
I’ve always had a desire to shoot a Javelina, or as they’re commonly called, “skunk pigs” with my bow. I don’t know why. Maybe that speaks to my character, who the hell knows. I booked a hunt on the Texas-Mexico border with a guide that resembled Anton from No Country for Old Men. Looks and personality.
I didn’t see shit for the first four days I was down there other than the occasional coyote or jackrabbit. I was told if you’re downwind of them, you could smell them from a hundred yards away. I would get an occasional whiff of what smelled like marijuana mixed with body odor, which brought back memories of high school, although the culprit wasn’t 16 year olds being stupid, but was the scent gland on this peckery that they use to mark their territory.
On the fifth day I ran into a javelina squadron of about 6 or so and stalked my way through the thorny brush and mesquite trees waiting for a good shot. Had I known how bad their eyesight was, I probably could have avoided the thorns in my ass, but hindsight is twenty-twenty.
I took my shot on what appeared to be the largest one, and watched him run through some sand sage thickets. The shot looked promising, promising enough that I didn’t bother waiting more than five minutes before going to look at my harvest.
I saw him lying belly up with an exit wound right where I intended it to be. He was dead. As I walked over to admire what I shot and to cure my curiosity of what their scent glands looked like up close, I remembered seeing a picture of a hunter who put a broken stick in the javelina's mouth, and I thought it looked pretty badass, so I thought I would try it. As I tried to open its mouth, my hand slipped and its jaws clamped down on the side of my wrist. Blood began to ooze out, but little enough that I knew it was nothing to be concerned about.
I called my guide to let him know that I got one if he wanted to come check it out. He came by and noticed my wrist.
“What happened?”
“Those knives coming out of that thing's mouth happened” I responded.
“Those things can carry rabies, ya know” he said casually.
“I could get rabies from that bite?”
“Oh yeah. Luckily for you, rabies really isn’t that bad.”
“I’m pretty sure rabies is fucking bad, I might want to go get this checked out.”
Call me a candyass if you want, there was no way I was running the risk of a dead animal leading me to die from rabies. That would bring shame on my family. So I checked into a local urgent care. As if my day wasn’t shitty enough, not a single person at this urgent care spoke a lick of coherent english. Through pictures on my phone and basic words, I think I conveyed well enough what I was there for. Regardless of if they understood my visit, I ended up getting a few shots in my ass and the skull of my javelina taken away for testing.
I drove back to my home in the midwest, visited a local hospital, where the people speak great english, and endured four weeks of rabies treatments, waiting on a phone call from the Mexican hospital to find out if my javelina was rabid.
Four years later, I still haven’t received that call. Don’t even know if they tested it. Don’t even know if they knew I wanted it to be tested. But what I do know is this; Javelinas have some sharp ass teeth.