Mess with the boar, you get the tusks. Don’t mess with the boar? You still get the tusks.
These snowboarders at a ski resort in Myoko, Japan were just trying to mind their own business when a wild boar with an apparent anger issue singled them out. If you ask me, shredding the slopes is challenging and dangerous enough as it is. There’s no need to complicate things even more by introducing wild animals to the mix.
When animals hit the slopes, they often unintentionally create some close calls. We’ve seen plenty of examples of bears running out in front of skiers, and there’s even a viral clip from a couple of years ago of a skier colliding with – and killing – a deer that darted out in front of him.
The guy threw it over his shoulders and rode down the mountain with it… it was pretty cool.
The animal causing issues in this video (which is a couple of years old now) below happens to be a feral hog. Just as wild boars are an invasive species here in the United States, and cause many problems like extensive crop damage, Japan also has a massive problem with the feral hogs. And as hunting has declined in Japan, the boar population has continued to grow, which has led to more and more dangerous encounters with humans like the one you’ll see in the video below.
I’ve never snowboarded myself, but I do have knowledge on how difficult it can be to get your feet strapped in (and eventually unclipped) from the board. The person in this video that got the worst of the boar’s unprovoked attack had their legs knocked out from underneath them in the clip, which wasn’t all that hard for the boar to do… since the boarder’s feet were still clipped in.
And some people were upset that the snowboarder started using their board to defend themself. Why wouldn’t they? I’m sure we’d all be shifting our snowboard to attack mode if we got knocked on the ground by a wild animal. I don’t see anything wrong with giving the boar a couple of boops on the noggin in an act of self defense.
Take a look:
As you can see, the board defense against the wild board ended up encouraging the invasive animal to run away. Did it probably just run off to some other snowboarder or skier to terrorize them? Can’t confirm that, but it’s not out of the cards. These wild boars are a problem in basically every environment they call home. They are only native to Asia, parts of North America, and Europe… yet they live on every continent with the exception of Antarctica.
Wild boars, as a problematic nuisance, are no laughing matter. The comments below the video that you just watched? They are very much a laughing matter:
“They don’t call Snow-BOAR-ding for nothing.”
“Bro woke up and chose violence.”
“I’d be scared for my life.”
“Classic powder pig, running into everyone.”
“That’s dinner running away… not on my watch.”
Funny thing about that last comment… they weren’t the only ones that replied with something along the lines of “turn that boar into bacon.” There were plenty of gifs in the replies of pigs roasting on a fire, and someone even said the video made them in the mood for a BLT.
And there’s some truth to that category of commentary. In some places in the world, wild boar is considered a delicacy, and some suggest it has more flavor -albeit it a little gamey – than your run-of-the-mill pork. So maybe someone near the lodge chased it down for a fresh “BBQ night?”
