By BEN GARRETT TnHunting.Com Publisher November 9, 2006

The sun is just starting to rise as the Toyota bounces down a muddy backroad deep in the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area. The road is open to hunters during big game hunting seasons only. The rest of the year, it is used by horseback riders and hikers.

Hunters are plentiful on this day, the second day of muzzleloader season. Tags from counties throughout East Tennessee, and even an occasional tag from Middle Tennessee, are visible on the vehicles that line the sides of the road. The hunting pressure doesn't bother us; Most of these hunters, experience says, will be hunting a stone's throw from the road. Where we're headed, few will venture.

It's a prime-time for deer in Tennessee: The pre-rut is in full swing and the "chase phase" is underway. But it isn't deer we're seeking today; it's 300-pound, razor-sharp tusked wild boar that inhabit the Big South Fork's 125,000 acres.

My brother, Jeremiah, has scouted the area thoroughly in the days leading up to the hunt. The hogs are in the area, he notes; In fact, he was within shooting range of a true monster on a pair of occasions, but did not shoot either time due to not wanting to risk the shot with his bow.

Wild boar are wary critters, every bit as challenging to hunt as whitetail deer. When hunting pressure sets in, they will leave the area. They have poor eyesight, but an excellent sense of smell, and they don't hang around and wait to be shot. Add to that they are few in number — TnHunting.Com wild boar expert Lathern Hull hunts the Big South Fork frequently and estimates that eradication efforts here have lowered the total number of hogs to fewer than 500 in the entire park, which sprawls north-to-south through several counties in Tennessee and Kentucky — and they're quite challenging indeed. State regulations do not allow for the use of dogs or bait to hunt them, and hogs are nocturnal by nature. That all adds up to make for a very difficult hunt; one that some would say is downright impossible.

The hogs don't tend to make it easy on hunters; they usually stay deep within the park's boundaries, well away from the beaten path. The Big South Fork's terrain is beautiful — the beauty of the terrain adds to the mystique of the hunt — but very rugged. Steep hills are lined with bluffs and boulders. Thickets of mountain laurel cover many of the hillsides. The hilltops are often thickets created by dead pine trees, killed by the infestation of the Southern Pine Beetle in 2001. Today, those trees have created deadfalls that are being overgrown with briars and ivy. The resulting thickets are a haven for game, but a nightmare for hunters.

As we leave the vehicle, we set off down a horse trail that will eventually drop 500 feet into the Big South Fork river gorge. Where the trail starts its descent, we break away for the second leg of our journey, easing around the side of a cliff that will take us to the mouth of a basin. The basin itself is large, lined with bluffs around the perimeter. Deer and hogs frequent this area. But the surrounding hilltops are nearly-impassable thickets. The way we took to get here is a most unlikely-seeming passage. The result? Few people venture here. And that's just fine with us. Because here, away from the pressure of hunters and other recreation-seekers that use the Big South Fork NRRA, the hogs typically hole up.

It isn't hard to tell that the critters have been here recently. Several trees have the bark shredded away by the hogs' tusks. In several rock overhangs, rock houses and caverns, there is sign of hogs rolling in the fine dust that covers the floor. Trails line the west side of the basin, and there is plenty of sign of rooting.

Across the basin, Jeremiah has worked his way in from another direction. The basin is wide enough that we cannot see one another, but we maintain radio contact on our Cobras as we work our way around the hill. The sign is intermittently fresh and not-so-fresh, but none of it appears to have been made today.

As I make my way around the perimeter of the basin, I take the time to ease through several caverns that nature has cut into the bluff-line. Some are deep enough to need a flashlight to see inside. Some could almost be classified as caves. The hogs like to sometimes hole up in these areas.

But there are no hogs in these areas today, and soon we have covered the entire perimeter of the basin and have met in the middle. My fears are realized: The porkers have moved out, at least for today. It took two hours to canvas the basin. It will take nearly that long to work our way back to the vehicle.

But the trip wasn't totally wasted. Although we didn't encounter pigs, we saw some beautiful scenery, some of the best that the Big South Fork has to offer.

Since the BSF opened a special hog hunting season in January four years ago, it has exposed the area and its population of feral boar to many hunters across the eastern United States who had never heard of the BSF NRRA before. Those hunters have flocked to the park, many of them in vain. But, to a man, they will usually say the trip is worth it. The hunting is hard, but the scenery is spectacular.

Michigan's Britt Owen is one of those hunters. Owen has traveled to the Big South Fork two consecutive winters. And, unlike many hunters, he's actually carried bacon home.

I really think that Big South Fork is a well-kept secret amongst vacation destinations for outdoors-oriented families," Owen said. "Part of the appeal for me is that it is only an eight-hour trip from my home in southern Michigan to the Big South Fork. I love mountains, and BSF is a lot closer than the Rockies."

Owen, a trooper for the Michigan Highway Patrol, brought his family to the Big South Fork last winter, making a mini-vacation out of the hog-hunting expedition. And while he wasn't successful on the trip, he says the lure isn't so much the success ratio.

"If it is important for you to kill a hog, go somewhere else," he said. "If you're not up to a huge challenge, go hunt somewhere else. But one thing is for sure: You will absolutely fall in love with the country."

Owen said that the low likelihood of killing a hog isn't a deterrent.

"The fact that I can go walk such beautiful country for hours on end keeps me looking forward to every trip down there," he said. "My first reaction to the Big South Fork terrain was, 'Wow! This is awesome!' I had hunted some steep terrain in the past, elk hunting in Colorado and Idaho. However, BSF is unique in that you can be sneaking along through the hardwoods or a river bottom and literally get hemmed in by a cliff line and have nowhere to go except to backtrack. It can be frustrating at times, but those clifflines are too beautiful to stay mad at!"

Jim Vandervort, an Alabama native, is another of those hunters who has hunted the Big South Fork for its hogs. He admits the hunting isn't easy, but says that he will be back.

"If I were describing it to someone who had never been here, I would tell them that they are going to do some walking and it will get rough," Vandervort said. "And I have been going for three years and have not seen a hog yet. But I love getting out in the woods and seeing it all."

Vandervort admitted that seeing hogs isn't as easy as he expected.

"I know they are there," he said. "I have seen the sign, pig tracks, mud wallows, trees that they rub and scratch on . . . but I knew it would be hard."

TnHunting.Com Waterfowl Expert David Edgar has made the Big South Fork an annual destination. He is also among the minority of hunters who are successful. He was able to tag a wild boar last year.

"We've been doing it for four years now," he said. "I saw a hog within two hours my first day here."

Feral hogs have always been present in the Big South Fork, but the population was helped by a hunting preserve, called the "Hog Farm," that operated in the Big South Fork backcountry circa the establishment of the national park in the early 1970s. Operated by Joe Simpson, the Hog Farm housed hunters in an old longhunters camp in the backcountry. Several pigs escaped the reserve over the years, and when hunting operations ceased, the remaining hogs were allowed to escape into the wild.

Today, the Hog Farm is operated as a rustic, backwoods resort called Charit Creek Hostel. It serves equestrian traffic and hunters traveling along the park's network of trails.

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