TEXASLAWMAN
Lone Star Boars Owner
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My friends ranch in E Texas has been getting hit pretty hard by the hogs again so he bought a zeus 336 and asked me to come help him slay some hogs. Last thing he told me was the roads are pretty dry and we wont need to use your truck I want to try out my new hunting jeep, famous last words.
So I get to the ranch and he had to head back into Dallas for work so now I'm on my own nothing new but I had my street tires on the Land Cruiser and most of the place was flooded or had been recently flooded it was a slippery nasty mess. Turned into a driving hunting adventure, the roads were bad enough I did not dare get off of them, just walking I was sinking in the muck.
Friday night not even 5 minutes from the ranch house I spot my first group of hogs with the tall grass I knew it would be fast shooting so I took out the lead sow and one small boar that ran right at me. After that the rest had vanished into the grass.
Next up and the last hogs for Friday night was a small group of hogs. I wanted to time my first shot to get two if possible so I let two of the smaller ones line up and took my shot. Due to the thick vegetation I only got off two shots, first shot was successful in hitting two hogs. One goes down dead, the second runs off to the left but only made it 20-30 yards into the brush, found him the next day via buzzards. Second shot hits the biggest sow and she crashed just past the clearing as the scope shut off again due to me not closing the cap again doh! Later on that night I got a coyote feeding on her as a bonus.
Saturday day I got two small boars in the swamp but my gopro battery died so no video
Saturday night comes along and wouldn't you know it the same group from Friday night was back but this time they were mixed in with the cows. Now I had taken out the alpha sow the night before so all of them were pretty small and dumb. I watched them for about 30 minutes waiting for them to clear the cattle finally they started working toward me so I had to pick up and move over about 50 yards to get a safe shooting angle. Again knowing I would only have a few seconds to shoot I tried to get two with the first shot. The stars aligned and so do two of their heads pop, thud double head shots for another twofer! Then I managed to get four more in the five seconds before they made it to cover. Only found four did not realize I had hit six until when I reviewed the video later lol.
Finally spot another group in the pecan orchard but again the grass is so tall the tops of their backs is the only thing visible. They are pretty spread out so I decide to pick the one farthest from me in hopes they will run back to me and it worked! Band thud and the rest head back giving me good broad side shots. Four adult sows went down and several piglets, seems when I was firing into the piglet groups I was hitting more than one at a time! The image was pretty poor in the thermal I thought maybe the humidity had changed then I realized the lens cap was still mostly on. As I walked back to my truck I spot a small bunch that had regrouped so I took the lead one out but instead of running away they came right at me running on both sides of me only a few feet away! Only managed to get three out of that group.
All in all it was a great time and sloppy adventure, most of the hogs were small but the ranch hands took several for a BBQ so everyone but the hogs ended up happy!