My neighbor, Ken, and I decided to see if we could surprise these guys and opted to work different parts of the property while we were both there, but being sure to cover the area where the hogs were frequenting. Ken covered that area first for a few hours and I arrived late and sat elsewhere until he sent me a note saying that he was done for the evening. So I headed over to the stand that Ken had vacated.
I probably had not been in the stand 5 minutes when I started hearing a lot of noise coming from the pasture across the creek. There were no grunts or other pig noises, just the sounds of animals moving through vegetation. It took a couple of minutes for me to find the origin of the sound with my thermal scope, mostly because of the vegetation, but I spotted a pig. Cool! Then there were three, then six, and finally at least nine. Even cooler!
So I was in a tripod stand on the opposite bank of a creek from the hogs with a lot of trees, shrubs, and briar between us. I could see them on thermal, but not with night vision. So I had to wait for the hogs to break through the vegetative curtain. During the time, the winds were supposed to be out of the north, but in the stand where I was, the winds felt like they were more out of the south. The hogs were to my northwest and so it wasn't an immediate problem, but they were coming toward me and depending on which side they tried to pass me, I might be winded by them.
As they come toward me through the vegetation, they are still very quiet and not talking amongst themselves. With the night vision, I would catch glimpses of them from time to time, but never well enough for a shot and things were starting to be problematic. It looked like the hogs were going to try to pass me on both the north and south sides. I was going to be screwed by the breeze. So instead of waiting in hopes of the hogs making it out into the open as a group, I started searching for one to shoot before getting winded. As can be seen in the video, I came up with two that were close together and viable. One was completely out in the open until I got my sights on him and he ducked behind a tree. That left the secondary target that I shot through a good bit of briar and such. Approximately 20 minutes had lapses since I first started hearing the hogs until when I took the shot.
Wonderful terminal ballistics! The shot entered behind the ear and while the hog did not appear to be quartered away from me when I shot, the bullet entered and proceeded forward into the brain cavity. Brain matter squirted out of the boar's left ear, which was really weird. I did not find an exit wound. I used a twig to probe the entry and to determine the bullet's path.
The little boar weighed about 78 lbs. The shot was approximate 40 yards. This was kill #6 for the new Grendel upper and #4 for the new Pulsar N750 Digisight. I am also quite pleased with my new T20 IR illuminator.
Angry Bird was still drunk from the eggnog and so was not allowed to hunt this evening. Walmart was closed and I will have to get cookies in the morning, as if the kids need anymore cookies after today, LOL.
