In the United States the peccary is only found in the southernmost
corner of Texas. In April 1892, I made a flying visit to the ranch
country of this region, starting from the town of Uvalde with a Texan
friend, Mr. John Moore. My trip being very hurried, I had but a couple
of days to devote to hunting.
Our first halting-place was at a ranch on the Frio; a low, wooden
building, of many rooms, with open galleries between them, and verandas
round about. The country was in some respects like, in others strangely
unlike, the northern plains with which I was so well acquainted. It
was for the most part covered with a scattered growth of tough,
stunted mesquite trees, not dense enough to be called a forest, and
yet sufficiently close to cut off the view. It was very dry, even as
compared with the northern plains. The bed of the Frio was filled with
coarse gravel, and for the most part dry as a bone on the surface, the
water seeping through underneath, and only appearing in occasional
deep holes. These deep holes or ponds never fail, even after a year's
drought; they were filled with fish. One lay quite near the ranch house,
under a bold rocky bluff; at its edge grew giant cypress trees. In
the hollows and by the watercourses were occasional groves of pecans,
live-oaks, and elms. Strange birds hopped among the bushes; the
chaparral cock--a big, handsome ground-cuckoo of remarkable habits, much
given to preying on small snakes and lizards--ran over the ground with
extraordinary rapidity. Beautiful swallow-tailed king-birds with rosy
plumage perched on the tops of the small trees, and soared and flitted
in graceful curves above them. Blackbirds of many kinds scuttled
in flocks about the corrals and outbuildings around the ranches.
Mocking-birds abounded, and were very noisy, singing almost all the
daytime, but with their usual irritating inequality of performance,
wonderfully musical and powerful snatches of song being interspersed
with imitations of other bird notes and disagreeable squalling.
Throughout the trip I did not hear one of them utter the beautiful love
song in which they sometimes indulge at night.
The country was all under wire fence, unlike the northern regions, the
pastures however being sometimes many miles across. When we reached the
Frio ranch a herd of a thousand cattle had just been gathered, and two
or three hundred beeves and young stock were being cut out to be driven
northward over the trail. The cattle were worked in pens much more than
in the North, and on all the ranches there were chutes with steering
gates, by means of which individuals of a herd could be dexterously
shifted into various corrals. The branding of the calves was done
ordinarily in one of these corrals and on foot, the calf being always
roped by both forelegs; otherwise the work of the cowpunchers was much
like that of their brothers in the North. As a whole, however, they were
distinctly more proficient with the rope, and at least half of them were
Mexicans.
There were some bands of wild cattle living only in the densest timber
of the river bottoms which were literally as wild as deer, and moreover
very fierce and dangerous. The pursuit of these was exciting and
hazardous in the extreme. The men who took part in it showed not only
the utmost daring but the most consummate horsemanship and wonderful
skill in the use of the rope, the coil being hurled with the force and
precision of an iron quoit; a single man speedily overtaking, roping,
throwing, and binding down the fiercest steer or bull.
There had been many peccaries, or, as the Mexicans and cowpunchers of
the border usually call them, javalinas, round this ranch a few years
before the date of my visit. Until 1886, or thereabouts, these little
wild hogs were not much molested, and abounded in the dense chaparral
around the lower Rio Grande. In that year, however, it was suddenly
discovered that their hides had a market value, being worth four
bits--that is, half a dollar--apiece; and many Mexicans and not a few
shiftless Texans went into the business of hunting them as a means of
livelihood. They were more easily killed than deer, and, as a result,
they were speedily exterminated in many localities where they had
formerly been numerous, and even where they were left were to be found
only in greatly diminished numbers. On this particular Frio ranch the
last little band had been killed nearly a year before. There were three
of them, a boar and two sows, and a couple of the cowboys stumbled on
them early one morning while out with a dog. After half a mile's
chase the three peccaries ran into a hollow pecan tree, and one of the
cowboys, dismounting, improvised a lance by tying his knife to the end
of a pole, and killed them all.
