The San Francisco call., 1898-01-16

OK years past SeleCI lot or
 knowing hunters have been hay
 ing exciting sport knocking wild
 hogs in certain sections of the
 San Joaquin River bottoms. It isn't every day though that the ven turesome hunters are almost killed by +ha cornered hogs. That fate, however, nearly befell William Douglass last week. If Jim Pope, with a trusty Win chester. hadn't been standing near by Douglass wouldn't be telling the eXcit- ing story he does about the old ''tusk- CT" that had him down in rush.
 The country they hunted in Is wild and densely covered with an almost tnpenetrable tangle of vines, low brush and occasional trees. All old residents along the lower San Joaquin valley know just such territory along the bottom lands where the water over flows in the spring. Hundreds of wild hogs inhabit some of them.
 It was in just such a jungle, near Lathrop where young Douglass went to bag some wild hogs, and 1t was in this same jungle that "Old Man" Ty- son hid after killing Deputy Sheriff Buzzell on Thanksgiving eve, 1895. To this wilderness of willows and under brush Williams and Schlagel fled last September after attempting to wreck and rob the south-bound New Orleans express.
 Nearly every traveller in California knows of Lathrop, in the banner wheat county of this State, but very few of the passengers who dine at the station daily know that less than five miles away there Is this wild spot where boar hunting can be followed that is every bit as exciting as the famous hunts in India. There can be no pig sticking, to be sure. for the hunter who wishes to bay a wild porker in the San Joa- 1,S r-iA and enough nerve and strength to carry him on hands and knees beneath the network of vines and bushes.
 The land thereabOut abounds in coons, and continuing Is faYorite pastime with the spOrtsmen of San Joaquin County. Occasionally when running down one of these ring-tailed despoiIers of hen roosts the hunters run across one of the droves of wild hogs that sometimes venture out into the open places on the river bottom. The hunters, however, rarely venture into the thickets on the old Trahern ranch and in the underbruSh, where the wild hogs root out living. It is a dangerous venture unless one is pre- pared to meet a rowing vicious old ''tusker" Williams, the train-wreCker, now serving a life sentence in the Fol som State Prison, knew this wild sec ton well. and told the authorities that
 
 tract on the evening of the Morano hold-up. He was looking for hiding place where it would take the officers weeks to find him, and he was in just the right kind of country to find such place. He might still be at large had not hunger and curiosity forced him to leave the haunts of the wild hogs.
 Those robbers will have plenty of hog meat to keep them alive" was what a number of Old-timerS said when they heard that the train-wreckers had taken to the brush. This is what fired hunters wftk a desire to possess a pair of wild boar's tusks.
 Pope and I had heard" said Doug las, in telling his adventure that there . were lots of wild hogs in the under brush near the river. I heard this story when I first came to the country, but paid no attention to it, for when ever had a chance to go hunting went after ducks or doves. After the newspapers printed so much about that Williams and Schlagel affair, and told of the wild country they were supposed