The rains came while I was hunting in an exposed tripod stand and so I packed out. By the time I loaded up the truck, the rains had nearly stopped. So I decided to drive by a couple of places to look for hogs, but otherwise I was going home.
I drove by a property we call "Safe House" because it is a place where I can change out of my hunting clothes and it is where I process hog carcasses into skeletons. On the first pass by, it look like there were deer or hogs in the side yard. I turned around and drove back and there were definitely animals there and so I drove past the house and parked in the right-of-way and got out. With my handheld FLIR, it looked like hogs in high grass. With the Pulsar Apex XD50 on my rifle, I could plainly see hogs, but they weren't moving much and they weren't bothered by me stopping.
You can't hunt from the ROW and so I slowly stalked onto the property and part way up the driveway. Leaves crunched, gravel crunched, but the hogs didn't notice. I got as far as I felt was safe and took aim on the hog that presented the best target. I shot and squealing started and the scope went black!
There is a flood light in the yard and I watched one squealing hog run right in front of me and out into the pasture. All the other hogs were gone, disappearing into the shadows. I scanned for the squealing hog, but it was gone.
I figured out the battery compartment lid had not been closed properly and came loose during recoil. I reseated it and went to look to see if I had a downed hog or if the squealing hog was it. There was a downed hog, still kicking.
I used my weapon light to walk up on the hog and sometime during the approach, the scope came back on, and while I wasn't looking through it, it recorded part of the Curly Shuffle...out of focus.
For the life of me, I am not sure what happened, but I believe the hog down was a hog hit by through and through. Why the target hog didn't go down, I don't know.
The downed hog had 2 wounds. The first was a large hole in the left side of her head and the second was where the brain case had split up in front and ushered forth the cranial contents.
Initial searching did not uncover the other hog and the storms set in anew and so we went home.
Angry Bird and I will search for the other hog for Easter fun.
Most of the video is in real time, but I cut out about a minute of search time where there was nothing going on because I had not restarted the Pulsar. Sorry for the text-only section. It was pretty much how I felt at the time - dark.
Oh, and the shot was at about 40 yards and the sow came in at 40 lbs.
