Boar goes down under Michigan's 'just shoot 'em' law

Dave Steinbach hunts waterfowl and deer, and he’ll tell you straight up he’s a long-gun kind of guy. But when he stuck a bolt from his crossbow into a 350-pound boar hog, he wished his arsenal was just a little bit bigger.

“Between shotguns and rifles I probably have 20-25 guns,” he said while discussing the Oct. 4 hunt. “I’ve never had a handgun or felt the need for one. But when I was getting down from my treestand that night, I was thinking ‘Man, I wish I had a handgun.' I wasn’t walking up on that thing with just a crossbow and a knife.”

But there was no need for worry: Steinbach’s bolt had flown true and taken out the boar’s heart. The big pig ran about 75 yards into the neighboring corn and expired. And Steinbach went down as one of the first hunters to take out a wild boar under Michigan’s new “Just Shoot ‘em” law.

Steinbach, of Chelsea, had no idea there were feral hogs around the farm he was hunting east of town, just south of Interstate 94. The first thing he noticed was how much noise the hog made moving through the corn, even with the din of the interstate and ongoing construction so close.

“I was a little surprised I could hear anything in the corn because it’s only a half-mile south of I-94, with all those semi trucks,” Steinbach said. “And it’s right where all that construction is, and even with all those machines I could still hear the corn rattling.”

 When he spotted movement in the waist-high marsh grass he still wasn’t sure what he was seeing, because there was no head or antlers visible. When the critter reached a thin spot in the marsh grass, Steinbach saw it was large and black, and assumed a neighbor’s lab had ruined his hunt. Then it stepped out and he could see it was a hog.

“My first thought was they want to get rid of these things, so I need to shoot and kill it,” he said. His shot from about 45 yards went low and the pig ambled off, leaving Steinbach to wonder who would believe him. But the pig returned about an hour later, this time along the edge of the corn, and offered up a clear 21-yard shot. The hog went about 75 yards into the corn, then turned back before stopping, turning a few circles and finally going still.

The state estimates there are somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 of the voracious critters living in Michigan; they’ve been spotted in at least 63 of Michigan’s 83 counties. Feral hogs are estimated to cause nearly $1 billion in damage nationwide each year, and since a healthy sow can produce two to three litters of up to a dozen new rooting, eating, mating machines, wildlife and agriculture officials say the time to slam the door on feral hogs is now.

Some feral hogs are farm escapes, but the majority are escapees from facilities that keep the animals – most are Eurasian boars -- inside fences and charge hunters to shoot them. But regulation on Michigan’s 40-some such facilities has been lax at best. In an August meeting between wildlife and agriculture officials, the DNRE Wildlife Division presented a proposal to declare all wild hogs – including Russian or Eurasian boar, any hybrids or other permutations – a prohibited invasive species in Michigan. That ruling would effectively shut down swine-hunting lodges. A ruling is expected in December.

After shooting the pig, Steinbach climbed down from his tree and went to his truck to call a friend who had a handgun. And then another friend who was hunting the same property called with perplexing news: He had shot a hog. Steinbach figured there must have been two hogs, because the one he’d shot was behaving normally.

But when he field-dressed the animal – with handgun-toting pal Dave Stoll in tow -- Steinbach found his crossbow bolt and Tom Tanner’s arrow, which had left a perfect three-creased hole in the animal’s liver. In retrospect, Steinbach said the pig repeatedly looked back as though something was following it, but then just returned to its feeding. It never turned in a way that he could have seen the original wound.

The big pig earned Steinbach some local notoriety – by the following Saturday he was teaching a hunter’s safety class at the Chelsea Rod & Gun Club, and he estimates 75 percent of the participants had already seen the picture. The following Tuesday he received a standing ovation from club members.

It also filled his freezer with plenty of ham, bratwurst and breakfast sausage. Steinbach disputes reports that wild boar isn’t good eating.

“We actually had some of that ham there at the club,” he said. “It was really good. I didn’t think it was gamey at all.”