Six Lamar County hunters couldn’t believe their eyes when they came upon a hog so big it “looked like a cow with tusks hanging out of his mouth.”
When Ty Eppler, Caleb Walton, Chandler Conrad, Coe Caraway, Denton Winchester, and Spencer Eppler set out on a hunt on June 13, 2020, never did they imagine bagging a hog over 450lbs.
“We hunt all over northeast Texas and have heard of people catching or shooting a hog over 400lbs but we’ve never caught one that big,” said Eppler. “We’ve caught several good ones but never anything that big.”
Eppler said they found a new spot in Clarksville they had never hunted before and even though it was a little later in the year than when they’d normally hunt, they wanted to see what the ranch had to offer.
“The ranch hand said he’d been seeing a big white-looking hog that looks like a cow out there but we just figured it was a nice hog or a 300-pounder,” said Eppler. “We went out there and turned the bay dogs lose and they went to baying at 75 yards from our four-wheelers. We weren’t sure how big it was until we got the bulldogs off the racks and lead them into the bay.”
Eppler said he was working the bay dogs up and down a little dry creek when the hog came out after one of the dogs and that’s when the boys got a good look at him.
“He looked like a cow with tusks hanging out of his mouth; it was insane,” said Eppler. “We let the bulldogs lose at 20-yards from the bay and the hog threw both bulldogs up in the air and took off. He only made it about 40-yards before the bay dogs spun him back around and the bulldogs nailed him. That time we got in there and did
all we could to get him down and killed.”
Weighing in at a whopping 465lbs, Eppler said that while it’s not a record weight in Texas, it is a personal best for him.
According to a report published by the Bluebonnet News, a pair of hunters with Nuisance Wildlife Removal holds the record in Texas at 488lbs killed in The Preserve, formerly known as Cypress Lakes.
“Normally I’d tie them up but with a hog that big we wanted to mount it,” said Eppler. “It was a hunt of a lifetime for sure. It was a really old mean giant Barr hog that someone cut I’d say 10 years or so ago that I was lucky enough to catch.”
The groups catch was also recently featured in the October issue of Tusker’s Magazine.