Many anecdotes were related to me of what they had done in the old days
when they were plentiful on the ranch. They were then usually found in
parties of from twenty to thirty, feeding in the dense chaparral, the
sows rejoining the herd with the young very soon after the birth of the
litter, each sow usually having but one or two at a litter. At night
they sometimes lay in the thickest cover, but always, where possible,
preferred to house in a cave or big hollow log, one invariably remaining
as a sentinel close to the mouth, looking out. If this sentinel were
shot, another would almost certainly take his place. They were subject
to freaks of stupidity, and were pugnacious to a degree. Not only would
they fight if molested, but they would often attack entirely without
provocation.
Once my friend Moore himself, while out with another cowboy on
horseback, was attacked in sheer wantonness by a drove of these little
wild hogs. The two men were riding by a grove of live-oaks along a
woodcutter's cart track, and were assailed without a moment's warning.
The little creatures completely surrounded them, cutting fiercely at the
horses' legs and jumping up at the riders' feet. The men, drawing their
revolvers, dashed through and were closely followed by their pursuers
for three or four hundred yards, although they fired right and left with
good effect. Both of the horses were badly cut. On another occasion the
bookkeeper of the ranch walked off to a water hole but a quarter of a
mile distant, and came face to face with a peccary on a cattle trail,
where the brush was thick. Instead of getting out of his way the
creature charged him instantly, drove him up a small mesquite tree, and
kept him there for nearly two hours, looking up at him and champing its
tusks.
I spent two days hunting round this ranch but saw no peccary sign
whatever, although deer were quite plentiful. Parties of wild geese and
sandhill cranes occasionally flew overhead. At nightfall the poor-wills
wailed everywhere through the woods, and coyotes yelped and yelled,
while in the early morning the wild turkeys gobbled loudly from their
roosts in the tops of the pecan trees.
Having satisfied myself that there were no javalinas left on the Frio
ranch, and being nearly at the end of my holiday, I was about to abandon
the effort to get any, when a passing cowman happened to mention the
fact that some were still to be found on the Nueces River thirty miles
or thereabouts to the southward. Thither I determined to go, and next
morning Moore and I started in a buggy drawn by a redoubtable horse,
named Jim Swinger, which we were allowed to use because he bucked so
under the saddle that nobody on the ranch could ride him. We drove six
or seven hours across the dry, waterless plains. There had been a heavy
frost a few days before, which had blackened the budding mesquite trees,
and their twigs still showed no signs of sprouting. Occasionally we came
across open space where there was nothing but short brown grass. In most
places, however, the leafless, sprawling mesquites were scattered rather
thinly over the ground, cutting off an extensive view and merely adding
to the melancholy barrenness of the landscape. The road was nothing but
a couple of dusty wheel-tracks; the ground was parched, and the grass
cropped close by the gaunt, starved cattle. As we drove along buzzards
and great hawks occasionally soared overhead. Now and then we passed
lines of wild-looking, long-horned steers, and once we came on the
grazing horses of a cow-outfit, just preparing to start northward over
the trail to the fattening pasture. Occasionally we encountered one or
two cowpunchers: either Texans, habited exactly like their brethren in
the North, with broad-brimmed gray hats, blue shirts, silk neckerchiefs,
and leather leggings; or else Mexicans, more gaudily dressed, and
wearing peculiarly stiff, very broad-brimmed hats with conical tops.
Toward the end of our ride we got where the ground was more fertile,
and there had recently been a sprinkling of rain. Here we came across
wonderful flower prairies. In one spot I kept catching glimpses through
the mesquite trees of lilac stretches which I had first thought must
be ponds of water. On coming nearer they proved to be acres on acres
thickly covered with beautiful lilac-colored flowers. Farther on we
came to where broad bands of red flowers covered the ground for many
furlongs; then their places were taken by yellow blossoms, elsewhere
by white. Generally each band or patch of ground was covered densely
by flowers of the same color, making a great vivid streak across the
landscape; but in places they were mixed together, red, yellow, and
purple, interspersed in patches and curving bands, carpeting the prairie
in a strange, bright pattern.
