I was able to team up with Glenn and Michellle Guess of Hog Zombies for the evening and we headed up into Montague County to see what we could find. We were on the first property of the evening when we topped a hill and Glenn spotted some hogs. We got out of the vehicle and I started scanning the area. Glenn tapped me and suggested we move a lot closer and so we headed down the hill toward the hogs. Michelle and I set up about 20 yards apart with Glenn coordinating things. I was told to go ahead and take the first hog and that was when Michelle was to followup with running hogs, but she never did and this first set was mine.
All the hogs shot were sows. First hog was DRT. As the hogs scattered, caught the second hog in the right shoulder as it approached quartered toward me. It changed directions and started running across my field of view. As it ran in front of me, dropped it with a second shot that exploded a bunch of the cheek teeth out of the left side of its mouth with a through a through shot - a bit too much lead. That showed up pretty well in the video.
Two more hogs ran by the 2nd downed hog and I had trouble staying on them as I had pivoted around on the bipod shooting sticks and ran into one of the legs. As I finally started to track the third hog, it suddenly changed direction after it flushed some birds from the ground that scared the sow. This is where Angry Bird's influence is finally starting to pay off. And then the sow came to a stop and provided a nice profile shot. I was way too jacked up on adrenaline by this point and my mind screaming like the dinosaur wrangler from Jurassic Park to "Shoot it!" I placed the shot in her shoulder instead of the head or neck where it should have gone. No surprise as she also ran despite the Hornady SST 123 gr round entering at the arm pit, traveling across the chest while leaving behind a racquetball-sized cavity in the center of the chest as it exited and broke the opposite leg, but the hog ran. The second shot did not have enough lead and the hog was center punched. Combined with the first shot, the hog started to slow and the third shot took it higher through both shoulders.
While I shot the number 3 sow, the other hog running with her disappeared off to my right. I heard Glenn loudly whisper to look out as a hog was headed my way. As I focused on shooting the 3rd sow, I heard the hooves of the 4th hog thrumming the ground as it ran by me. I would like to think that I was cool under pressure and was able to remain on target but in reality it was probably just a simple matter of target fixation, LOL. I have no idea where that hog went after it ran by.
While the hogs started off at about 60-80 yards distant, the first hog was shot at about 60 yards, the second hog shot as close as 40 yards, and the furthest shot on the third hog was at ~80 yards.
Getting into a sounder like this gave me reason to appreciate the Picture in Picture (PiP) mode of the Pulsar Apex XD50 scope. The digitally zoomed 4x PiP allowed for more precise aiming on the first target when additional field of view (FOV) was not necessary. However, once the hogs started to scatter, the wide FOV was much more useful for spotting, tracking, and targeting running hogs. It is a neat feature. When folks discuss scope features, you will often read folks talking about wanting a more narrow FOV for X reason or a wider FOV for X reason. This scope gives you the opportunity to run both simultaneously, but it takes some getting used to using.
This time I ran the scope in white hot mode. I did not like it as well as running black hot.
The three sows ranged in weight from about 110 to 140 lbs.
At the next property, Michelle landed a big 240 lb. boar (sorry, no vid). We spotted hogs one more time that evening and despite our best efforts to get to them, they got away. Four hogs in total. Not a bad evening.
