Spilled blood never dries. When a wild pig slashed razor-sharp tusks across Hardy Carraway’s inner thigh, death was assured. Mortally wounded in an isolated river bottom, Carraway bled out in minutes as his sons desperately tried to staunch the flow from a severed femoral artery.
Decades after Carraway’s death, his family salvages the tragic details, physically preserved by a blood-soaked handkerchief and a single, telltale pig tusk .
“A wild hog killed my grandfather,” says Louise Brumfield. “I’ve been in those same gullies and swamps, and it was no place for anyone to die.”
Deepest Cut
In the fall of 1920, the U.S. was dry with Prohibition, the Red Sox had sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees, and Hardy Bryant Carraway, 45, a beloved father of 12 children and husband to Susie, 42, was harvesting crops in southern Mississippi’s Franklin County.
“Hardy and Susie were my grandparents,” explains Louise Brumfield, 96 years young. “They worked for everything they had. They did the best they could, loved each other, and could have been any couple living off the land you’d find anywhere in the country.”
Either during or after harvest on Oct. 26, Carraway set out to gather several domesticated swine.
The wild pig attack, according to Brumfield, took place in the Little Springs community of Franklin County. “Back then, your animals wandered and that was normal,” she says. “Livestock roamed a lot and my grandfather wanted to get his hogs.”
“When my great-grandfather went to find his domesticated pigs, there was a wild pig running with them—a boar,” concurs Clayton Hardy Johnston, namesake and great-grandson of Carraway.
Pursuing the swine herd, Carraway, accompanied by his two eldest sons, Marshall, 19, and Lloyd, 18, along with several hunting dogs, entered a bottom area within proximity of the family farm. “The dogs bayed a big wild hog,” Brumfield notes. “They were in the middle of a gully area, and Hardy, my grandfather, stepped on top of a ditch above a pond or slough to get away from the wild hog.”
However, when the wild pig charged Carraway, there was no cover—the embankment was almost bare.
“He was standing on a pond levee or ditch bank, and the wild pig charged him,” echoes Johnston. “There was no place to go, except for a tree, and he grabbed a lower limb to pull himself to safety, out of reach of the wild pig.”
Seizing the limb, Carraway hoisted himself into the air and made a fatal error. Rather than bending his legs together and upward, he extended both legs outward in a V-pattern. The wild pig raised its head and drove its tusks under Carraway’s groin, deeply slicing through his pant leg and inner thigh, severing a femoral artery.
Carraway collapsed to the ground—a lifetime reduced to minutes.
“He died fast before Marshall and Lloyd could get him anywhere—no house or hospital,” Brumfield laments. “Lloyd wrapped a handkerchief tourniquet around Hardy’s leg to stop the bleeding and keep his daddy from dying, but it didn’t work. He died right there in the dirt in front of his boys.”
Catastrophic Blink
The severity of the attack and the location of Carraway’s fatal injury resonate with John J. Mayer, one of the foremost wild pig experts on the planet and technical program manager at the Savannah River National Laboratory in Aiken, S.C. Mayer has examined 20,000 wild pig specimens spanning 50 years of research.
Mayer published Wild Pig Attacks on Humans in 2013. He noted a total of 412 attacks on at least 665 humans in 47 countries and 21 U.S. states from 1825-2012. (The current U.S. wild pig population stands at approximately 6.9 million.)
“Most human deaths from wild pig attacks occur when the femoral artery is cut,” Mayer says. “An average wild pig’s head level is under 3’, certainly below a deer, and that puts the pig’s head—and tusks—at the waist and below of a standing adult human.”
“The femoral arteries, on the inner thighs of a human, are in the central zone of attack,” Mayer continues. “Wild pig attacks on females, teens, and seniors often produce injuries to both the upper and lower body because the humans usually get knocked down. However, in adult human males, those wild pig attacks are often just in the lower body—exclusive to the inner leg and the femoral artery.”
Boar tusks are phenomenally sharp, with 60-70% of a canine enclosed in the mandible and typically 1”-3” outside the socket, with a frequent diameter of ¾” at the widest point. In boars, tusks are triangularly shaped and grow throughout a pig’s lifetime. The upper and lower tusks rub against one another each time a boar opens and closes its mouth, honing the lower tusks into cutters via the perpetual sharpening process.
