Peccaries are very fast for a few hundred yards,but speedily tire,lose their wind,and come to bay.Almost immediately one of these,a sow,as it turned out,wheeled and charged at Moore as he passed,Moore never seeing her but keeping on after another.The sow then stopped and stood still,chattering her teeth savagely,and I jumped off my horse and dropped her dead with a shot in the spine,over the shoulders.Moore meanwhile had dashed off after his pig in one direction,and killed the little beast with a shot from the saddle when it had come to bay,turning and going straight at him.Two of the peccaries got off;the remaining one,a rather large boar,was followed by the two dogs,and as soon as I had killed the sow I leaped again on my horse and made after them,guided by the yelping and baying.In less than a quarter of a mile they were on his haunches,and he wheeled and stood under a bush,charging at them when they came near him,and once catching one,inflicting an ugly cut.All the while his teeth kept going like castanets,with a rapid champing sound.Iran up close and killed him by a shot through the backbone where it joined the neck.His tusks were fine.
The few minutes'chase on horseback was great fun,and there was a certain excitement in seeing the fierce little creatures come to bay;but the true way to kill these peccaries would be with the spear.They could often be speared on horseback,and where this was impossible,by using dogs to bring them to bay they could readily be killed on foot;though,as they are very active,absolutely fearless,and inflict a most formidable bite,it would usually be safest to have two men go at one together.Peccaries are not difficult beasts to kill,because their short wind and their pugnacity make them come to bay before hounds so quickly.Two or three good dogs can bring to a halt a herd of considerable size.They then all stand in a bunch,or else with their sterns against a bank,chattering their teeth at their antagonist.When angry and at bay,they get their legs close together,their shoulders high,and their bristles all ruffled and look the very incarnation of anger,and they fight with reckless indifference to the very last.Hunters usually treat them with a certain amount of caution;but,as a matter of act,I know of but one case where a man was hurt by them.He had shot at and wounded one,was charged both by it and by its two companions,and started to climb a tree;but as he drew himself from the ground,one sprang at him and bit him through the calf,inflicting a very severe wound.I have known of several cases of horses being cut,however,and the dogs are very commonly killed.Indeed,a dog new to the business is almost certain to get very badly scarred,and no dog that hunts steadily can escape without some injury.If it runs in right at the heads of the animals,the probabilities are that it will get killed;and,as a rule,even two good-sized hounds cannot kill a peccary,though it is no larger than either of them.However,a wary,resolute,hard-biting dog of good size speedily gets accustomed to the chase,and can kill a peccary single-handed,seizing it from behind and worrying it to death,or watching its chance and grabbing it by the back of the neck where it joins the head.
Peccaries have delicately moulded short legs,and their feet are small,the tracks looking peculiarly dainty in consequence.Hence,they do not swim well,though they take to the water if necessary.
They feed on roots,prickly pears,nuts,insects,lizards,etc.They usually keep entirely separate from the droves of half-wild swine that are so often found in the same neighborhoods;but in one case,on this very ranch where I was staying a peccary deliberately joined a party of nine pigs and associated with them.When the owner of the pigs came up to them one day the peccary manifested great suspicion at his presence,and finally sidled close up and threatened to attack him,so that he had to shoot it.The ranchman's son told me that he had never but once had a peccary assail him unprovoked,and even in this case it was his dog that was the object of attack,the peccary rushing out at it as it followed him home one evening through the chaparral.Even around this ranch the peccaries had very greatly decreased in numbers,and the survivors were learning some caution.In the old days it had been no uncommon thing for a big band to attack entirely of their own accord,and keep a hunter up a tree for hours at a time.
