DaveABQ
Albuquerque, NM
For he most part it was a slow week. Hogs all over the camera's, but just not coming in where I was sitting. I had the wind right, but on some of the locations they can come in from 360 degrees.
I did connect on a couple of boars. One night in the blind I was sitting I spotting a large hog, assuming a boar, judging by the thermal it had to be close to a 300 pound hog, by the time I got the Armasight Zeus on him he had moved in to the thicker brush and I couldn't get off a shot. I assumed it would come to the feeder, but it never did. About an hour and a half later this 176 pound boar came in to the feeder. One shot from the 12.5" 6.8 shooting 120gr SST handloads and it was down:
On another night I was sitting in really open country with a bunch of large ravines with a feeder near the bottom of one. I thought I would see anything approaching from a long ways out, wrong. As Brian stated to me, they 'teleport' to the feeder lol. Anyways, looked through the Thermal-Eye monocular and see a hog at the feeder, by the time I got the gun up it was already walking away and about to disappear, apparently there wasn't any more corn on the ground. I had to hurry to make the shot, didn't have time to flip on the DVR to record the action.
Boar weighed 115 pounds:
Normally I use my Otter Super Express ATV trailer to load the hogs as it has a tilt bed, but after I located the hog which was about 20 yards away from where I shot him, I decided to load him on the ATV, well not the conventional way, which would be on the rack, but stuffed him on the footwell, worked pretty good lol.
Was still a good time. I did take a couple coyotes out in the field near camp one morning with the Zeus. I also had a whole group of hogs behind camp one morning. I tried to get in on them with the thermal scope and they went in to some Johnson grass over 6' tall, I went back to camp and grabbed a .223 Wylde with a red dot scope as trying to use a 5x thermal scope at possible very short distances wouldn't be good. They bedded in the grass and there was no way I was going in after them lol.
I did connect on a couple of boars. One night in the blind I was sitting I spotting a large hog, assuming a boar, judging by the thermal it had to be close to a 300 pound hog, by the time I got the Armasight Zeus on him he had moved in to the thicker brush and I couldn't get off a shot. I assumed it would come to the feeder, but it never did. About an hour and a half later this 176 pound boar came in to the feeder. One shot from the 12.5" 6.8 shooting 120gr SST handloads and it was down:
On another night I was sitting in really open country with a bunch of large ravines with a feeder near the bottom of one. I thought I would see anything approaching from a long ways out, wrong. As Brian stated to me, they 'teleport' to the feeder lol. Anyways, looked through the Thermal-Eye monocular and see a hog at the feeder, by the time I got the gun up it was already walking away and about to disappear, apparently there wasn't any more corn on the ground. I had to hurry to make the shot, didn't have time to flip on the DVR to record the action.
Boar weighed 115 pounds:
Normally I use my Otter Super Express ATV trailer to load the hogs as it has a tilt bed, but after I located the hog which was about 20 yards away from where I shot him, I decided to load him on the ATV, well not the conventional way, which would be on the rack, but stuffed him on the footwell, worked pretty good lol.
Was still a good time. I did take a couple coyotes out in the field near camp one morning with the Zeus. I also had a whole group of hogs behind camp one morning. I tried to get in on them with the thermal scope and they went in to some Johnson grass over 6' tall, I went back to camp and grabbed a .223 Wylde with a red dot scope as trying to use a 5x thermal scope at possible very short distances wouldn't be good. They bedded in the grass and there was no way I was going in after them lol.
