We started out the night around 9 pm and started the normal routine. We got the hunters familiar with the equipment and got the normal "oooos" and "aaaaahhhhs" out of the hunters when they looked through the night vision for the first time. I love taking someone who has never seen generation three night vision. They are just astounded by how much they can see in the dark.
We drove to our first property and we spotted something moving about 900-1000 yards away across a huge plowed field. We watched it for a while and I couldn't quite tell if it was deer or hogs so we started the walk across the sandy and soft plowed dirt. We cut the distance in half and the somethings that I thought were hogs turned out to be 15 deer running around like idiots! The landowner is going to have an awesome deer season. He has deer running everywhere!
We moved to the next property and spotted a huge black blob out in a field all alone. Unfortunately this was in a field we could not shoot in. We watched it for a minute and I could tell this was one of the biggest boars I have ever seen in my area. I thought it was a cow at first, but there were not any other cows to be seen in the field. It was one, lone, gigantic boar just feeding away in a field and we couldn't touch him! Hopefully he will cross the road into the gauntlet when the pecans start falling in a couple of weeks.
We continued our pattern and didn't see much. We drove to a dead end and spotted some hogs in another field we couldn't shoot in. We watched them for a little bit in hopes of them crossing the fence line, but after 30 minutes they never moved over. So we started to drive back down the road to check the last field we had before we started the loop over. PIGS!!!
However, the wind was all wrong. So I turned the truck around and drove the nearly 2 mile loop to get the wind right. We made the stalk with the wind in our face and the hogs feeding our way. We closed the 700+ yard gap to about 50 yards and got everyone setup. The 48 hogs didn't have a clue about the death that awaited them in the dark as they crunched away on the leftover pecans.
I setup the iphone to record while Dave and the clients lined up for the shots. 3,2,1, BOOM! Hogs start scrambling in the mayhem trying to figure out which way to run. Some of them ran directly to us and we could hear the hoof beats pound the hard packed dirt. The hunters hammered one about 20 yards to our right and it let out a long squeal. I was using an IR laser to spot hogs for the hunters and calling out shots and it worked really well. They ended up with 6 hogs for the night and gigantic smiles.
Lots of different colors in this sounder.
Yes that is masking tape on the gun on the left. The barrel is shiny stainless steel and was creating a glare with the IR light. A field expedient fix was masking tape. The barrel is getting a nice flat black paint job this week.
We drove to our first property and we spotted something moving about 900-1000 yards away across a huge plowed field. We watched it for a while and I couldn't quite tell if it was deer or hogs so we started the walk across the sandy and soft plowed dirt. We cut the distance in half and the somethings that I thought were hogs turned out to be 15 deer running around like idiots! The landowner is going to have an awesome deer season. He has deer running everywhere!
We moved to the next property and spotted a huge black blob out in a field all alone. Unfortunately this was in a field we could not shoot in. We watched it for a minute and I could tell this was one of the biggest boars I have ever seen in my area. I thought it was a cow at first, but there were not any other cows to be seen in the field. It was one, lone, gigantic boar just feeding away in a field and we couldn't touch him! Hopefully he will cross the road into the gauntlet when the pecans start falling in a couple of weeks.
We continued our pattern and didn't see much. We drove to a dead end and spotted some hogs in another field we couldn't shoot in. We watched them for a little bit in hopes of them crossing the fence line, but after 30 minutes they never moved over. So we started to drive back down the road to check the last field we had before we started the loop over. PIGS!!!
However, the wind was all wrong. So I turned the truck around and drove the nearly 2 mile loop to get the wind right. We made the stalk with the wind in our face and the hogs feeding our way. We closed the 700+ yard gap to about 50 yards and got everyone setup. The 48 hogs didn't have a clue about the death that awaited them in the dark as they crunched away on the leftover pecans.
I setup the iphone to record while Dave and the clients lined up for the shots. 3,2,1, BOOM! Hogs start scrambling in the mayhem trying to figure out which way to run. Some of them ran directly to us and we could hear the hoof beats pound the hard packed dirt. The hunters hammered one about 20 yards to our right and it let out a long squeal. I was using an IR laser to spot hogs for the hunters and calling out shots and it worked really well. They ended up with 6 hogs for the night and gigantic smiles.
Lots of different colors in this sounder.
Yes that is masking tape on the gun on the left. The barrel is shiny stainless steel and was creating a glare with the IR light. A field expedient fix was masking tape. The barrel is getting a nice flat black paint job this week.
