Double Naught Spy
Sus Venator
For the second time in several years, I managed to drag JohnKSa out to go hog hunting. The first time was a stand hunt using night vision and no hogs showed. Now, the situation has changed. I do hog control on several properties, gear has improved, and so the chances for success have improved. Even better, I got a call from one of my landowner's while en route saying hogs had hit his front yard on the previous night and that they had hit next door the previous two night. This speaks well for seeing some hogs.
We started off the evening with a range session so that he could get familiar with the gear being used. This was all done in daylight before the hunt with the thought that we didn't want to be wasting prime hunting time with orientation. He got to dry and live fire the rifle, verify zero, experience shooting off of shooting sticks and was satisfied he could put a round on target. Everything looked good to me.
We dined at the local Dairy Queen where we happened to meet a couple of local hunters and had a good time chatting about the various nuances of calibers and gear used for hog hunting and hunting hogs in the surrounding area. It wasn't quite dinner and a show, but it was perfect for burning most of the daylight we had left before starting our circuit of going property to property.
Very soon into our search, I spied a lone boar in one of my fields. We geared up and started our stalk that was only a couple hundred yards or so. The problem here was the orientation of the field and the wind direction. We were about directly up wind when we started and so I set a course paralleling the wind, but well lateral to the hog. We we had come far enough abreast, we turned and headed toward the hog, the wind now being a cross wind. At this point, we also were able to use a large tree to help shield our approach.
From behind the tree, I explained that we would move out to the side where we could see the hog, set up, and shoot. We moved out and set up on our sticks and that is when it because apparent that I had shortcutted John in my instruction on the thermal gear. Usually when I introduce people to thermal optics, it is in a dusk or dark setting. John received his instruction in daylight. Here is salient difference was that he could visually see the targets at the range with his unaided eye and he knew where to point the rifle and so had no problem finding the targets in the optic. So we pop out from this tree and set up and John doesn't immediately know where the hog is and has no experience trying to find his target in the B&W world of thermal imagery where everything looks a different. This sort of issue is normally worked out when the orientation is done in the dark {note to self}, and the best time to be learning this skill is not when one is in proximity of one's quarry.
So it took a couple of minutes of talking him onto the target, trying to orient him with ambiguous landmarks, none of which were amazingly distinctive in this field when looking through thermal. Once he said he had the target and I verified that we were both seeing the same thing, we were good to go. All the while, the hog continued nonchalantly grazing, unaware of our presence. So I started the countdown.
Countdowns don't always turn out well. They should go "3,2,1BANG" (how we do them), usually with some sort of verification that each shooter is ready and on target, first. Everybody screws up with countdowns sooner or later. I have jumped the count before and fired before 1 (most common issue). I have been there when a person fired on 3. I had a partner that when he would get really excited and was running the count, the countdown would be a count up instead of down. The funniest thing I have heard is when the counter jumps his own count, firing before reaching 1. My old partner took a guy out that was so excited that he started shooting when he was asked if he was ready. The saddest thing that seems to happen is when everyone is prompted and ready, the countdown happens, shooting happens, shooting stops, and somebody says, "I wasn't ready." Well, none of this was John. His first countdown and it was nearly perfect with me firing just a tad after him.
John placed his shot well. It punched through the humerus (breaking it), heart area, and exited the opposite side slightly higher up and a bit forward of the shoulder. My shot was behind the shoulder, through the spine area, exiting the opposite side. The hog dropped in place.
Good thing we got the one hog. We spent the entire night trying to find more hogs and came up empty handed on my properties. At one point, across the road from one of my properties, we spied in two sounders in a large field that, combined, had close to 100 hogs, but they never crossed the road to our side. And the phone call properties? Despite 5 visits to the properties over night, no hogs showed on either. Sometimes, that is just how it goes...
We started off the evening with a range session so that he could get familiar with the gear being used. This was all done in daylight before the hunt with the thought that we didn't want to be wasting prime hunting time with orientation. He got to dry and live fire the rifle, verify zero, experience shooting off of shooting sticks and was satisfied he could put a round on target. Everything looked good to me.
We dined at the local Dairy Queen where we happened to meet a couple of local hunters and had a good time chatting about the various nuances of calibers and gear used for hog hunting and hunting hogs in the surrounding area. It wasn't quite dinner and a show, but it was perfect for burning most of the daylight we had left before starting our circuit of going property to property.
Very soon into our search, I spied a lone boar in one of my fields. We geared up and started our stalk that was only a couple hundred yards or so. The problem here was the orientation of the field and the wind direction. We were about directly up wind when we started and so I set a course paralleling the wind, but well lateral to the hog. We we had come far enough abreast, we turned and headed toward the hog, the wind now being a cross wind. At this point, we also were able to use a large tree to help shield our approach.
From behind the tree, I explained that we would move out to the side where we could see the hog, set up, and shoot. We moved out and set up on our sticks and that is when it because apparent that I had shortcutted John in my instruction on the thermal gear. Usually when I introduce people to thermal optics, it is in a dusk or dark setting. John received his instruction in daylight. Here is salient difference was that he could visually see the targets at the range with his unaided eye and he knew where to point the rifle and so had no problem finding the targets in the optic. So we pop out from this tree and set up and John doesn't immediately know where the hog is and has no experience trying to find his target in the B&W world of thermal imagery where everything looks a different. This sort of issue is normally worked out when the orientation is done in the dark {note to self}, and the best time to be learning this skill is not when one is in proximity of one's quarry.
So it took a couple of minutes of talking him onto the target, trying to orient him with ambiguous landmarks, none of which were amazingly distinctive in this field when looking through thermal. Once he said he had the target and I verified that we were both seeing the same thing, we were good to go. All the while, the hog continued nonchalantly grazing, unaware of our presence. So I started the countdown.
Countdowns don't always turn out well. They should go "3,2,1BANG" (how we do them), usually with some sort of verification that each shooter is ready and on target, first. Everybody screws up with countdowns sooner or later. I have jumped the count before and fired before 1 (most common issue). I have been there when a person fired on 3. I had a partner that when he would get really excited and was running the count, the countdown would be a count up instead of down. The funniest thing I have heard is when the counter jumps his own count, firing before reaching 1. My old partner took a guy out that was so excited that he started shooting when he was asked if he was ready. The saddest thing that seems to happen is when everyone is prompted and ready, the countdown happens, shooting happens, shooting stops, and somebody says, "I wasn't ready." Well, none of this was John. His first countdown and it was nearly perfect with me firing just a tad after him.
John placed his shot well. It punched through the humerus (breaking it), heart area, and exited the opposite side slightly higher up and a bit forward of the shoulder. My shot was behind the shoulder, through the spine area, exiting the opposite side. The hog dropped in place.
Good thing we got the one hog. We spent the entire night trying to find more hogs and came up empty handed on my properties. At one point, across the road from one of my properties, we spied in two sounders in a large field that, combined, had close to 100 hogs, but they never crossed the road to our side. And the phone call properties? Despite 5 visits to the properties over night, no hogs showed on either. Sometimes, that is just how it goes...
Is he gonna EAT that pig?
