If you have read some of my most recent posts, you know that I have been writing about my exploits and experiences after arriving at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, and being assigned to the Joint Interoperability Test Center (JITC) at Fort Huachuca. My most recent post may remind those of you with families of the time you spend together with your children enjoying the great outdoors. You know. Getting a little exercise, such as riding a bike. Cuz that is exactly what my most recent post was about, riding bikes with my children on a leisurely Sunday afternoon. Bo what a joy that was. Well, at least it was a joy for most of us. The Master of Disaster may not have had as great a time as the rest of us. Who is the Master of Disaster? Well, if you don’t know, you may have to go back and research some of my older posts to find out. Today, I am going to talk about another outdoor pastime that I enjoyed while at Fort Huachuca during my time off. I enjoyed hunting the wild critters that roamed the mountains adjacent to Fort Huachuca. One of those wild critters that I enjoyed hunting was the Javelina or collared peccary. Javelina are medium-size animals that kinda look like wild boars. They have tusks that protrude from their jaws about an inch, maybe a little longer. And they like to live in herds of between ten and fifty critters. Those herds are also known as squadrons. Each herd defends the territory, which includes their sleeping and feeding areas. Javelina live in desert washes and grasslands consisting of saguaro cacti and palo verde trees with mixed shrubs. They are classified as herbivores and they eat a variety of plant foods such as agave, mesquite beans and prickly pear cacti as well as other roots and vegetation. However, they have been known to eat lizards, dead birds and rodents. Their main predators are mountain lions, coyotes, bobcats and humans. Go figure. They typically live to be about ten, to sometimes as long as twenty years old. The really old ones get kind of silvery gray hair on their backs. Thus, they are known as silverback Javelina. A typical Javelina stands about two feet high and can weigh anywhere between thirty-five and fifty-five pounds. Their average length from snout to rear-end is typically 3 to 4 feet long. During my years of hunting Javelina, I learned to track them by smell because they have a scent gland on the top of their rump that gives off a very potent musk smell. A couple of interesting tidbits about Javelina: members of the herd or squadron will rub cheek to hip (kind of like a Javelina handshake) to share their scent among the members of the herd. The individual scents that are exchanged during the Javelina handshake form a sort of herd perfume that is used to identify the members of the herd. When javelina smell danger, they will freeze and let off a musky odor from their musk gland and clack their tusks in warning. This is because their eyesight is very poor. Javelina have myopic eyesight. But their hearing and their sense of smell are very keen. Thus, it is best to stay downwind of a herd and to be as quiet as possible if you are tracking Javelina. Now, I did mention that Javelina have very poor eyesight. As a result, I liked to give those critters a sporting chance. It was perfectly legal to hunt them with a high power rifle. But why? If you were a skilled hunter and you know how to track critters, you shouldn’t need a high-powered rifle. Thus, I like to give Javelina a sporting chance. The very first Javelina I ever tagged at Fort Huachuca, I successfully hunted and bagged with a model M1911 .45 caliber ACP pistol. It was an old silverback fifty-eight pound male Javelina. I drove up into hunting area T-3 in the mountains adjacent to Fort Huachuca. I parked my vehicle near an outcropping that gave me a nice view of the surrounding valley. I glassed (looked through binoculars) the area on and off throughout the morning without seeing any Javelina. Oh, I had seen critters. I had seen plenty of critters. They were just the wrong kind of critters. I had seen lots and lots of deer migrate through that valley throughout the morning. It looked like they were headed from one bedding area to another while they grazed. They didn’t seem to be in any particular rush. It almost seemed as if those bastards knew that they weren’t being hunted. It’s amazing how wild animals can figure shit like that out. I mean, there ain’t any signs out there telling them that it’s Javelina hunting season but not deer hunting season like in my favorite Bugs Bunny cartoons. And there sure as hell aren’t any people standing out there telling them that. And I’m also pretty damn sure that there ain’t any wild critters roaming about and telling them that shit. But I did see occasional birds circling the skies above that valley. Perhaps they were warning the critters below whose turn it was to be hunted. And maybe that’s why I wasn’t seeing a goddamn thing in the way of Javelina. Then, at around noon or so, even the deer stopped migrating through the valley. Then, I didn’t see shit. I must’ve dozed off in the afternoon sun because the next thing I knew was that I was disturbed by a loud crashing noise. First, I saw a herd of deer running like a bat out of hell across the valley like their asses were on fire. But I couldn’t see the source of the danger. Next, I noticed a small herd of Javelina enter the valley and disappear into a wash just below me. They were also running like a bat out of hell like their asses were on fire. Then, far below them, I heard some really loud squealing like an animal in distress. Soon after that, I saw a mountain lion enter the valley with a clump of red in its mouth. It had obviously caught dinner. The clump of red in its mouth was a young Javelina, also known as a “red” because it’s hair is darker and more reddish color than an adult Javelina. The herd of Javelina must have been somewhere at the lower end of the valley and they obviously scattered when they sensed the danger from the mountain lion. Meanwhile, I still heard the crashing and thrashing in the wash below me where I had seen two Javelina disappear. Obviously, they weren’t going to come to me so I was going to have to go to them. But I couldn’t just go charging right down into that wash like General Custer and the Seventh Cavalry because I didn’t want to attract attention to myself. Plus, I didn’t want those little bastards to be able to smell me. Thus, I had to get down onto the ridge just above the wash in a downwind position from those Javelina. It took me about fifteen or twenty minutes to work my way down to the ridge above the wash. Where that Javelina were thrashing and crashing about. When I lay down on that ridge and glassed into the wash, the Javelina were going to town on some prickly pears. They were just tearing that shit up. I don’t even think that they knew I was there. I was only about ten or fifteen feet away from them. I drew and cocked my M1911 forty-five caliber ACP pistol. I aimed for the bigger of the two Javelina (the old silverback). I just didn’t know that it was an old silverback at the time. I aimed low center of mass (or for those not familiar approximately at the heart). But as it was, my round struck the Javelina just below the spine. The force of the impact picked the Javelina up and spun around 180 degrees and set it down on the ground. The Javelina took three or four steps and fell over. The other Javelina took off like a streak of greased lightning for parts unknown as soon as my shot rang out. I wasn’t really concerned about that one because I was pretty sure I had already bagged one. I waited a good five or ten minutes before approaching the critter. I wanted to make damn good and sure that it was dead. Then, I walked over to the Javelina and kicked it to double ensure that it was dead. And then I tagged it, and encountered no exercises in futility during my first ever Javelina hunt.
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