A wild boar always means big “goin’s ons” in Webster.
When resident and builder Bob Pearson took out his tools to hang up the head of a German black boar shot and killed 56 years ago, he drew a small gathering to the old meeting house.
The wild boar had been in the old fire station ever since it was bagged on Jan. 25, 1960, mounted on the wall in the past and more recently, in storage with other Webster Historical Society items waiting to be organized.
Pearson, at the urging of historical society Vice President Tara Gunnigle, helped create a new place of honor for the animal.
“We’re going to put a screw in a 300-year-old building and hang it up,” Pearson said.
Pearson’s father, Bob Pearson Sr., was one of the eight young men on the hunt. They wanted to capture the boar prowling around town since December 1959, when it escaped from the “zillionaire” park in Croydon, more commonly known as the exclusive Corbin Park hunting preserve.
“It was a pretty big goin’s ons in those days,” Pearson Jr. said. “It was like seeing a mountain lion.”
He added of the wild boar, “My father said he was as cagey as any buck.”
The only man of the original eight still alive today, 87-year-old Paul Whitcomb, described the boar this way: “That’s probably got to be the ugliest looking wild animal I’ve ever seen.”
Whitcomb visited the mounted head at its new location in the meeting house. As he reached up and gently touched one of the curled, sharp tusks, he reminisced about the day he first saw the animal. He used a written account by local historian Marj Blanchette for help with the details.
“We met at 7 o’clock,” Whitcomb said. Taking four hound dogs, the men started at Sweatt’s Hill and drove the boar through the Trumbull Woods, across Route 127 and into Delos Kidder’s field.
“Boy, I’m telling you,” Whitcomb said. “When he come across the road, the snowbanks are at least 5 feet tall. He didn’t go over them, he went right through them like a snow plow.”
On a hunting stand, Whitcomb said he had trouble getting a good shot with all the snow in the field.
“There was 2, 2 feet of snow,” he said. “When he went through that field, snow was flying something fierce.”
Trying his luck with five different gunshots, Whitcomb said, “I had a hard time getting something to shoot at. It finally hit it in its spleen.”
At that point, Whitcomb said he and fellow hunter Bud Stone gathered up the dogs to make sure they didn’t go after the bleeding hog and get themselves hurt. Then Bob Pearson Sr. had his turn with the animal.
“When we were on the way back out to follow the trail, Bob Pearson walked out and saw it, and it was heading right at him,” Whitcomb said. “He shot it right between the eyes and killed it.”
Nate Mock, the organizer of the hunting party, wanted some glory, too.
“He shot the wild boar in the foot,” Whitcomb said. “Just to say he shot it.”
When all was said and done, the men took an equal share of the 218-pound boar’s meat each, sent the hide to the tannery in Penacook and got nine belts in return, and asked an 80-year-old Winchester man to mount the head.
The day of the hunt, about 150 local residents, plus news reporters and photographers, showed up to see the body hung up in Mock’s garage.
“That was a once-in-a-lifetime deal,” Whitcomb said. He said the meat from the boar was gamey but delicious, and it was the first and last wild hog he’d ever hunted.
“According to Fish and Game, this was the biggest boar that had been shot in New Hampshire,” he said. He added that officials told the hunters the wild boar was one of an estimated 150 that escaped Corbin Park during the hurricane of 1938.
Their hometown hunt, Whitcomb added, was the only way he and the others would ever come into contact with a German black boar.
“You had to be a multi-millionaire to belong to that club,” he said. “I was damn lucky to hit him.”
Whitcomb said that he was happy to see his wild boar in the Webster Meeting House, where more people will likely visit than the old fire station.
“I thought that was a very good idea,” he said. “Many people will get to see him over here I think.”
There also is the likelihood, he added, if people are lucky, that they’ll see one wandering far away from its Croydon preserve.
“There still are some out there,” Whitcomb said.
USDA wildlife biologist Anthony Musante confirmed that to be true. As to how many wild boar – more commonly called feral swine – are wandering around, he couldn’t say.
“I think your guess is as good as mine at this point,” he said Thursday. “We probably get one report – probably one a month at this point.”
Even then, Musante added, it usually turns out to be an escaped domestic pig. This year, however, he has responded to 10 confirmed, trapped feral swine incidents in New Hampshire.
“That was high for us,” he said. Usually, he gets about two annually.
Most of the wild boar USDA encounters in New Hampshire, Musante said, are in the Croydon and Lebanon area.
“Most of what we deal with is Eurasian boar,” he said. No feral swine are native to the U.S., Musante added, which is why USDA doesn’t want them roaming freely. They are aggressive, omnivore, apex predators, carry diseases, and tend to leave a path of destruction in their wake.
“They’re like little rototillers to be honest,” Musante said. “We just don’t really want them on the landscape.”
People still like to try to hunt wild boar, though because it’s technically illegal to kill the “private property” of Corbin Park without expressed permission, Musante doesn’t hear about successful kills often.
“I don’t get a lot of confirmation on it,” he said. He added the law is there for good reason, since some hunters may get overly excited when they see what they think is a wild boar, and then realize their mistake.
“Some people send me pictures,” Musante said, “and it ends up being a potbelly pig. We want to stop people from shooting livestock.”
(Elodie Reed can be reached at 369-3306, ereed@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @elodie_reed.)