For most of recorded history, darkness has provided concealment to the hunted. Night vision and thermal technologies changed all that. The commercial market is seeing an explosion in availability and innovation of this type of gear. This has opened the door to some serious game changers in Special Hog Weapons And Tactics™ hunts. If you read my story, "East Texas Nights," you know that we recently had the opportunity to test drive some night hunting gear at the Wild Hog Roundup put on by Wulf Outdoor Sports in East Texas. This is my After Action Report focused on the tools we used to see in the dark. They range from the entry level Nite Hunter to a $15K thermal device.
The book Use Enough Gun by famous African professional hunter Robert Ruark posed the question about how much gun was enough gun for cleanly taking big game. The same concept also applies to hunting game like wild hogs. When pressured, angered, cornered, or especially wounded, a wild pig can dose out all the thrill any hunter can handle. The choice of an effective pig rifle/cartridge has to be made with serious attention to the natural meanness of this particular tusk laden target. Most experienced hog hunters will tell you to forget those long barreled elk and moose rifles with 24-inch tubes. They are too cumbersome to move quickly in hog habitat which is usually thick, vine laden cover. You need a rifle that is quick to point, and easy to move around in close, tight situations.
I’m often asked, how do I know if there are hogs in my hunting area? Well hogs leave tell tale sign, and often lots of it. Depending upon the terrain, you may have to go looking for it. In this article, I'm going to give you a brief overview of what to look for to determine if you do if fact have a huntable population of hogs in your area. I've included plenty of pictures from my own scouting.
But, before we go on, I must mention a few things on suitable hog habitat. Basically, in order for there to be resident hogs in an area you MUST have water, cover and food. Leave out any one of these and you won’t have resident hogs.
SHWAT™ founders Jonathan and Stephen attended the First Annual Silencers are Legal Shoot in Dallas on Saturday April 28th. Seen at the event: everything from revolvers (really) to HK 45s, from MP5-SDs to super quiet bolt guns. Of course, the ubiquitous .223 & .300 Blackout ARs were everywhere. Even a .50 BMG rifle and M249 SAW were present. Intended as an educational and outreach as well as a fun event, it was a great success. Attendees were having a blast and finding out just what “silencers” are all about. This story is full of great pictures and video you don’t want to miss. You will probably want one of everything you see...
The first official East Texas hunt for the SHWAT™ Team was an exciting success! We were well equipped with a wide variety of some of the best gear available and had good land to hunt on. Our kit included prototypes of new Laser Devices NV gear, Nitehog NV and thermal optics, EOTech, and much more. It's all part of the tactical hog hunting fun!
SHWAT™ fielded a team at the Wulf Outdoor Sports Wild Hog Roundup, and I'm pleased to tell you that the gear, guns and even the hogs cooperated nicely. You'll have to read the rest of the story to get the details and the final score, but I think you'll like how it goes.
Regular visitors to SHWAT™ will know that I am a big fan of the ammunition made by Dynamic Research Technologies or DRT. My first experience with this fine ammo came last November in Oklahoma, when I used DRT’s 79 grain Terminal Shock in .223 to take down a 210 pound wild boar—with a single shot to the ribcage. Impressive! The non-lead, penetrating frangible DRT bullet is designed to punch through hard material like bone and hogshields ("penetrating"), and then essentially explode into the soft tissue beyond (frangible), completely dispersing all its terminal energy and knockdown power within the hog. There's a picture of a gel block you want to see inside this article that shows the would channels for the .308 and .223 DRT ammo.
Recently, while on a hog hunt in East Texas, I had the chance to use DRT’s .308 Winchester, a 125 grain boat-tailed hollow point, and the results were devastating. I was night hunting...
“I was walking by a creek the other weekend when all of a sudden I started noticing all the fresh sign around me. I was just thinking to myself there has to be some hogs close by. It wasn’t two seconds later when two huge boars I estimated at 300 pounds apiece jumped up about ten feet in front of me. I never even saw them coming. Talk about tactical hog hunting,” said Jason Pope of Madison, MS.The wild pig situation in Mississippi is reaching critical mass, with emphasis on mass. Tactical hog hunters should take note. What made pigs so ideal for domestication is what makes them a problem in the wild.
CENTER, East Texas, April 16, 2012: This is Day Six of the Wild Hog Roundup, in Shelby County and throughout much of East Texas, and hunters, trappers, and dog hunters have brought in 364 feral hogs as of 9:30 this morning. Sponsored by Wulf Outdoor Sports, the top outdoors retailer in East Texas, the Wild Hog Roundup is offering $28,000 in cash prizes in a variety of hog hunting categories, and local hunters are responding. For example, one team brought in a trailer load of 58 hogs! Read on for details and pictures. SHWAT is here, too, with this writer, SHWAT Team Member Brian McCombie. I will be joined by SHWAT co-founders Jonathan and Stephen Owen later this week. We'll be bringing a tactical focus to the Roundup, hunting with a variety of AR rifles, night and traditional optics, and even suppressors...
Whew, what a hog hunt I had last night and on into this morning! I spotted three hogs at the SW corner feeder, close to last light. All three hogs were in the mud, a third of the way up their bodies, so it was impossible to sex them or properly judge them for size. A deer passing through solved that problem for me. The last light was fading. I shouldered my Trijicon topped .458 SOCOM AR. You'll want to read the rest of this - it's worth it - but in short order, now it's dark and I have a roughly 200 pound wounded boar to find in the really thick and nasty stuff all hogs love! I had to name this hog "Terminator" the next day. You'll understand shortly.
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