Wild boar hunting at its finest in Tennessee's Cumberland Mountains

The sun is just starting to rise as the Toyota bounces down a muddy backroad deep in the Big South Fork National River & Recreation Area.

The road is open to hunters during big game hunting seasons only. The rest of the year, it is used by horseback riders and hikers.

Hunters are plentiful on this particular day, the second day of muzzleloader season. Tags from counties throughout East Tennessee and Middle Tennessee are visible on the vehicles that line the sides of the road.

The hunting pressure doesn't bother us. Most of these hunters, experience says, will be hunting a stone's throw from the road. Where we're headed, few will venture.

It's prime time for deer in Tennessee. The pre-rut is in full swing and the chase phase is underway. But it isn't deer we're seeking on this particular day. It's 300-lb. wild boar with razor-sharp tusks. The boar inhabit the 125,000 acres of the Big South Fork NRRA, making it one of the Volunteer State's prime destinations for boar hunting.

Several years ago, the National Park Service teamed up with the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency to offer a special hunting season for wild boar. The season begins in late January—after the deer seasons have closed—and continues through the end of February. A $5 permit (purchased at area vendors or at the park's visitor center) is required in addition to a valid Tennessee hunting license to hunt the critters.

The annual hunt has attracted hunters from across the eastern United States. But this hunt isn't for the casual hunter seeking an easy thrill. .

Wild boar are wary critters, every bit as challenging to hunt as whitetail deer. When hunting pressure sets in, they will leave the area. They make up for their poor eyesight with an excellent sense of smell. They don't hang around and wait to be shot. Add to that their relatively limited number—hunting guide Lathern Hull estimates that eradication efforts have lowered the total number of hogs in the Big South Fork to fewer than 500—and they're quite challenging indeed. Throw in the fact that state regulations do not permit the use of dogs or bait to hunt wild hogs in the Big South Fork, and the fact that hogs are nocturnal by nature. That all adds up to make a very difficult hunt; one that some would say is downright impossible.

Hogs don't tend to make it easy on hunters. They typically stay deep within the park's boundaries and well away form the beaten path. But the Big South Fork's terrain is beautiful—which adds to the mystique of the hunt—but very rugged. Steep hills are lined with bluffs and boulders. Thickets of mountain laurel cover many of the hillsides. The hilltops are thickets created by dead pine trees, killed by the southern pine beetle infestation ten years ago. Today, those trees have created deadfalls overgrown with briars and ivy. The resulting thickets are a haven for wild game, but a nightmare for hunters.

Still, the difficult hunt isn't a deterrent for determined hunters looking for a good time in beautiful country.

Michigan's Britt Owen is one of those hunters. Owen makes an annual trip to the Big South Fork. And, unlike many hunters, he's actually carried bacon home.

"I really think the Big South Fork is a well-kept secret amongst vacation destinations for outdoors-oriented families," Owen said. "Part of the appeal for me is that it is only an eight-hour trip from my home in southern Michigan to the Big South Fork. I love the mountains, and BSF is a lot closer than the Rockies."

Owen, a trooper for the Michigan Highway Patrol, takes his family to the Big South Fork to make a mini-vacation of the hog hunting expedition.

"If it is important for you to kill a pig, go somewhere else," he said. "If you're not up to a challenge, go hunt somewhere else. But one thing is for sure: You will absolutely fall in love with the country."

Owen said that the low likelihood of killing a hog isn't a deterrent.

"The fact that I can go walk such beautiful country for hours on end keeps me looking forward to every trip down there," he said. "My first reaction to the Big South Fork terrain was, 'Wow! This is awesome!' I had hunted some steep terrain in the past, elk hunting in Colorado and Idaho. However, BSF is unique in that you can be sneaking along through the hardwoods or a river bottom and literally get hemmed in by a cliff line and have no where to go except to backtrack. It can be frustrating at times but those clifflines are too beautiful to stay mad at."

Alabama's Jim Vandervort is another of those hunters who has hunted the Big South Fork for its hogs. He admits the hunting isn't easy, but says he will be back.

"If I were describing it to someone who had never been there, I would tell them that they were going to do some walking and it will get rough," Vandervort said. "And I have been going for three years and have not got a hog yet. But I love getting out in the woods and seeing it all."

Vandervort admitted that seeing hogs isn't as easy as he expected.

"I know they are there," he said. "I've seen the sign, pig tracks, mud wallows, trees that they rub and scratch on . . . but I knew it would be hard."

Murfreesboro, Tenn., native David Edgar is another hunter who has made the Big South Fork an annual hunting destination. He is also among the minority of hunters who are successful, putting a tag on more than one wild boar.

"I was lucky," he said. "I saw a hog within two hours my first day there."

Feral hogs have always been present in the Big South Fork, but the population was helped by a hunting preserve, called the "Hog Farm," that operated in the Big South Fork backcountry circa the establishment of the national park in the early 1970s. Operated by Joe Simpson, the Hog Farm housed hunters in an old longhunter's camp in the backcountry. Pigs escaped the reserve over the years, and when hunting operations ceased, the remaining hogs were allowed to escape into the wild.

Today, the Hog Farm is operated as a rustic backwoods retreat called Charit Creek Hostel. It serves equestrian traffic and hunters traveling along the park's network of trails, and remains a prime destination for wild hog hunters in the Big South Fork NRRA.