Chapter 5

We had to have a more effective point on our bolt for killing bears. It would not hurt to get the same kind of things for wild hogs, too. In fact, it dawned on me that we might be able to sell wild hog carcasses. There were no butcher shops to buy them, but I should be able to get a few copper pennies for a hog carcass from a family that could not kill their own.

With that in mind, I had James Colbert order two more crossbows from the same supplier in England who had supplied the ones that David and I used. I was already thinking of hiring additional hunters. Ephraim Maxim was the first name that occurred to me. Now that he was married, he might be interested in a steady job.

On our next trip into Bob’s Knob, I stopped by to talk to Tom Hanks, the blacksmith about making points out of iron for the crossbow bolts. I had no doubt that he could do what I had in mind, but I was concerned about the cost. I knew that he would have to charge more for the points because they would contain more iron than the current bolts.

My first idea was a leaf-shaped point so that it could be pulled out of the wound during recovery. I was thinking of a point with the widest place being about two inches across. I also wanted to pin the point to the shaft of the bolt so that it would be less likely to come lose when it was pulled from the carcass.

Hanks thought about the project for a few minutes before he quoted me a price of four copper pennies per point. I could afford that high price, but I figured that he was starting off a round of bargaining. I countered with an offer of two copper pennies each. We went at it with him coming down on the price and me going up until we compromised at 2½ copper pennies per point. I figured that was a very good price for both sides and ordered 20 points of the type that I had described.

I really did not know if the new points were going to make that much difference, but they had to be better than what we were currently using. I hoped to get six copper pennies for each adult wild hog carcass that I delivered. I could get a nice return on my investment if I could hire Ephraim as a hunter for two copper pennies per day. That was certainly more than he could get working for just about anybody else.

Two weeks later, I took delivery of six of the new iron points. David and I worked the next day making bolts from them. These bolts were a bit stronger in the shaft as compared to the bolts we had been using. I wanted to get as much mass as possible into the bolt to try to ensure penetration of the point through the heavy skin of a hog.

On the following day, we set out specifically to hunt hogs in order to test the new style bolts. A bolt with simply a fire-hardened point seemed to just bounce off a hog’s tough skin. A bolt with the original iron point would penetrate, but not that far; therefore, it took at least four hits to bring down an adult hog, especially a boar.

These all had to be shots into the bulk of the body of the animal because we had nothing powerful enough to go through the skull or those two very tough cartilage plates that protected the boar’s shoulders and spine. Not even a .71 caliber ball from a musket could kill a boar with one shot. That was why no Indians and very few Whites ate much pork during this era.

Unless my new crossbow bolts could do the job, the only practical way to kill wild hogs was with a spear or pike tipped with an iron point. There had to be a cross bar on the shaft of the spear or pike to keep the boar from charging down the length of the spear even if he had been stabbed. An enraged boar was unstoppable from pain alone.

For these experiments, David and I hoped to be shooting from trees where we could not be easily reached by a charging boar. We could be sure that he was going to charge once he identified who it was shooting at him. There was no way for a human to outrun a boar, even if he was carrying one or more bolts stuck into him somewhere, so we had to be prepared by already being up in the tree.

It was possible to cock the crossbow while sitting on a tree limb, but it did take longer than doing that while standing on solid ground. We tied a lanyard from our waist to the crossbow just in case we dropped it during the fight. Without the crossbow, we were defenseless against the boar and his long tusks. If we dropped the crossbow to the ground, there was no telling how long we would have to wait in the tree for rescue. We carried with us a short section of rope to tie ourselves in the tree if we had to sleep there overnight.

We knew of a place where there were so many acorns around that we were almost guaranteed to find at least one sow there during practically any part of the day. Where there were sows, there were piglets. The problem was that there was usually at least one boar, and he was the greatest danger, though the sows were no pushovers.

Fortunately, it did not take long to reach the acorn utopia, so we were presented with three sows, one boar, and about a dozen piglets. We had been there before, so we knew which trees were the best ones for our purposes. David and I each went to his favorite tree and climbed high enough to be out of reach of the hogs, male or female.

