‘Wild With Kyle’ Series Begins With Midnight Boar Hunting

We’re taking a little bit of a different approach in a new series at 41 NBC News.

As a news gatherer for the Middle Georgia community, I wanted to find different type of story; a story about people who do some of the wildest activities for an adrenaline rush.

So began my search for stories appropriately titled, ‘Wild With Kyle’.

I sometimes can have a wild personality in the newsroom. So my boss agreed to let me use that, and find five stories from around the state of Georgia of me doing the wildest thing I can find.

Day one takes place in the watermelon fields of Dooly County. Feral hogs have been destroying farmers’ crops, and cutting into profits of the harvest.

Hunting a group of wild hogs, is generally too big of a job for just one man, so the boys of Jager Pro Tactical Boar Hunting step in to help. These guys are loaded with .308, semi-automatic rifles. Each gun is equipped with a $14,000 night/thermal vision scope.

They mean business.

Rod Pinkston is the man behind Jager Pro. His mission is to exterminate every feral hog he can find.

“They’re (feral hogs) actually considered a pest. And we’re doing exactly what the Georgia Department of Natural Resources wants us to do… That’s kill as many as possible,” Pinkston.

The hunt begins when the sun goes down. Five of us are in the field tonight, each with a gun loaded with 10 rounds of ammo. Pinkston is an ex-Army sniper, so he leads us through the field until we are within 50 yards of the pack of hogs.

“You’ve got to look at the hog, more like the pest that they are. If you’ve got termites in your house, don’t you want the pest control agent to kill the pregnant termites and the baby termites? A hog is nothing more than a 150 pound termite to a farmer,” Pinkston explains.

When Pinkston’s countdown hits ‘zero’, the shooting begins.

When the field is cleared of the hogs, I pulled my head out from behind my rifle, and realized my hands are shaking from the adrenaline pumping through my veins.

The hunt was successful. We’ve each cleared at least one of the pests from the field.

Our team did not hit every hog we saw in the field. But those we did hit, will go to farmers’ families as a source of meat.