Finally, toward evening we reached the Nueces. Where we struck it first
the bed was dry, except in occasional deep, malarial-looking pools, but
a short distance below there began to be a running current. Great blue
herons were stalking beside these pools, and from one we flushed a white
ibis. In the woods were reddish cardinal birds, much less brilliant
in plumage than the true cardinals and the scarlet tanagers; and
yellow-headed titmice which had already built large domed nests.
In the valley of the Nueces itself, the brush grew thick. There were
great groves of pecan trees, and ever-green live-oaks stood in many
places, long, wind-shaken tufts of gray moss hanging from their limbs.
Many of the trees in the wet spots were of giant size, and the whole
landscape was semi-tropical in character. High on a bluff shoulder
overlooking the course of the river was perched the ranch house, toward
which we were bending our steps; and here we were received with the
hearty hospitality characteristic of the ranch country everywhere.
The son of the ranchman, a tall, well-built young fellow, told me at
once that there were peccaries in the neighborhood, and that he had
himself shot one but two or three days before, and volunteered to lend
us horses and pilot us to the game on the morrow, with the help of
his two dogs. The last were big black curs with, as we were assured,
"considerable hound" in them. One was at the time staying at the ranch
house, the other was four or five miles off with a Mexican goat-herder,
and it was arranged that early in the morning we should ride down to the
latter place, taking the first dog with us and procuring his companion
when we reached the goat-herder's house.
We started after breakfast, riding powerful cow-ponies, well trained to
gallop at full speed through the dense chaparral. The big black hound
slouched at our heels. We rode down the banks of the Nueces, crossing
and recrossing the stream. Here and there were long, deep pools in the
bed of the river, where rushes and lilies grew and huge mailed
garfish swam slowly just beneath the surface of the water. Once my two
companions stopped to pull a mired cow out of a slough, hauling with
ropes from their saddle horns. In places there were half-dry pools,
out of the regular current of the river, the water green and fetid. The
trees were very tall and large. The streamers of pale gray moss hung
thickly from the branches of the live-oaks, and when many trees thus
draped stood close together they bore a strangely mournful and desolate
look.
We finally found the queer little hut of the Mexican goat-herder in the
midst of a grove of giant pecans. On the walls were nailed the skins
of different beasts, raccoons, wild-cats, and the tree-civet, with its
ringed tail. The Mexican's brown wife and children were in the hut, but
the man himself and the goats were off in the forest, and it took us
three or four hours' search before we found him. Then it was nearly
noon, and we lunched in his hut, a square building of split logs, with
bare earth floor, and roof of clap-boards and bark. Our lunch consisted
of goat's meat and _pan de mais_. The Mexican, a broad-chested man with
a stolid Indian face, was evidently quite a sportsman, and had two or
three half-starved hounds, besides the funny, hairless little house
dogs, of which Mexicans seem so fond.
Having borrowed the javalina hound of which we were in search, we rode
off in quest of our game, the two dogs trotting gayly ahead. The one
which had been living at the ranch had evidently fared well, and was
very fat; the other was little else but skin and bone, but as alert and
knowing as any New York street-boy, with the same air of disreputable
capacity. It was this hound which always did most in finding the
javalinas and bringing them to bay, his companion's chief use being to
make a noise and lend the moral support of his presence.
We rode away from the river on the dry uplands, where the timber, though
thick, was small, consisting almost exclusively of the thorny mesquites.
Mixed among them were prickly pears, standing as high as our heads on
horseback, and Spanish bayonets, looking in the distance like small
palms; and there were many other kinds of cactus, all with poisonous
thorns. Two or three times the dogs got on an old trail and rushed off
giving tongue, whereat we galloped madly after them, ducking and dodging
through and among the clusters of spine-bearing tress and cactus, not
without getting a considerable number of thorns in our hands and legs.
It was very dry and hot. Where the javalinas live in droves in the river
bottoms they often drink at the pools; but when some distance from water
they seem to live quite comfortably on the prickly pear, slaking their
thirst by eating its hard, juicy fibre.
