The Miracle of the Woods

We went out the day before to find sign and places to wait in ambush. We found plenty of rooting on the edge of a dry swamp, and I found a hollow tree big enough to hide me and best of all it had a crack that looked out over the swamp. Perfect in every way.
We got into place before dawn the next morning, me in my tree and the other guys where ever they found. We waited. Slowly the sun crept up and the sky lightened. Now I could see the edge of the swamp. Wait. Wait. Then, low but real, the sound of slow movement. Rustling in the dri-ish saw grass. Next came a hunters dream: a huge black pig slowly walked out of the brush towards me. Twenty five yards or so. NO!! TWO!!!! One behind the other. My old Fox double barrel was loaded with magnum 00 buck. Perfect. Two shells, two pigs. Wait. Wait. They came closer and got bigger and bigger. I stepped out of the tree, aimed and fired twice. Perfect hits squarely in the head of both, and both went down.
Then the Miracle of the Woods happened. As I walked up to them, shaking with adrenalin (these were after all my first and second pigs), they started to shrink. The closer I got the smaller they got. Damn. How big are they? Closer, still shrinking. By the time I got to the bodies, or what was left of them, they had shriveled to about 15 pounds each. Babies. Just trying to be big and tough. Walking like adults. Puffing themselves up to look like 200 pounders. I felt like a real dick (pardons all around).
On the way out of the woods later that day, I passed two people coming into the woods with a camera or something. The woman muttered “Jerk. Why kill babies? Stupid hunters!” I wanted to scream “I DID NOT KILL BABIES. THESE SUCKERS WERE 200 POUNDS EACH WHEN I SHOT THEM!!!” But of course I didn’t. And of course they weren’t. They were tasty, though, cooked slowly in a smoker. Sort of pre-pulled pork.
Image: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3065/2716321404_f860af82da_z.jpg