Searching for pigs with Lloyd Khan on his first hunt at 91.
The thigh-high brown grass made the ridges and rolling oak hills of northern California look foreign and exotic. The mountains of the Mendocino National Forest, towering up close to eight thousand feet to the west, were a dead giveaway, but if I just looked south and east, Lloyd Kahn, Kate Sylvan, Mike Idell and myself could have been anywhere from West Texas to central Europe. Over the last year and a half, I’d put in over a hundred miles wandering around this ranch in search of wild, acorn-fed pigs, but always in the winter. I’d dropped dozens of pins on X and through trial and error had a good idea where the pigs would be and helped a few friends pull pigs out of the poison oak-covered ravines.
Lloyd brandished his weathered Winchester 270 with a Leupold 4x scope and trail running backpack, followed by Mike and Kate. I’d put in the most time on the ranch and took the lead, keeping an eye out for fresh rubs and bent grass indicating pig trails. It was hot, in the low 90’s, and the pigs were certainly bedded down. When they woke up, we needed to be on their path to the water set up 100 yards away with Lloyd and Kate on tripods.
For years, Mike and I had talked about taking our friend Lloyd Kahn on a hunt. Two years ago, we took him halibut fishing in the bay and had a banner time, roping in a half dozen quality fish and making fish tacos that night. After that, we loosely planned a blacktail hunt, but the ranch we had permission to hunt in Marin fell through, and we shelved it. I’ve known Lloyd since 2013 and have grown close over the last decade, making stops at his compound in Bolinas on my trips south, meeting up with him on the coast to tour his favorite places, and having him up to the tree houses. As my journey into adult-onset hunting took hold, specifically my obsession with hunting wild pigs in California, I immediately knew that Lloyd would get a kick out of it.
Lloyd’s intake of meat comes from diverse sources: friends’ farms, pigeons from his yard that he shoots with a pellet gun or catches with a box trap, roadkill, and the occasional duck from an undisclosed park in SF. Lloyd’s open mind and internal curiosity, not dogma, lead him to his decisions in life, especially when it comes to meat, and I knew chasing wild pigs descended from Spanish missionaries along the Camino Real and Russian fur traders would be right up his alley.
