It was nearly midnight back at the fire marshal's ranch, and rifleman Stroud said his feet hurt. He was going home.
That was probably for the best, Paddock and his remaining rifleman, Kit Rackow, reasoned later. Stroud had been passing gas all night -- the offensive exhaust from a three-chili-dog lunch -- and hogs have uncanny hearing and sense of smell.
The evening's only swine sighting had been brief and action-free: Rackow spotted a sow and two piglets. But he couldn't get off a shot before they ran back into the brush.
As the hunt dragged on, the air got chillier, and a dense fog began blanketing the bottomlands. Paddock's night-vision scopes were useless now. Even his spotlights could only penetrate a few feet before fading into gray.
The hunt's prospects looked bleak, and both men knew it. But Paddock refused to give in.
"I'm going to shoot a hog or the sun's coming up," he said stubbornly.
Since he began shooting the ranch's swine, Paddock explained, his quarry would creep out later every evening in hopes of avoiding him. But eventually, he said confidently, they would have to come out to eat.
Around 2 a.m., coyotes began to howl; the woods were coming alive at last. A racket down the hill from where the hunters were scanning the panorama made them jump. It was a false alarm: just a few loose horses that roam the 600 acres.
Suddenly, Paddock noticed something, and a look of defeat formed on his face. The winds had shifted, and were moving past the hunters and down into the creek bed where he thought the hogs were holed up. That meant the swine could smell him before he could see them.
A dejected Paddock finally folded shortly before 3 a.m.
"These hogs have made a fool of me," he said sadly. He walked to his pickup and drove home.
Paddock was right -- they had. When he returned after daybreak, he found a hayfield torn asunder. Shielded by the fog, the hogs had been just 50 feet away, pigging out all night long.
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miguel.bustillo@latimes.com
