Warthogs on the Run!

It happened when I was about 12-13 years old.My first chance to hunt with my .243 Brno all alone in the bush.I don't think my dad reckonend that I would shoot anything as I was a very novice hunter with no experience.

We visited family friends on their small little bushveldt farm just south of Louis Trichardt,a small town in the Limpopo Province of South Africa.There was'nt any real game but you could get the occasional Kudu,Waterbuck,Impala and Warthogs that moved through the property after water and food.

The Saturday morning I was up at 4h30,had coffee,toast and small bowl of "pap".At Five I was ready to go but it was still dark so I decided to walk slowly to the cattle "kraal" first and maybe see if I'm lucky to catch a Duiker feeding of the cattle and horse feed.I only had two bullets cause at that stage of any young boy's life they tend to think that they are the greatest hunters that Africa had ever seen and my rules was one bullet for one animal.By the time I got there it was starting to get light but to my biggest disgust there was no Duiker.The only way out now was to challenge the bush and see if I get anything walking and stalking.

I was walking for probably 2-3km,wich felt like 50km when I decided to head home.Remember that a young boy's first priority is his stomach!!!And this was really bothring me at this stage.
On my way home,it was about 9h00,I saw in front of me a warthog burrow but thought nothing of it as I reckoned it was to late for them to still be sleeping.So I decided to see how fresh the hole is and to maybe come back early the next morning.
And there it was as I was about to jump over the opening of the burrow.This two big white shiny tusks right in my face.I frose and with heavily shaking legs backed off to the closest Maroela tree.(usually the tallest and biggest in that part of the South African bush.)
So there I stood behind the tree looking for someting to throw at the warty's to see if they might emerge from the whole.After several attempts with pieces of cattle dung I decided to go back and shoot the big pig that is blocking the hole first.Then I'll have time to go fetch my dad and uncle with more guns and then we could get the rest of the family to.As I inched forward towards the hole warthogs burst out of the hole about 2 feet in front of me.It was chaos.I could feel some of them brushing past my legs.Acting on instinct I through the rifle against my shoulder,pointed at the closest moving thing and pulled the shot of.Asplit second later I saw the young pig lying dead still in front of me but there was a terrible scream coming from behind the Raisonbush just to my right.The next moment I had this huge mother pig charging me straight from the front.I made a crack for the Maroela tree again but there was no time ti climb so I was only hiding behind the tree.The screaming sound was still going on I figured that I must have wounded this pig who is showing all this aggression towards me.Everytime I move out from behind the tree she charges again from the direction of the noise.Now I don't know wat to do.I ran to another tree to get a better view of what is screaming like that.There I could see the bigger warthog is trying to help another smaller one up but not succesfully.I had to make a choice to shoot the big one and just cut the obviously wounded one's throat.Eventually I got a chance and shot the screaming pig through the head and the big old sow left the scene.

There I was with 2 warthog and technically one shot on my first outing alone.
I hid them next to the road and covered them with some thorn branches and set of for home to get a recovery vehicle.When I got home nobody wanted to drive me back to the spot to fetch my warthog as they didn't believe my farfetched story.Eventually we went and to everybody's surprise I loaded 2 nice young warthogs on the vehicle.
I could feel my chest grow and grow with pride.
What happened was that I shot the first piggy nice behind the shoulder(LUCK!!!) and the bullet went through to hit the second pig on the back wich paralized him.
I had to do a bit of changing clothes after this whole incident but it is something that I'll never forget in my whole life!!!!!!!!!!!!!