Getty Image / Mayra Beltran / Houston Chronicle
Audio By Carbonatix
A wheelchair-bound man in Houston, Texas recently faced down an attacking feral hog that got so close he said he could smell it. If it wasn’t for the man’s dog and his trusty Airsoft gun, it might have been a tragic story about the growing dangers presented by feral hogs in Texas but he was able to scare the wild hog off.
Carl White’s story was recently featured on Houston’s KHOU 11 News. He told his surreal story of how he knew something was wrong when his dog started wildly barking. By that point, the wild hog was already bearing down on him and as he is confined to a wheelchair there wasn’t much he could do.
Improvising in the moment, he reached for Airsoft pistol which has an LED light affixed to the top of it and he was ble to fire off a few of the plastic Airsoft BBs which proved to be a large enough distraction for the wild hog. His barking dog and the improvised distractions proved to be enough to turn the attacking hog away.
Here’s Carl White’s story which was recently featured on the Houston evening news:
Carl says the wild hog was “coming full speed, looking right at me and fixing to mow me down.” He went on to say “when I hit that light, it startled him and he turned a 180 right there, so close that I could smell him.”
According to the latest estimates via Google, Texas leads the nation in feral hog population with an estimated 3,000,000 wild hogs running around the Lone Star State. Oklahoma is believed to be second with roughly half of the feral pig population of Texas, albeit in a much smaller state, followed by Louisiana (750K), Georgia (600K), and Florida (500K).
Carl White seemed to be pretty knowledgeable on how to handle an attacking wild hog. He told KHOU 11 his tips on how to navigate that survival situation, saying “just don’t get yourself in a position where you’re confronting or cornering them, because that’s when they really get nervous and come at you. But let them have an escape if they want to run away.”
KHOU’s own reporting corroborates Texas having the biggest problem in the nation with feral hogs right now. They ran this story a year ago on wild hogs:
This feels as good of a time as any to remember the Boy Scouts motto… Always Be Prepared. The last thing anyone wants is to be cornered/trapped by an attacking wild hog… Keep your head on a swivel if you are in an area where wild hogs might be found. Have some way to protect yourself, whether that’s a large dog to alert you and chase off the feral hog or something else. Just be careful out there, everyone!