When some people harvest their first wild animal, it awakens an appreciation of the great outdoors and nature. For others, it is much more emotional and prompts memories of family or loved ones.

For Sadie Pettus, the latter is true. On a recent hunting trip to Barbour Wildlife Management Area (WMA), Pettus was able to take a feral hog, and it evoked memories of her late father, Clark Crates. Although Crates was an avid outdoorsman as well as a talented musician on the piano, he mentored his sons in the outdoor skills while Sadie was growing up.

“He spent his time in the woods teaching the boys,” said Pettus, who calls Wing, Alabama, home. “He didn’t know so much about being the girl dad. As we got older, the boys had zero interest in hunting, but the girl did. It was like, ‘Dang, I should have spent all the time with you.’”

Unfortunately, Crates health started declining, but he had a difficult time accepting he wasn’t able to do what he once could.

“It was Valentine’s Day, and he said, ‘I’m going hunting with you at Barbour. We’re going to be a power team. You’re going to get a 10- or 12-point buck, and you’re going to get a hog,’” Pettus said. “I said, ‘Daddy, I really want to get a hog, but I’ve never even seen one. People say they’re all over the management area, but I can’t get one if I can’t see it.’ He said, ‘You will; you will.’”

Crates asked his daughter what she wanted for her birthday in July 2023, and she said to get her something simple. He answered that he had bought guns for the boys and wanted to buy one for her. Crates ended up being too ill to purchase the rifle and passed away in March.

“I was able to finalize that myself,” Pettus said. “It doesn’t matter that I paid for the gun, it was still going to be from my daddy.”

Fast forward to the recent opening day of gun deer season at Barbour, and Pettus headed out with her new .308 rifle to hunt deer and hogs if she saw one.

“I was not really emotional at that point,” she said. “It was usually after the hunt. My daddy was the first one I called. I would tell him if I was in a ground blind or climber, and the wind did this or that.”

Pettus was in a ladder stand on opening day at Barbour when she heard movement nearby.

“I heard them and knew it wasn’t the sound of a deer,” she said. “It was cold, so I thought I’d better get my glove off and get ready. There were actually four hogs, but I could only put eyes on three of them. One of them I really wanted to get because I’d heard the guys talking around the campfire about getting a hog with the biggest cutters (lower canine teeth called tusks). I guess that’s the equivalent of bragging rights like the antlers on a deer.

“I saw the boar with these big ol’ cutters, but they’re not like deer. They don’t go slow. Deer will browse, but these rascals were going somewhere with a purpose. There were so many palmettos that I lost the opportunity to get a shot at that one. I was always told to go for the head or right behind the ear on a hog, but I didn’t have the opportunity on the sow. I didn’t know it was a sow at the time. It was like, it’s now or never Daddy.”

On the frosty morning, the blast from the deer rifle flooded the area with mist and smoke.

“It looked like I had shot a blackpowder gun,” Pettus said. “It took a second for it to clear out. I didn’t know if I had killed her, but she didn’t go but maybe 20 yards.”

The sow weighed well over 100 pounds, and Pettus knew there was no way she could get it out of the woods by herself. Her husband, Terry, was hunting in a different area of the WMA, but she found a couple of friends back at the camp to help her with the hog.

That’s when she encountered Lt. Vance Wood, a Conservation Enforcement Officer with the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources’ (ADCNR) Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries (WFF) Division.

Wood’s vehicle was in the middle of the road between Pettus and her hog. Pettus and her friends got out to investigate and discovered Wood was trying to remove a downed tree from the roadway.

“I was so emotional at that point that I think we said, ‘Hey, can we help you?’” Pettus said. “I can’t even describe how awesome he was. He said, ‘No, I’ve got this.’ He didn’t ask what we were doing or where we were going. I just told him I got my very first hog.”

Wood wanted to get the tree out of the road and get a picture of the hog but found out Pettus and friends were on the way to retrieve the hog. Wood drug the tree out of the road and headed to the woods to help get the hog.

“I’ve never had an encounter like that,” Pettus said. “I’m a fairly new hunter, but I’ve heard people say negative stuff about game wardens. I took a couple of pictures of him pulling the tree out of the road, and then we went to the spot where I was hunting.

“He took his time and taught me about finding a sapling to use to drag that hog by slicing slots in the hocks. It was a big hog, and he was teaching me how to make it easier because we were pretty deep in the woods. He said, ‘I’m so impressed. You’re out here by yourself, and you’re deep in the woods. And you were able to take me right back to where the animal was.’ There were so many God winks in the whole thing, and the whole thing with Vance was amazing. I told him that just meeting him did my heart and soul so much good. He was genuinely excited for me. The same excitement I would have shared with my dad, I was able to share with Vance.”

Pettus’ husband is an avid hog hunter and regularly takes feral hogs off of Barbour. When he tried to check in with Sadie on the phone, she was crying and saying something about being with a game warden.

“He’s thinking, ‘What could Sadie have possibly done?’” she said. “When you’re emotional, you’re not thinking about that. I finally said, ‘Hey, I’m good.’ When he found out about the hog, he was absolutely thrilled for me. He knew I was going to be emotional about not having my daddy to call. He was extremely pumped up.”

Wood was also pumped about positive interaction with a group of people hunting on public land.

“When Sadie came up on me getting the tree out of the road, I asked them how their luck was going,” Wood said. “She said she had just shot a hog, and she was getting teary-eyed talking about her dad. I told them I’d like to go help them. I helped them drag it out.

“They were good people, and I enjoyed meeting them. After that interaction, they now know they can always call us if they need us. We want people to know we’re there to help, not interfere in somebody enjoying the outdoors. All our officers who work Barbour are willing to help.”

Wood said he was glad to see Pettus harvest one of the many feral hogs that call Barbour home.

“These hogs do so much damage and compete with other wildlife for food, like deer and squirrels for acorns,” he said. “The hogs act like a Hoover, vacuuming up all the food.”

Another aspect of Barbour WMA that Wood pointed out is the number of out-of-state people who hunt the management area.

“The non-resident hunters really add a lot to help keep the lights on,” he said. “A lot of people come to Barbour from Florida and Georgia and buy annual all-game and management area licenses. I always thank them for coming and purchasing a license.”