I hunted a 'sort of' new spot over the recent weekend. It's 'sort of' new because I hunted the property next to it a few times in June & July. This field belongs to my wife's family and was planted in sorghum, which was harvested the weekend before this hunt. The guy who harvested it said there was considerable hog damage, and I figured there would be grain scattered around that might still attract hogs. I set up at sundown in hopes of seeing a few.
Here's the view of the field. The tree line on the left is on a line going SSW:
The wind was forecast to be SSE, so I set up in the NE corner of the field. It gave me a pretty good view of the area. I thought the hogs would probably come in just slightly south of me, from the east through the tree line. There are some houses farther up to the left of the photo above (on the east side of the field), so I didn't want to set up in the NW corner because that might have me shooting in their direction.
Here's my set up. I sat in a chair in the bed of my truck to get a slightly elevated viewing position:
I saw a lot of deer. There were deer in the field constantly from sundown until I finally saw hogs a little after 2AM Sunday morning. The hogs actually came in from the NW corner, which made me happy I hadn't set up there. I had noticed something at the far south end of the field around 1AM. There were some deer, but something else somewhat away from them that I couldn't identify. I figured I had nothing better to do than to go check it out, so I started walking. It took close to a half hour to get to the south end, and by then whatever I'd seen had disappeared. I stayed a little while in case it or something else interesting showed, but started my return journey a little after 1:30AM. A little after 2AM I was almost back to my truck when I stopped to take a look around. I saw some "new players" on the field which I recognized as hogs. It was a sounder consisting of two large sows and roughly a dozen piglets. They were across the field from me and a little out of my comfortable shooting range, so I started moving toward them. The moon was full, and behind me, so I was concerned that I'd be spotted if I got too close. I stopped twice to make sure they hadn't seen me, and eventually got to within what I estimated to be perhaps just over 100 yards. I would have liked to have gone closer but with the bright moon high overhead I figured I'd better shoot before they got wise.
I doubt that these hogs had ever been hunted before, or not much. The area is a combination of small farms and occasional residences, and I doubt that the hogs get much pressure. I guessed that once I started shooting they'd run back the way they came. Instead they ran forward and toward the middle of the field, which gave me the opportunity to keep shooting. My initial shot dropped one of the large sows.
She weighed 190 Lbs and went down with one shot through the shoulders.
I recovered the bullet. It was a 110 grain Hornady SP which was lodged in the fat just under the skin on the far side. It penetrated both shoulders. I'm shooting a 300 Blackout with a home made (Form 1) suppressor.
Weight retention was just over 86 grains, or about 78%.
Once the first sow went down, I took aim at the second large hog. It turned out to be an even larger sow weighing about 220 Lbs (estimated). She actually made it across the fence onto the neighbor's property, but only barely. I wasn't inclined to crawl through the wet grass to go under the fence, so I just took a photo from where I stood. I've hunted this neighbor's land before, and he said it's all right to just leave dead hogs where they lay. I texted him after dawn alerting him that he might be seeing buzzard activity near his fence. He had no problems & was happy to have a few more hogs gone from the area.
After taking the above photo I re-scanned the field and saw that the piglets hadn't completely left the area. They wandered around, and eventually came close enough for me to get a shot. They weren't as small as I had expected. I killed a 90 Lb male shoat with a shot through both shoulders to bring the nightly total to three hogs down. I failed to get a photo of the shoat, however. Y'all are just gonna have to take my word for it!
