By Joel van der Veen
DAVIDSON — Pigs might not fly, but as Stuart Morrison can attest, they can at least run pretty darn fast.
Morrison spotted a pair of wild boar while driving on a grid road towards Simpson on Dec. 22.
He said he was about 15 miles east and five miles north of Davidson when he saw the two animals.
“I seen these things coming across the field,” he said. “I thought they looked like bears to begin with.”
He stopped his truck, hoping to take some pictures of the critters, but they went hog wild, running off in the opposite direction.
Morrison followed them briefly, snapping three photos.
“They were running pretty fast,” he recalled, adding that they appeared to be headed toward an open grain bag.
He said he’d never spotted a wild boar before, though he’d heard reports about them.
He has spoken to several hunters since then, who told him that there is a small wild boar population in a ravine in that area.
Some have spotted the animals’ tracks while others have reported hearing them.
Morrison said lots of people have reached out to him since the sighting, asking for the photos or the location.
“They created a lot more interest than I thought they would,” he said. “It is something you don’t see everyday.”
Wild boar, native to Europe and Asia, were introduced to Saskatchewan through a agriculture diversification initiative in the 1990s, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.
An unknown number of these animals escaped and survived, adapting to Prairie conditions and eventually establishing themselves in the wild.