I wanted to shoot first because I wanted complete control over this part of the experiment. I spotted the boar at a range of approximately 12 yards, and he was happily eating acorns while standing so that his left side was presented to me as a target. I lined up my shot carefully and fired. As Galileo had demonstrated, I did not have to make any changes in my aiming habits because I was plenty close enough to my prey.

I fired, and the bolt hit within an inch of my aiming point. I was proud of that shot, and gave myself a silent cheer in celebration. My bolt penetrated the boar’s side quite satisfactorily and buried the point and a short portion of the shaft under the boar’s skin. Okay, now I knew that I had a useful point style. However, though the point had probably penetrated the boar’s lung, it was not a lethal shot.

“Okay, David, it is your turn. Be sure to shot the same boar as I did.”

David laughed at that admonition, and lined up his shot. He managed to place his bolt entry point within half an inch of my shot, and the bolt penetrated about the same distance, even though the range was about 15 yards. That was amazingly good shooting!

The boar was charging at my tree, but it fell to the ground before it reached me. I assume that was the result of excessive internal bleeding. The intent with the larger bolt points was to cut as many blood vessels as possible and to cause as much bleeding as possible. We would know when we cut the boar up during butchering, but we could not tell the exact cause of death at the moment.

This boar was so damned big that we were going to have to do some preliminary butchering just to get it home. It sure would help if we had a cart to carry the carcass on, but we were going to have to use travois for now. We cut the carcass approximately in half far enough away from the bolts so that we did not mess up the pattern of damage done by the bolts. Hopefully, that would not be a problem next time.

When we got home, I explained to Mary what we were looking for, so she began butchering the carcass half that did not have the bolts. Meanwhile, David and I worked on the carcass half with the bolts. We found that the cutting edges of the points had done a good job of cutting those blood vessels as I had hoped. We did not try pulling out the bolts, but resorted to carefully cutting around them so that we could see exactly what had happened.

Both points had entered the boar’s left side and had indeed penetrated its lung, though the damage was not as significant as I had hoped. We concluded that he boar had died from the bleeding, and a single bolt would have been adequate to cause that, but we really needed a third bolt to kill the boar as quickly as possible. There was no point to dawdling so that the animal suffered longer than necessary. Next time, we would use three bolts unless it was obvious that we did not need them.

That night, we had a pork roast with our vegetables for our evening dinner. I do not know if it was the best pork that I had ever tasted, but it certainly was high up on the list!

Okay, the next question was how would the new points do against bear? It was kind of late in the year to expect to find bear very easily. I decided that I would just postpone serious bear hunting until the coming spring. Judging from our previous efforts in hunting bears, I wanted to have more of the new bolts before going after them.

The next item on the agenda was a cart or small wagon that we could take with us on our hunting trips. I did not think that it was good business to deliver a hog in pieces to a customer. I figured that we could just hang a hog from a tree to let it bleed out while we did something else. As for the bear, it really pained me to have to leave so much prime meat behind because we could not haul it home along with the very valuable skin.

I would really prefer buying a cart or wagon that Ned could pull for us. He certainly could pull more weight than we could. The forest was open enough in most places that there was enough room for Ned and a cart. On top of all of that, it would be great to ride to and from home on our hunting expeditions.

As far as Mary was concerned, she did not care how I passed my time as long as it was productively supporting our family. She was impressed at how much money there was to be made by selling bear or cougar skins to Colbert, so she was not against the investments that I had to make to get into the business. Besides, it was just something else that she could use to brag about to her friends. If I could make a living from hunting, then we could abandon our home and move into Bob’s Knob where she could always find someone new to talk to.

On our next trip into town, I checked with Hanks about more points. He had five, and I took a ha’penny (half penny) in change. Since he also did all of the animal shoes in Bob’s Knob, I asked if he knew of a cart or small wagon that might be available.