Foy got down out of the stand and found blood sign right away. He decided to go get his buddy to help track the big hog through the swamp. He turned on his flashlight and discovered a big cottonmouth lying right beside him, which only served to kick his pulse rate up another notch -- as if he needed that. He quickly dispatched the snake with his handgun and met up with his friend.

They tracked the hog some 150 yards into the thick woods, jumping other hogs all along the way. They finally got to a point in the thick reeds where they could hear the hog breathing. They parted the reeds and saw the huge hog lying on the ground, down but not out.

After quickly dispatching the big boar, they began to contemplate the prospects for getting the hog out of the woods in the middle of the night.

“I measured him with my boots and he was right at 7 feet long,” Foy said. “We decided to cut a tree and carry him out on a pole like the Indians used to do. We cut a tree as big around as your arm and strapped the hog to the pole. We lifted him up and the pole snapped like a twig.”

Foy realized they couldn’t drag the quarter-ton hog out of the woods and they couldn’t get any heavy equipment in there because of the oxbow creek. Therefore, he decided to just cut the head off the huge beast so that he could at least get a taxidermy mount. To make a long story short, after picking their way through the dark woods -- after no less than three flashlights had failed them -- dragging the hog head all the way, they finally got home thoroughly exhausted at 5:30 a.m. After all that, the taxidermist announced several days later that the hide had deteriorated to the point that it was ruined. Oh well, they have their memories of a once-in-a-lifetime hog hunt, and a story to tell.

Just upstream from Wedgefield, at Beech Creek Hunt Club on the Wateree River, Tom Baldwin also killed a mega-hog, but under somewhat more controlled conditions.

“I was sitting in a stand deer hunting when I heard a big hog squealing and grunting in the woods behind me,” Baldwin said. “There was such a commotion in there that it sounded like there had to be several hogs. I was watching a food plot, but I could tell that they were going to cross an access road about 60 to 70 yards away.

“I knew that would be the only shot that I would get, so I got ready, and the hogs stepped into the road. It was a big sow and several small pigs. I put the sights on her and pulled the trigger. She dropped like a rock right there. It was the biggest hog I had ever seen. It bottomed out our scales, but I estimate that it weighed right at 450 pounds.”