Spear Hunting

Wild boar hunting with a spear adds excitement to your life.

To get the blood pumping, try tracking a wild boar through the swamp or heavy underbrush of a forested hillside, knowing if you make a mistake, you become the hunted instead of the hunter.  Man against beast – just like thousands of years ago.

Boars are fast and dangerous.  A small boar weights 80 pounds and has razor sharp teeth.  By their design they are hard to stop or catch, they are low to ground with thick skin.

Wild boars are the ancestors of today’s pigs.  Wild boars are a pest; they destroy crops, damage the woods and chase or injure people. However, some states require a license to hunt wild boar.

A spear is just a short piece of wood with a point on the end.  Why would anyone what to do something so crazy?  Hunting with a spear is a primitive skill.  Spears have been around at least 400,000 years and have evolved from a piece of wood to a finely crafted work of art.  The boar hunting spears used today have a wooden shaft and metal head.

A spear used for boar hunting is about 70 to 73 inches long.  The design of the metal head is important.  It is the metal head that kills the boar.   Because the hunter carries the spear for hours, the spear needs to be light.  Most spears weigh between 4 and 6 pounds.

Some spears are designed to be thrown.  Some are designed to be held in place and to let the charging boar impale itself on the spear. To throw a spear, the spear is thrown in mid-stride.  As the hunter walks forward, he pulls his throwing arm back.  When the foot on the opposite side of his body hits the ground, he releases the spear.  This gives him maximum leverage and adds power to the throw.

A skilled hunter practices both methods over and over until they are second nature to him.  When hunting with a spear, the hunter must get close to the prey.  The hunter will have only seconds to react if the boar explodes from the underbrush in front of him.

Spear hunting is exciting and very rewarding.  It puts you into the heart of the action and split second reactions can spell success or failure.