Of all the weather conditions that affect hunting hogs, high winds seem to have the most negative impact on good hunting in my experience. The hogs just don't seem to be out and about as much. I have come to expect to come home empty handed when the winds are high, but once in a while, things turn out well despite the winds. We hunted a bunch of properties, but only saw hogs on three. Of the three, we got busted multiple times during the night on the same property, three of those times before even entering the field. The wind was not in our favor. The first time, I thought it was a fluke to have the hogs bolt with us over 250 yards away. We came back later and it happened again. So we tried different entry points on the last two attempts, but got the same result. We had no way to make entry from down wind.
One the first property where we got onto the hogs, we could drive in quite a ways behind a small hill and enter the pasture from down wind. With the high winds and lack of a moon, the hogs weren't going to hear us and weren't likely to see us. Heck, we couldn't hardly hear each other, LOL. On the second place where we got onto hogs, we could enter the property far enough west to circle around behind the hogs to come in down wind.
Another downside to the wind was getting buffeted while trying to shoot. On top of that, we were both shooting light 90 gr. Speer TNT bullets. My partner has been using them handloaded for a while and has been happy with how they perform. I was shooting Federal American Eagle factory loads which chrono'd @ 2800 fps from my rifle. At the distances we were shooting, they seemed to perform well. When shooting with a crosswind, well, that made things pretty challenging.
One the first property where we got onto the hogs, we could drive in quite a ways behind a small hill and enter the pasture from down wind. With the high winds and lack of a moon, the hogs weren't going to hear us and weren't likely to see us. Heck, we couldn't hardly hear each other, LOL. On the second place where we got onto hogs, we could enter the property far enough west to circle around behind the hogs to come in down wind.
Another downside to the wind was getting buffeted while trying to shoot. On top of that, we were both shooting light 90 gr. Speer TNT bullets. My partner has been using them handloaded for a while and has been happy with how they perform. I was shooting Federal American Eagle factory loads which chrono'd @ 2800 fps from my rifle. At the distances we were shooting, they seemed to perform well. When shooting with a crosswind, well, that made things pretty challenging.
