hog-dog rodeos

I am constantly amazed @ the diversity in the US. Sometimes I can't believe that it's one nation.

Hog Wild
Feral pigs are ugly, destructive and mean. Some people in Texas just love to trap, stab or shoot them. Or put them in rodeos. With dogs.
Todd Spivak ~ Houston Press, Aug 24, 2006

Jason Schooley is a self-described hawg-dawg fanatic. "I love those frickin' hogs," he says. "I don't know what I'd do without 'em." "My daughter was five when she stuck her first hog," he says, beaming.

Domestic hogs become feral after as few as three generations spent in the wild, during which they undergo a werewolf-like transformation. They grow bristly hair and curling tusks, become almost exclusively nocturnal when hunted hard, and develop a thick plate of gristle on their shoulders and sides tough enough to deflect small-caliber bullets.

Nationwide, since 1990, the wild hog population has more than doubled and spread from 19 to 35 states. Every year they cause more than $50 million in damages across Texas.

Feral hogs are said to have a lean, mildly gamy flavor and are considered a delicacy in high-end restaurants on the east and west coasts as well as overseas.

Once, Schooley says, while on a hunt, his dogs caught a hog several miles away. By the time he got to the scene, the dogs had eaten so much of the hog, they were passed out next to it. The hog was still breathing, though its face was completely chewed off from behind its ears to the tip of its snout.

Louisiana, one of just two states that still allow cockfighting, in 2004 became the first to ban hog-catch trials. Leading up to the vote, legislators engaged in "a boisterous hourlong House debate in which one lawmaker wore a hog nose and scores of others squealed and clucked animal noises," according to the Times-Picayune.

Unrepentant, Luther says she continues to organize hog-dog rodeos across the South. Luther can't understand why hogs are being singled out for sympathy. She also organizes fights that pit dogs against raccoons and foxes in pens. "The dogs shred the foxes to pieces, but nobody cares about that," she says. "It's silly to care about hogs but not foxes and coons."

Nearby Nixon is home to Dan Moody, a commercial hunter who claims his Texas Dogs on Hogs video series -- which depicts actual feral hog hunts edited with slow-motion effects and classic-guitar riffs -- has sold 20,000 copies worldwide.
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