So I got off the last bus of the night near home, in a suburban area of Tucson AZ, just before midnight. Walking by a nearby apartment complex I see two ladies in a smallish car start to come out and then make a weird U-turn back into the complex parking lot. Odd. I look in there and see the biggest damn Javalina I've seen yet in my roughly six years around here. I'd guesstimate around 125lbs worth.
Whoa.
These things aren't "exactly" pigs, but for all practical purposes they might as well be. If startled up close they can be vicious. And this thing was cruising around right past people's apartment doors - if somebody came out unawares right on top of it they could get chewed up and spat out. Plus it's basically cornered in there, scared of the cars, forcing it in up against people's doors.
Not a good scene.
I talk to the gals, one of whom was calling her husband inside one of the apartments. Him and a friend came out, and we helped escort the ladies into their house. We then discussed what to do.
The husband in question asked me if I had a problem with guns.
Err, no - I told him I was armed myself. Cool - he showed me his Ruger LC9 held low, finger off trigger - his only holster was a deep-cover rig and he wanted faster access than that.
We discussed trying to carefully and gently chase it out. In this complex there were a lot of apartment front doors in close proximity, opening onto fairly narrow areas. We didn't like the idea of this thing feeling "trapped" if somebody suddenly came out not expecting a funkypork surprise at close range.
I told him I'd take point as my 357Mag with hot loads was much more likely to stop it if it came to that, and I had a much better flashlight than anybody else present (160lumen, dual CR123 type). We did NOT want to shoot the dang thing - safe backstops were there, but so were a lot of apartment walls.
Well short form, we did manage to herd it out the same way it got in. My flashlight was critical, it let me keep him in sight from enough distance that he wasn't threatened into charging.
Once he was off down the street, we saw the rest of his herd - we counted at least six adults all told, most across the street, plus at least two babies. The one we had rounded up was the biggest, I assume the alpha male.
Hairy situation, somewhat, but I felt very, very well equipped for it. Never cleared leather, but I did walk around hand on grip, flashlight in the off hand. A weapon-mounted light would have been a fiasco in this case - avoiding scaring any of the other residents was very high on the list of priorities!
For the record: we don't usually see those suckers that deep into town. Obviously it does happen though. If it was just ordinary houses, wouldn't have been such an issue but that apartment complex wasn't designed for close encounters of the funkypork kind.
Sidenote on the size of this thing: I'm comparing weight to known weights of California wild boar I've seen stuffed and mounted. The various "spec sheets" on these things online says they max out around 80lbs or a hair over. This one was in a major no-hunting zone (city of Tucson!) and had probably been raised on year-round-watered decorative plants as opposed to the usual desert fare. It seems plausible to me that under those circumstances a "Javalina Rex" could easily develop. The good news was, it was reasonably well behaved. It faced us down a couple of times but didn't threaten to charge, and seemed fairly calm through the whole thing.
And if you think these things can't be dangerous, here's what the skull looks like:
Whoa.
These things aren't "exactly" pigs, but for all practical purposes they might as well be. If startled up close they can be vicious. And this thing was cruising around right past people's apartment doors - if somebody came out unawares right on top of it they could get chewed up and spat out. Plus it's basically cornered in there, scared of the cars, forcing it in up against people's doors.
Not a good scene.
I talk to the gals, one of whom was calling her husband inside one of the apartments. Him and a friend came out, and we helped escort the ladies into their house. We then discussed what to do.
The husband in question asked me if I had a problem with guns.
Err, no - I told him I was armed myself. Cool - he showed me his Ruger LC9 held low, finger off trigger - his only holster was a deep-cover rig and he wanted faster access than that.We discussed trying to carefully and gently chase it out. In this complex there were a lot of apartment front doors in close proximity, opening onto fairly narrow areas. We didn't like the idea of this thing feeling "trapped" if somebody suddenly came out not expecting a funkypork surprise at close range.
I told him I'd take point as my 357Mag with hot loads was much more likely to stop it if it came to that, and I had a much better flashlight than anybody else present (160lumen, dual CR123 type). We did NOT want to shoot the dang thing - safe backstops were there, but so were a lot of apartment walls.
Well short form, we did manage to herd it out the same way it got in. My flashlight was critical, it let me keep him in sight from enough distance that he wasn't threatened into charging.
Once he was off down the street, we saw the rest of his herd - we counted at least six adults all told, most across the street, plus at least two babies. The one we had rounded up was the biggest, I assume the alpha male.
Hairy situation, somewhat, but I felt very, very well equipped for it. Never cleared leather, but I did walk around hand on grip, flashlight in the off hand. A weapon-mounted light would have been a fiasco in this case - avoiding scaring any of the other residents was very high on the list of priorities!
For the record: we don't usually see those suckers that deep into town. Obviously it does happen though. If it was just ordinary houses, wouldn't have been such an issue but that apartment complex wasn't designed for close encounters of the funkypork kind.
Sidenote on the size of this thing: I'm comparing weight to known weights of California wild boar I've seen stuffed and mounted. The various "spec sheets" on these things online says they max out around 80lbs or a hair over. This one was in a major no-hunting zone (city of Tucson!) and had probably been raised on year-round-watered decorative plants as opposed to the usual desert fare. It seems plausible to me that under those circumstances a "Javalina Rex" could easily develop. The good news was, it was reasonably well behaved. It faced us down a couple of times but didn't threaten to charge, and seemed fairly calm through the whole thing.
And if you think these things can't be dangerous, here's what the skull looks like: