Grit won’t be a concern for Cowboys’ Owens
STILLWATER — Jarrell Owens took the con- tact from the hardcharging big body, hitting the ground but hustling to his feet.
To this day, he never has admitted to having been hit that night much less having been hurt — even though he spent the rest of the evening walking around with a limp. He wasn’t about to let that hog get the best of him.
And hog isn’t some sort of slang.
The Oklahoma State defensive end is an avid hunter of wild hogs. Growing up, he learned
how to go into the piney woods of East Texas near his home in Palestine, find the beasts with the help of a couple dogs, then capture the hogs with his bare hands.
You read right — bare hands.
“I shock people a lot when I talk about it,” he said.
As the Cowboys fill the void left by departing defensive ends Emmanuel Ogbah and Jimmy Bean, there are questions about the replacements. Are they ready to be more than reserves doing spot duty? Are they able to play lots of snaps, handle the pressure and help win games?
Even with those uncertainties, one thing no one has to question is Jarrell Owens’ grit. The redshirt sophomore who’s been tabbed the next Ogbah will grab wild hogs by the hind legs, wrestle them to the ground, then tie their legs while they flail around. He thinks it’s grand fun. “That’s like one of his hobbies,” fellow defensive lineman and roommate Vincent Taylor said. “Like how we play Xbox, one of his hobbies is hunting hogs.”
Owens was introduced to hog hunting by his older brother, Jalon, who hunted from a young age. Even though Palestine isn’t a big city — population, 18,617 — Jalon knew that there were plenty of ways for teenage boys to get in trouble. He kept Jarrell (pronounced juh-RELL) with him as much as possible, and when Jalon had free time, they went hog hunting.
Though Jarrell didn’t exactly love it right away.
The first time Jarrell went hunting, Jalon and his son took their dogs while Jarrell went with a buddy of theirs. After a bit, Jalon heard the other dogs barking, so he went to see what they’d cornered. Instead, a herd of 20 or 30 hogs came charging out of the trees.
Jarrell and the buddy had to scramble up a couple pine trees to avoid the stampede.
“His first time wasn’t a great experience,” Jalon said, chuckling. “But we caught a few.”
It was the first of hundreds for Jarrell.
Since then, Owens has come to love hog hunting. The animals are pests in East Texas; they can root up entire crop fields, home gardens or yards. While some folks think they are killed only from the air — footage of hunters shooting hogs from low-flying helicopters is easily found on YouTube — most of the hunting is done from the ground.
“You’ve got a catch dog and a bay dog,” Owens explained. “The bay dog is the dog that goes out and finds ‘em and keeps ‘em in one spot because the hog will run from anything. Once the hog is bayed, you turn the catch dog loose, and he goes in and grabs the hog.”
Then comes the part that Owens loves most.
“We’ve got to go in and grab the hog,” Owens said smiling. “An adrenaline rush.”
Once he has a hog by the hind legs, he flips it over and hogties it. The right back leg is crisscrossed with the left front leg and tied together, then the left back and right front are brought together and tied in with the first two.
Then, the hogs go in a wagon behind the fourwheeler.
“We don’t shoot ‘em,” Jalon said. “We bring ‘em out live.”
Provided all goes as planned.
The biggest hog Jarrell ever got weighed over 300 pounds. It was ripping up lots of property, and a landowner called Jalon looking for someone to take care of it. Jalon was working, so Jarrell and some friends went out to get it.
Before they did, the hog killed four of their dogs. That hog, they shot. But for the most part, the Owens brothers enjoy the thrill of the chase, of not knowing what they’ll find or what they’ll need to do to get the animal tied up.
“Me, I’m competitive,” Jalon said. “My brother, he’s competitive. If there’s a group of us ... I like the excitement of me and my dogs getting one.”
That competitiveness and toughness was one of the things that drew OSU to Jarrell. Even though he primarily played running back in high school — the position played at Palestine High once upon a time by Adrian Peterson — Cowboy defensive coordinator Glenn Spencer wasn’t afraid to recruit Owens to play defensive end.
“Because you see the athleticism,” Spencer said of the now 6-foot-3, 270pound Owens. “You see the size and the athleticism.”
The grit, too.
“Tough kid,” Spencer said. “Never have doubted that a bit. He’s not a guy that avoids contact.”
Mammoth offensive linemen don’t seem all that scary when you’ve gone nose-to-snout with hundreds of wild hogs.
Which brings us back to that one run-in that got Owens run over.
Jalon, who says he’s never been injured while hog hunting, remembers that Jarrell had just gotten a new dog. The younger Owens was still training it and teaching it what to do on a hunt, and even though Jarrell has never admitted to a hog charging and knocking him down, Jalon heard and saw the aftermath.
Not that it slowed Jarrell Owens.
Nothing does. Not hunting hogs. Not playing football.
“He’s dedicated to whatever he’s doing,” his older brother said. “I feel like he’ll do good this year. I feel like he’ll do real good.
“Whatever they need him to do, he’s gonna do it.”