Massive Hogs!! Large Caliber help!!
12-01-2008, 02:21 PM
#1
Fork Horn
Thread Starter
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: Florida
Posts: 466
Massive Hogs!! Large Caliber help!!
Another day at the lease and the weather was windy. I took a new gent named David (Woods and Water) and Todd (T bare) up for some hunting. David stood me up last time like he had something better to do and Todd wanted to redeem himself for the deer fiasco last week. We got to the lease around two in the afternoon and my game cams told me the deer would soon be walking.
For those of you that do not own game cams they are a VERY useful tool in patterning a deer, especially the big bucks. I would never know that my swamp stand had a 10 point and a fourteen point in there and that they had switched to coming in around 9:30 to 10:30 in the morning. Like most hunters when it gets to be 9ish I get hungry. We would usually pull stakes and go get food and because of the cams I got my personal best buck a few weeks ago. I shot him at 9:45 a.m. Go get a game cam.
David wanted to shoot a buck or a hog so I put him in the swamp. Todd put up my first dedicated rifle stand and he wanted to sit in it to survey a larger area (it is 35 feet up), and I took the oaks. I sat there with a strong southwest wind blowing and watched a dillo dig till it was dark. Nothing, zip, nada came in. I walked out to meet the guys at the truck. They saw zip also. I think the wind made everything a tad nervous and they stayed under cover. It was a new moon and dark so Todd said “I bet they are down at the road feeder now”. I rack up my bow and grab the 30-06 and sneak down the road.
The neat thing about using a gun is that you do not have to be so close, but, like I said it was dark. Lucky for me I have a Trijicon scope. I think it is the neatest gimmick I have in my arsenal of tricks. 56mm bell, 30mm tube, and great glass. But the piece de resistance is the glow in the dark triangle. It is coated with Tritium which is a radioactive isotope that glows in the dark. This scope has accounted for LOTS of pork being put down. So I get near the feeder and can hear them chewing up the corn. I look through my scope and all I can see is a LARGE mass of black hogs standing in a herd. I had to wait while they milled about until one broke ranks from the pack. YOU LOSE and BANG shot in the head. The bad part is when it that dark you cannot tell the size of the hog and he went around 15 pounds. But he will fit nicely in a casserole dish. Walked him back to the truck and we parked to camp and clean him. The hunt the next morning was going to be GREAT!
WRONG!! We went into the stands with high hopes because NOTHING was moving the night before. I took the swamp, David the oaks, and Todd just knew that a buck was going to walk under his stand. We got nothing and I mean we even heard nothing. No squeals, no hog “barks”, and no deer running through. I did at least see something large and fairly white looking come slinking through but it was too dark to really tell what it was. Later that day I must have walked 15+ miles looking for sign and even the roads did not have many animals crossing. Everything went and hid that last week. David had to go home because he got a new baby and Todd and I stayed to hunt the evening because it just had to happen. We were sitting in the truck because it had just started to sprinkle when down the road comes a small herd of pigs. Both Todd and I jump out and begin the stalk. They had run into the side of the road but we closed the gap. They detected us and began to run back across the road and the fun begins. Let me just say that I am glad we 308’s and 30-06’s. As everyone knows when you shoot a massive boar that they have a shield that can stop anti tank rounds. They are also capable of demolishing large tracked vehicles (tanks) if you get them riled up enough and I was thankful we might be able to stop one of these beasties. As they came crashing through the underbrush Todd managed to plant a round just behind the left shoulder of a boar. With a mighty squeal it took a step forward and fell dead. A clean kill and one of his personal bests (see photo). We waited for the evening but nothing came in until dark and I did not want to clean any more hogs so we went home.
On a side note my game cams are showing the deer and hogs have become VERY jumpy. Normally you would just see them eating but now I have a LOT of pics of them jumping in the air as the cam goes off. More lessons learned.
For those of you that do not own game cams they are a VERY useful tool in patterning a deer, especially the big bucks. I would never know that my swamp stand had a 10 point and a fourteen point in there and that they had switched to coming in around 9:30 to 10:30 in the morning. Like most hunters when it gets to be 9ish I get hungry. We would usually pull stakes and go get food and because of the cams I got my personal best buck a few weeks ago. I shot him at 9:45 a.m. Go get a game cam.
David wanted to shoot a buck or a hog so I put him in the swamp. Todd put up my first dedicated rifle stand and he wanted to sit in it to survey a larger area (it is 35 feet up), and I took the oaks. I sat there with a strong southwest wind blowing and watched a dillo dig till it was dark. Nothing, zip, nada came in. I walked out to meet the guys at the truck. They saw zip also. I think the wind made everything a tad nervous and they stayed under cover. It was a new moon and dark so Todd said “I bet they are down at the road feeder now”. I rack up my bow and grab the 30-06 and sneak down the road.
The neat thing about using a gun is that you do not have to be so close, but, like I said it was dark. Lucky for me I have a Trijicon scope. I think it is the neatest gimmick I have in my arsenal of tricks. 56mm bell, 30mm tube, and great glass. But the piece de resistance is the glow in the dark triangle. It is coated with Tritium which is a radioactive isotope that glows in the dark. This scope has accounted for LOTS of pork being put down. So I get near the feeder and can hear them chewing up the corn. I look through my scope and all I can see is a LARGE mass of black hogs standing in a herd. I had to wait while they milled about until one broke ranks from the pack. YOU LOSE and BANG shot in the head. The bad part is when it that dark you cannot tell the size of the hog and he went around 15 pounds. But he will fit nicely in a casserole dish. Walked him back to the truck and we parked to camp and clean him. The hunt the next morning was going to be GREAT!
WRONG!! We went into the stands with high hopes because NOTHING was moving the night before. I took the swamp, David the oaks, and Todd just knew that a buck was going to walk under his stand. We got nothing and I mean we even heard nothing. No squeals, no hog “barks”, and no deer running through. I did at least see something large and fairly white looking come slinking through but it was too dark to really tell what it was. Later that day I must have walked 15+ miles looking for sign and even the roads did not have many animals crossing. Everything went and hid that last week. David had to go home because he got a new baby and Todd and I stayed to hunt the evening because it just had to happen. We were sitting in the truck because it had just started to sprinkle when down the road comes a small herd of pigs. Both Todd and I jump out and begin the stalk. They had run into the side of the road but we closed the gap. They detected us and began to run back across the road and the fun begins. Let me just say that I am glad we 308’s and 30-06’s. As everyone knows when you shoot a massive boar that they have a shield that can stop anti tank rounds. They are also capable of demolishing large tracked vehicles (tanks) if you get them riled up enough and I was thankful we might be able to stop one of these beasties. As they came crashing through the underbrush Todd managed to plant a round just behind the left shoulder of a boar. With a mighty squeal it took a step forward and fell dead. A clean kill and one of his personal bests (see photo). We waited for the evening but nothing came in until dark and I did not want to clean any more hogs so we went home.
On a side note my game cams are showing the deer and hogs have become VERY jumpy. Normally you would just see them eating but now I have a LOT of pics of them jumping in the air as the cam goes off. More lessons learned.
