Five kids, ages 12 to 15, spent a recent weekend hunting wild
pigs and learning about nature
By Chris Riley Chief Photographer
Gilroy – There’s something in the air in the hills east of Gilroy, and it’s not the smell of garlic. It’s thick with anticipation for the thrill of the hunt, and for five junior hunters it’s the chance of a lifetime.
They came from Morgan Hill, Modesto, Vacaville and Castroville, but for 12-year-old Gilroy resident, Louie Bonesio, the hunt is in his own backyard.
Each year, for the past three years, the Department of Fish and Game – in cooperation with the California Deer Association – hold junior hunting opportunities on the 4,200-acre Cañada De Los Osos Ecological Reserve in south Santa Clara County. Each of the five annual hunts is for a specific type of animal. This trip the young hunters sought the elusive wild pig.
This opportunity was particularly special for young Louie because a handful of the volunteer guides are practically family. According to Louie’s grandpa, Tony Lopez, when Louie was 1 year old, his father, Louie III died from heart failure. Louie III was best friends with many of the men that help keep the junior hunting program running strong at Cañada de Los Osos, and they became Louie’s surrogate uncles. As luck would have it, Louie was one of the five of 104 applicants to be drawn for this year’s fall pig hunt.
“Each applicant is assigned a number, and randomly selected in a lottery chosen by computer at the Department of Fish and Game. Once the computer has selected five numbers,” said Jeannine Dewald with the Department of Fish and Game. “We match them to the applicant, and e-mail the list to Mike Mantelli, the coordinator.”
“It was quite an honor and very special for Louie to be drawn,” said Louie’s mom Tonya Bonesio. “He got a chance to be one of the guys.”
The two-day excursion began at a small cabin on the reserve where the hunters, ranging in age from 12 to 15, got a refresher course in hunter safety.
“The kids are required to have a California Junior Hunting License prior to the hunt. We stress safety and education, we want to teach the kids how to be good hunters and that a hunter is not someone who just blows crap up,” Mantelii said.
After the safety course and watching a short video the kids got a chance, under supervision, to fire their gun and make sure the sight was dialed in. For some it would be the only shots fired during the two-day trip.
The reserve was divided into five zones. Each hunter was assigned a zone, jeep, driver and guide and was only allowed to shoot one pig. A parent or relative also got to experience the hunt, riding along. In Louie’s case it was grandpa Tony.
“It’s been terrific being able to watch Louie grow up,” Lopez said, “I didn’t get to know his father that well, but what I do know is, he is a lot like him.”
Under the midday sun, the hunting parties began their trek into the reserve. As the jeeps traveled down a graded dirt road, parts of the reserve resembled an African safari with rolling hills covered in dry grass blowing in the wind where grazing deer occasionally lift their heads to look at the passing jeeps. As the mountains became more steep and the terrain covered with trees and heavy vegetation a different kind of awareness became apparent.
“This reminds me of Jurassic Park, when the jeeps run on that track ,” Lopez said.
The hum of the jeep was the only sound heard as they headed into zone two. Todd Morrell, or uncle Todd to Louie, kept a sharp eye out occasionally hitting the brakes and grabbing the binoculars tethered around his neck to examine a dark spot that seemed out of place.
“Just a rock,” he said as the jeep began to roll again.
Throughout the day the jeep stopped several times so the group could look through binoculars at rocks, logs and anything out of the ordinary that could have possibly been a pig. A few times during the hunt Morrell and Louie hopped out of the jeep to peek over a hill, or walk down a canyon. Lopez would picked them up further down the road.
“We looked at tracks and other signs of what animals had been there and where they were going,” Louie said.
Henry Coletto, director of the California Deer Association, said about 5 percent of the ecological reserve is used for the hunting, the other 95 percent is for outdoor hands-on habitat enhancement and education,
“For the kids rather than sitting in front of the TV, it’s getting out there and using their other senses to learn about nature and what’s around them,” Coletto said.
The day quietly lulled on with no pigs in sight, then the silence was broken by a crackle on the handheld radio. Through a broken transmission Morrell was able to decipher that two other groups, hunting together in another part of the reserve, had come across a group of about 12 pigs.
“We have one down and grazed another that we are tracking,” said Mantelli.
This gave Louie and the zone two group a renewed energy. They new the pigs were out there, they’d just had to find them. As the sky grew dark the visibility and chance of finding the animals grew less and less. The hunting party decided to call it a day. Tomorrow was another day and 6am would come early.
The hunting party returned to the cabin to tell stories of the hunt and the one that got away. It turned out that the smallest of the hunters, Todd Pate, 12, of Modesto, was the only successful hunter of the day, bagging an estimated 200 pound female. Todd stood quiet with a smile on his face.
“A pig on the ground is meat in the freezer,” said Everett Pate, the boy’s proud dad.
The hunt was over for the Pate’s which meant only four hunters ventured out the next morning.
Under the cover of darkness and in the chill of the early Sunday morning wind, the remaining hunting parties set out into the fog, headed for their designated zones. Four hours later they all returned they way they had went out, empty handed.
Out of nine hunts four shots were fired, and three of those were fired by Todd to bring down his pig.
“It was still fun even though I didn’t get one,” Louie said.
“When you are hunting deer,” Morrell said, “you see all kinds of pigs and when your hunting pigs, you see all kinds of deer. It’s kind of like they know what your looking for.”