At last, after several false alarms, and gallops which led to nothing,
when it lacked but an hour of sundown we struck a band of five of the
little wild hogs. They were running off through the mesquites with a
peculiar hopping or bounding motion, and we all, dogs and men, tore
after them instantly.
Peccaries are very fast for a few hundred yards, but speedily tire, lose
their wind, and come to bay. Almost immediately one of these, a sow, as
it turned out, wheeled and charged at Moore as he passed, Moore never
seeing her but keeping on after another. The sow then stopped and stood
still, chattering her teeth savagely, and I jumped off my horse and
dropped her dead with a shot in the spine, over the shoulders. Moore
meanwhile had dashed off after his pig in one direction, and killed
the little beast with a shot from the saddle when it had come to bay,
turning and going straight at him. Two of the peccaries got off; the
remaining one, a rather large boar, was followed by the two dogs, and as
soon as I had killed the sow I leaped again on my horse and made after
them, guided by the yelping and baying. In less than a quarter of a
mile they were on his haunches, and he wheeled and stood under a
bush, charging at them when they came near him, and once catching
one, inflicting an ugly cut. All the while his teeth kept going like
castanets, with a rapid champing sound. I ran up close and killed him
by a shot through the backbone where it joined the neck. His tusks were
fine.
The few minutes' chase on horseback was great fun, and there was a
certain excitement in seeing the fierce little creatures come to bay;
but the true way to kill these peccaries would be with the spear. They
could often be speared on horseback, and where this was impossible, by
using dogs to bring them to bay they could readily be killed on foot;
though, as they are very active, absolutely fearless, and inflict a most
formidable bite, it would usually be safest to have two men go at one
together. Peccaries are not difficult beasts to kill, because their
short wind and their pugnacity make them come to bay before hounds
so quickly. Two or three good dogs can bring to a halt a herd of
considerable size. They then all stand in a bunch, or else with their
sterns against a bank, chattering their teeth at their antagonist. When
angry and at bay, they get their legs close together, their shoulders
high, and their bristles all ruffled and look the very incarnation
of anger, and they fight with reckless indifference to the very last.
Hunters usually treat them with a certain amount of caution; but, as a
matter of act, I know of but one case where a man was hurt by them.
He had shot at and wounded one, was charged both by it and by its two
companions, and started to climb a tree; but as he drew himself from
the ground, one sprang at him and bit him through the calf, inflicting
a very severe wound. I have known of several cases of horses being cut,
however, and the dogs are very commonly killed. Indeed, a dog new to the
business is almost certain to get very badly scarred, and no dog that
hunts steadily can escape without some injury. If it runs in right at
the heads of the animals, the probabilities are that it will get killed;
and, as a rule, even two good-sized hounds cannot kill a peccary,
though it is no larger than either of them. However, a wary, resolute,
hard-biting dog of good size speedily gets accustomed to the chase, and
can kill a peccary single-handed, seizing it from behind and worrying it
to death, or watching its chance and grabbing it by the back of the neck
where it joins the head.
Peccaries have delicately moulded short legs, and their feet are small,
the tracks looking peculiarly dainty in consequence. Hence, they do
not swim well, though they take to the water if necessary. They feed
on roots, prickly pears, nuts, insects, lizards, etc. They usually keep
entirely separate from the droves of half-wild swine that are so often
found in the same neighborhoods; but in one case, on this very ranch
where I was staying a peccary deliberately joined a party of nine pigs
and associated with them. When the owner of the pigs came up to them one
day the peccary manifested great suspicion at his presence, and finally
sidled close up and threatened to attack him, so that he had to shoot
it. The ranchman's son told me that he had never but once had a peccary
assail him unprovoked, and even in this case it was his dog that was the
object of attack, the peccary rushing out at it as it followed him home
one evening through the chaparral. Even around this ranch the peccaries
had very greatly decreased in numbers, and the survivors were learning
some caution. In the old days it had been no uncommon thing for a big
band to attack entirely of their own accord, and keep a hunter up a tree
for hours at a time.