Hopefully there’s no successor for Corcoran’s big hog
Ashton Corcoran was enjoying his recent graduation from the University of Louisiana-Monroe and getting ready to move to Seattle for a job in construction management when he decided to get in a couple of last deer hunts near his home in Washington Parish.
His hunt on the morning of Dec. 21 was a memorable one, but not because of a big deer. The 22-year-old from Franklinton killed a 260-pound boar hog with huge tusks. The hog had never been seen in daylight, but had shown up on trail camera pictures at night, prompting Corcoran’s 4-year-old nephew Walker to nickname the monster hog “The King” while reviewing the trail cam photos.
Louisiana hunters who keep up with their French history would have to immediately think of King Louis XVI when his predecessor died and put him in power: “the king is dead, long live the king!” But this “King” may not have a successor. Most folks are hoping he doesn’t. Corcoran and his hunting companions haven’t seen any sign of another one anywhere near this big.
“We had a cold front come through that week before Christmas and I thought it would be a good time to go after a big buck we had been seeing on camera,” Corcoran said. “It was freezing and I got to the stand way too early — about 5:30 a.m. I sat there and at very first light I saw a big blob in the dark down the road to the right of the stand. I knew it wasn’t a deer, but I couldn’t tell if it was a bear or a hog.”
Big nuisance
Finally it got light enough to be sure and Corcoran recognized it was feral hog royalty. He took aim and shot and the hog ran about 20 yards and crashed. He shot it with a Remington .243. He stayed and hunted for a while, but his shot had pretty well messed up his deer hunt for the day.
“It took two of us to drag it out and three of us to get it in the back of the Ranger,” he said. “It pretty well filled it up. We were going to try and use the backstraps and some of the other meat to make sausage, but when we tried to clean it, the meat just wasn’t any good and had worms.”
Cocoran was rewarded the next day when any other hogs that might have been around stayed hidden and a nice 8-point came out in his shooting lane and he nailed it. His brother, Micah Magee, also killed a big 6-point out of the same stand.
Feral hogs are a growing nuisance and problem in Louisiana’s outdoors. A huge boar like that one is even causing some safety concerns among hunters.
“Yes, you don’t want to be walking in the woods in the dark and come face to face with that thing,” Corcoran said. “It’s certainly something to think about.”
