Hunting Boars With US Congress' Most Conservative Member... Florida
ZOLFO SPRINGS, Fla. -- It's 7:30 a.m., and already the congressman and I are covered in blood.
Mine trickles out of a crescent-shaped gash on my forehead. It hurts, but the lingering buzz from our predawn whiskey shot helps.
The blood on Rep. Dennis Ross belongs to a 95-pound wild hog whose head he is removing with a hand saw. The skull plops to the ground. Ross yanks off the animal's skin and cuts open its belly with a bowie knife. He reaches inside and pulls out coils of slimy, gray intestines.
"It beats fundraising," he says with a grin.
DISTRACTED BY HOG HEADS
I had met Ross a few weeks earlier in his Capitol Hill office with a different sort of dissection in mind. National Journal had recently ranked him and nine other Republicans as the most conservative House members, and I wanted to see what made one of the most conservative members of the most conservative, powerful freshman class in the history of the House of Representatives tick.
After the 2010 midterms, the victorious Tea Party candidates vowed to shake Washington to its very core. But despite their bravado, a whole series of vote rankings (including NJ's) have painted them as not much different from the rest of the Republican conference. They diverge from leadership about as much as the old-timers do, although the rankings fail to capture some important dynamics. The only reason Washington had a debt-ceiling fight, for instance, was that the freshman class pushed the leadership into waging one. Even so, last week, the Tea-Party-before-the-Tea-Party-was-cool Club for Growth released a study asking whether the freshman class was really even Tea Party at all.
Ross is an exception. A year into his term, the Florida lawmaker has held his ground, voting against pretty much everything that the Tea Party hates: raising the debt ceiling, funding the government through short-term Band-Aid bills, and extending the payroll-tax cut without offsetting spending cuts.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/hog-wild-hunting-boars-with-congress-most-conservative-member/257946/
= new reply since forum marked as read
The World’s Most Dangerous Game To Hunt
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Wild Boar (Sus scrofa)
Experienced hunters say that wild boar can be even more dangerous to hunt than a bear. Equipped with thick, razor-sharp tusks, and a razor-sharp mind (hogs are the 4th most intelligent animal in the world) a wild boar can weigh a staggering 660 lbs and exhibit extremely aggressive and unpredictable behaviour.
Hunters be warned! After wounding a boar, give the animal plenty of time before you follow it in to the bush. Otherwise, you’ll go from being the hunter to the hunted. Boars will circle a human adversary, charge rampantly and attack from behind.
A survival tip: Pick your tree ahead of time so you can climb out of harm’s way if ever you’re being chased.
http://www.huntercourse.com/blog/2011/11/the-worlds-most-dangerous-game-to-hunt/
These animals can be huge!
Big Hog
Status: True.
Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2004]BIG HOG!
The fellow in the pictures is Larry Earley, He lives about 30 miles from Orlando, in the very rural community of Okahumpka, just off the Florida turnpike in Lake County, Florida. He has 20 acres of land and on it, a few cows and horses. Mostly it's pasture land that is fenced with woods surrounding him.
He is neighbored by a larger cattle ranch. His neighbor has complained for several years that wild hogs had been raiding his cattle feeders and salt licks.
Last month he saw what he though was a cow in his pond and went to see if it was stuck in the mud and would have to be pulled out. When he got close enough to realize it was hog, the thing made a charge at him. He had driven his truck down to the pond and carries a pistol in it (as any Florida redneck would, and I say that with genuine affection). He got his handgun and when it came at him again, he shot it twice and killed it.
Wild hogs in Florida usually run from 100-400 pounds with a 400 pounder being a monster. Because this one had been feasting on grain for several years it had grown to mamoth size. When Larry took it to the processor it weighed in at over 1100 pounds!
http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/bighog.asp
