Dear Friends of Hollywood Farms,
One of the most popular stories I ever heard our father tell was about the Hog Pen.
During World War II, Macon, Georgia became home to tens of thousands of soldiers training at Camp Wheeler before shipping overseas.
At its height, the camp housed nearly 20,000 men, and every one of them had to eat. That produced dump truck loads of kitchen waste, or what everybody called “slop,” every single day.
Our grandfather, Charles A. Duggan Sr., figured he had a dump truck and could help the Army solve a problem. So every day he hauled the slop back to the farm where, believe it or not, he fed it to as many as 4,000 feeder pigs in what became known as the Hog Pen.
The area covered about 50 acres and featured a 400-foot-long concrete trough built along the top of a hill, just wide enough for the dump truck to drive down and unload the feed.
After the war, Granddaddy turned the field into pasture for cattle. By the time I was seven or eight years old, I was quail hunting around the old barns and field edges with him. We would usually find three or four wild coveys every time we hunted there.
The trough eventually became a rusty graveyard for old equipment, but the name stuck. Everybody always called it “the Hog Pen,” and they still do today.
For about twenty years, the Hog Pen was planted in longleaf pine for pine straw production. It produced plenty of straw, but very few quail.
Then things changed.
We thinned the pines, started burning regularly, cleaned up years of debris, and let sunlight hit the ground again. Slowly, native grasses and natural cover returned. What had once been a dark pine plantation became beautiful longleaf pine quail woods.
Today, the Hog Pen is one of the most popular hunting areas on the farm.
To reach the clays courses at Doc’s Pond Shooting Ground, you drive right through it. We also use the Hog Pen for our simulated quail course during wingshooting instruction.
The truth is, you really need to see it in person to appreciate both the beauty and the history of the place.
For those of you who have already seen it, we hope you’ll come back soon.
For those who haven’t, what are you waiting for?
The season is only a little more than four months away.
We hope you’ll come visit our grandfather’s home, enjoy the incredible food and first-class Southern hospitality at Hollywood Farms, and hear a few more stories that make this place so special.
Warmly,
Chuck Duggan & The Hollywood Farms Team