache
Trail in June. Call 463-3777 or visit www.lexingtonvirginia.com for
more information.