“It always amazes me to see how sharp boar tusks are, especially the razor-sharp edge, and even when you tap your finger onto the very ends of the lower tusks, you’ll see how the ends are pointy as a nail,” Mayer says. “I’m talking incredibly sharp and perfect for deep puncture and laceration.”
“The boar punches through the flesh with its tusks and then pulls to the side or backward, doing tremendous damage,” Mayer adds. “Laceration from these tusks to the inner thigh is the biggest danger to humans and causes most fatalities. If the pig hits the femoral, the blood loss is critical.”
How critical? As in, how fast did Carraway’s life slip away in 1920?
The human body has two femoral arteries (each approximately the width of an index finger) that branch off mid-abdomen and extend through the groin and into each thigh, situated about 1” below the skin. A damaged femoral artery can discharge 1 liter of blood per minute—a staggering quantity considering roughly 5 liters of blood circulate in the entire adult body.
In Carraway’s case, he likely was dead in two to five minutes, a catastrophic blink that accords with Brumfield’s family narrative. “There was too much blood,” she says. “There was no time.”
“I’ve Seen the Blood”
Brumfield’s account of her grandfather’s end is bolstered by a tiny news article that appeared in the Okolona Messenger, dated Nov. 4, 1920, nine days after the wild pig attack: News reached this place of the tragic death of Hardy Carraway, 50, a farmer living eight miles southeast of here. He, with several others, was in the woods hunting wild hogs, when a large one which he was trying to dislodge from under cover where it had taken refuge, made a rush at him and, in doing so, almost severed his leg from his body with its tusks. Death resulted in a very short time from loss of blood.
The news article miscalculates Carraway’s age, but captures the general narrative and stresses the traumatic damage inflicted by the pig.
According to Brumfield, following Carraway’s death, on a return trip to the vicinity of the attack, Lloyd and Marshall killed the wild pig and hauled home the carcass. “It was huge,” Brumfield says. “The head hung off the front of their small wagon and the feet hung off the back. I don’t know the exact size of the wagon, but everyone could see it was a very big pig.”
Patriarch and father to 12 children, Carraway’s death was devastating to his remaining family. Susie would never remarry. “It was the deepest grief,” Brumfield says. “It hurts me to think about the financial impact my grandfather’s death had on my grandmother (Susie). Even today, I think a lot about how difficult it was for her to go on and raise the kids by herself. She was a strong, wonderful lady to keep going.”
Throughout Brumfield’s life, the story of Carraway’s loss was retold at family reunions and funerals, poignantly memorialized by a bloodstained handkerchief and a telltale pig tusk.
“I saw my grandfather’s blood many times on the tourniquet rag that my grandmother kept. She later gave it to my momma, Lou Essie. It’s still in the family.”
And the tusk? “I’ve handled the tush (or tusk) that killed my grandfather,” Brumfield adds. “It’s the same tush that killed him when the wild hog ran between his legs. It’s plenty big and is also still in the family.”
Carraway was buried at Cane Cemetery, deep in the woods of Franklin County. His tombstone epitaph: Hardy B. Carraway; Husband of Susie Laird Carraway; Mar. 6, 1875 — Oct. 26, 1920; An Honest Man Is The Noblest Work Of God.
Fifty-eight years following her husband’s death, Susie died in 1978—100 years old—and was buried at Mt. Zion Cemetery—a stone’s throw away from her husband. “She wasn’t buried in the same cemetery as Hardy because there was no way to get the hearse up the road to Cane Cemetery,” Brumfield explains.
Even 104 years after Carraway’s great misfortune, Brumfield holds tight to the memories of a grandfather she never knew. “I’ve held the handkerchief. I’ve seen the blood. I’ve held the tush that did the cutting. I’m 96, but I still always think about what happened when my grandfather was killed by a wild hog. His name was Hardy Bryant Carraway and he is still loved by his family.”
For more articles from Chris Bennett (cbennett@farmjournal.com or 662-592-1106), see:
Corn and Cocaine: Roger Reaves and the Most Incredible Farm Story Never Told
American Gothic: Farm Couple Nailed In Massive $9M Crop Insurance Fraud
Priceless Pistol Found After Decades Lost in Farmhouse Attic
Cottonmouth Farmer: The Insane Tale of a Buck-Wild Scheme to Corner the Snake Venom Market
Power vs. Privacy: Landowner Sues Game Wardens, Challenges Property Intrusion
Tractorcade: How an Epic Convoy and Legendary Farmer Army Shook Washington, D.C.
