Don Rowe celebrates the unexpected triumphs of Lady Hoggers, the redneck reality show that follows two women with a thirst for hog blood.
At this moment, approximately six million wild hogs are trotting across the southern USA, leaving a $1.5 billion trail of carnage in their wake. Despite a $20 million Department of Agriculture effort and an annual kill rate of 750,000 hogs in Texas alone, the pig problem continues to get worse. But where most people see an unparalleled ecological disaster 300 years in the making, others see an opportunity for fame. Enter the Lady Hoggers.
My personal favourite in the ‘Rednecks vs Nature’ reality tv sub-genre, Lady Hoggers is the story of two women engaged in a porcine jihad. With a combination of giant breasts, tie-front plaid shirts and a decent helping of sass, Christie Chreene and Julie Snead hog their way across the Sunshine State, slaying sows and castrating boars like nobodies business. To really amp up the ‘Murica factor, even the narrator speaks in a slow southern drawl, introducing a deliciously Southern host of characters like the elderly rancher Miss Daisy and the Hoggers’ personal whipping boy Gary.
It’s a ridiculous premise. Even some pretty generous editing can’t hide the fact that the Lady Hoggers are certainly more lady than hogger, and I detected a bit of tomfoolery around just how much they’re really getting done. But there is one thing that can’t be denied; feral pigs are goddamned terrifying. Wild boars operate in the 200lb/90kg area and stand around a metre at the shoulder. They can reach a top speed of 40km/h, and a metre high vertical leap isn’t out of the question either. They have an armored hide which gets tougher the more they fight. And oh yeah, they basically have knives sticking out of their face too.
So while the show is a little gimmicky, I’ve got respect for anyone who goes after a feral boar’s genitals with nothing but a sharp knife. And when the alternatives are a bunch of out-and-out homophobic racists shooting ducks or a gummy hick catching turtles, the Lady Hoggers start to look pretty damn good.
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