DaveABQ
Albuquerque, NM
The lease owner has been bringing in paid hogs hunters almost every weekend and sometimes during the week making the hogs almost non-existent and scarce. While I was hunting, there was 9 hunters for 3 of the 5 days I hunted.
So on this first boar, I found out that changing my powder charge by .5 grain 'probably' resulted in some poor impacts. I was at max pressure, actually too much as the primers were completely flattened and sometimes getting pierced primers, so I backed off by .5 grain which resulted in much better looking primers. I wouldn't have thought that the .5 grain change would have resulted in the difference, but as you'll see in the slow motion of this first hog, the crosshairs should have blow the back of his head off or close to it, but the impact was 2" low and there was no room for error with the angle and the shot placement. Should have been a little higher on the first shot, but if impacted where I aimed, should have dropped.
This boar was 120 pounds, I forgot take pictures, but I did a complete skinning and autopsy of this hog, the second shot entered behind the ribs and in to the chest cavity completely exploding everything with the 120 SST's out of my 12.5" 6.8 and the hog still ran 30 yards. First shot at 70 yards, second at about 85 yards:
Then, the last night there, I finally did it, I forgot to hit record. I was going to pull a Brian and just whack the hog instead of getting some video footage. The shot was like Brian's last video, quartered towards me, boom, hog starts running, but angled in my direction. First shot low again, dropped with second shot high in the back part of the neck.
This boar was 39" taped, around 190 pounds and had hair like a mammoth. Ugly beast for sure. When I walked over to find the hog, wasn't where I thought, It was thick stuff and I could hear it, I said screw that, went and got the ATV and drove in there with it working my way through it, finally found the boar, not with the thermal, but with the lights of the ATV as it was down in a depression.
This is the Armasight Zeus, 3x, 640 scope. Should have backed up a few more steps to get perfect focus, but oh well. First finish shot was 'black hot', second was 'white hot'.
So on this first boar, I found out that changing my powder charge by .5 grain 'probably' resulted in some poor impacts. I was at max pressure, actually too much as the primers were completely flattened and sometimes getting pierced primers, so I backed off by .5 grain which resulted in much better looking primers. I wouldn't have thought that the .5 grain change would have resulted in the difference, but as you'll see in the slow motion of this first hog, the crosshairs should have blow the back of his head off or close to it, but the impact was 2" low and there was no room for error with the angle and the shot placement. Should have been a little higher on the first shot, but if impacted where I aimed, should have dropped.
This boar was 120 pounds, I forgot take pictures, but I did a complete skinning and autopsy of this hog, the second shot entered behind the ribs and in to the chest cavity completely exploding everything with the 120 SST's out of my 12.5" 6.8 and the hog still ran 30 yards. First shot at 70 yards, second at about 85 yards:
Then, the last night there, I finally did it, I forgot to hit record. I was going to pull a Brian and just whack the hog instead of getting some video footage. The shot was like Brian's last video, quartered towards me, boom, hog starts running, but angled in my direction. First shot low again, dropped with second shot high in the back part of the neck.
This boar was 39" taped, around 190 pounds and had hair like a mammoth. Ugly beast for sure. When I walked over to find the hog, wasn't where I thought, It was thick stuff and I could hear it, I said screw that, went and got the ATV and drove in there with it working my way through it, finally found the boar, not with the thermal, but with the lights of the ATV as it was down in a depression.
This is the Armasight Zeus, 3x, 640 scope. Should have backed up a few more steps to get perfect focus, but oh well. First finish shot was 'black hot', second was 'white hot'.
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