Went back down to Bosque County on Friday and got to hunt with one of the owners of the property. This was actually a lot of fun. He has been hunting there for decades, but never with night vision or thermal. So we swapped stories and I introduced him to thermal.
Henry carried the Pulsar Trail XP50 for spotting. I carried the Armasight Zeus, rifle, sticks, etc. After he was good with how his scope worked, we headed down to check the fields and spotted a hog in a side field after going less than 50 yards. This was the hog that Henry put down. We let it lay and continued down the fence/tree line, peering into the next field and spotted more hogs. Wind and direction were bad and so had to make a large loop around to come in behind them.
My first hog didn't go down and was lost. Second hog walked behind a piglet and I killed the piglet instead. Finally, I got her on the run.
I am not impressed with the ELD-M at this point, but the issue may be the shooting/circumstances and not the bullet performance, although I don't seem to have such issues with Hornady SST. Henry's first shot clipped the leg just below the chest and didn't enter the body. His second shot was low on the neck and just opened up the underneath side a bit and exited after about 4" of penetration. My first hog disappeared. Piglet found by buzzards (so no data). My runner was shot in the side of the face, long about the top of the jaw and exited under and forward of the eye ON THE SAME SIDE and then shot low on the chest, taking out the heart and breaking the front leg. So again, the sample is small and the results point to inconsistent performance.
Henry carried the Pulsar Trail XP50 for spotting. I carried the Armasight Zeus, rifle, sticks, etc. After he was good with how his scope worked, we headed down to check the fields and spotted a hog in a side field after going less than 50 yards. This was the hog that Henry put down. We let it lay and continued down the fence/tree line, peering into the next field and spotted more hogs. Wind and direction were bad and so had to make a large loop around to come in behind them.
My first hog didn't go down and was lost. Second hog walked behind a piglet and I killed the piglet instead. Finally, I got her on the run.
I am not impressed with the ELD-M at this point, but the issue may be the shooting/circumstances and not the bullet performance, although I don't seem to have such issues with Hornady SST. Henry's first shot clipped the leg just below the chest and didn't enter the body. His second shot was low on the neck and just opened up the underneath side a bit and exited after about 4" of penetration. My first hog disappeared. Piglet found by buzzards (so no data). My runner was shot in the side of the face, long about the top of the jaw and exited under and forward of the eye ON THE SAME SIDE and then shot low on the chest, taking out the heart and breaking the front leg. So again, the sample is small and the results point to inconsistent performance.
