These dogs are hogging all the glory

Nine-year-old Trey Skains sat in the dirt with Steele, scratching the dog’s belly and bragging about the spotted pooch with bright blue eyes.

“He’s a pretty dang good dog,” Trey said. “He’s won me a lot of trophies.”

Trey and Steele are players in hog baying, in which dogs go into a ring to round up a wild hog. At Uncle Earl’s 13th Annual Hog Dog Trials in March, they got the chance to show their stuff in a competition billed as both a Southern and a family tradition.

“This isn’t a sport, it’s our heritage” said Clem O’Bryan, 70, a founder of the event. “This is families together sharing something we’ve been doing for generations.”

In an era of animal rights activism, O’Bryan is quick to point out that hog baying differs from hog catching.

In hog catching, dogs, usually pit bulls, are sent into a pen and timed for how quickly they can pin a hog. Once they bite, the dogs usually must be pried from the hogs with a specially designed bar. The practice -- sometimes called hog baiting -- outraged animal lovers and sparked prohibitions across the South.

In hog baying, the goal is for a dog to corner a boar in two to four minutes. The dogs sometimes bite, but it counts against them in scoring.

Louisiana bans hog catching but permits Uncle Earl’s event.

The Louisiana Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals worked on the law that exempted Uncle Earl’s, said spokeswoman Gloria Dauphin. The society has never received a complaint about the event, she said.

All usually ends well for the hogs, which are released after the event.

Trey and Steele won second place in two events at Uncle Earl’s. Twin sister Rebecca and her dog, Pongo, took a fourth place.

The siblings and their father, Reg Skains, were among thousands of people who jammed Winnfield, population about 5,400, for five days of watching everything from puppies to old dogs chase wild hogs.

“It’s the biggest event in Winn Parish,” said Lawrence White, president of the Winnfield Chamber of Commerce. “I would guess five to six thousand people come to the event over the course of the week.”

The event was named for Earl K. Long -- “Uncle Earl” -- who was born in Winnfield in 1895. Long, brother of Gov. Huey P. Long, was one of Louisiana’s most colorful politicians. Elected governor three times between 1939 and 1960, he was an avid hog hunter. He also was known for his relationship with New Orleans stripper Blaze Starr; Paul Newman portrayed Long in the 1989 film “Blaze.”

O’Bryan, clad in overalls and a white cowboy hat, a half-chewed cigar stuck in the side of his mouth, said he hunted with Earl Long as a boy, and for a time cured the boars Long shot.

Reg Skains said he began taking his children to hog baying contests when they were in strollers. They grew up appreciating the skills of the Louisiana Catahoula Leopard dog and the Black Mouth Cur -- considered the top dogs for rounding up wild hogs.

Hog baying traditions, O’Bryan said, are rooted in Southern agricultural customs: Settlers often let their hogs run loose. The animals fattened up on acorns and vegetation in the woods until late fall, when they were rounded up and slaughtered.

“Those hogs were good for extra food, maybe extra goods; they could be traded for things people needed,” O’Bryan said. “The hogs were a farmer’s bank account, but his bay dog was the key he needed to open it.”

For the dogs, which weigh 45 to 75 pounds, dominating a 200-pound hog requires instinct, athleticism and finesse.

“You’ve got to go through a lot of dogs to get a really champion one,” said Levi Jones, 10, who won the Youth Bay with his dog, Blue. Herding is instinctive for the Catahoula -- the state dog of Louisiana -- and the Black Mouth Cur, breeders say.

“We breed them to do this kind of work,” said Sherry Bondo, 62, of Lumberton, Miss., who has been competing with Catahoulas for 20 years and hog hunting with them for longer. “They love it.”

Barking almost constantly, the dog is judged in the event on how it contains the hog, like a sheepdog handling sheep, O’Bryan said.

Stoic hogs hunker down into a corner. The feisty ones charge the dogs.

At least twice on the final day of the event, a hog tossed a dog into the air. Both dogs were wearing protective vests on their necks and bodies.

The dogs are big investments. Star performers have sold at the Winnfield event for as much as $15,000. This year, prices generally ranged from $100 to $450, but one dog sold for $8,500.

The sport can be costly but has its rewards.

The Skains family owns about 40 dogs, said Reg Skains. His monthly food bill is about $600. Then there are trailers, cases for transporting the dogs, vet bills and fees for entering events.

“But I won about $29,000 one year when I was real serious with it,” Reg Skains said.