I went postal on another group of feral hogs yesterday.

It was truly beautiful!  We had gone hunting with 3 guys and 7 dogs.  We had already caught one alive.  Roped and tied him.  Drug him 200 yards through the brush and tied him to a fencepost.  Left him along the pasture road so we could go hunt another.

Immediately (15 feet from where we were tying this hog) another hog got flushed by the dogs.  Amazing because we were standing and talking and the hogs were only scant feet from us!

The dogs gave chase but got sidetracked by a piglet in a thicket.  We kicked the hounds off the little squealer, but he had been severely injured.  We killed him to prevent him from dying as a cripple.

The dogs were already on ANOTHER trail.  We gave chase.  The dogs must have hit upon a large herd.  We ran, jogged, stomped through acres of woods.  The other two guys with me are a little older, and I was able to get out in front by several hundred yards.  

I was hoping to stay close to the dogs, since one had already been gored earlier in the hunt.  I figured there must be at least one bad boar in the herd.

I tried hard to keep up, but the dogs/hogs broke into the open pasture and were getting fainter.

As I emegered from the thicket/brushline, I saw three large, low shapes 200 yards ahead of me in a nearby thicket.  Three heavy hogs had apparently ditched the dogs and were attempting to sneak back into the large bottom.

I checked for cows, dogs because I was about to see what a 30 round magazine, an Aimpoint and a Bushmaster XM15 E2S with AK74 muzzle brake could do to hogs in the open.

Perfection, no cows, no dogs, hillside for a backstop.  

I opened fire.  The hogs kicked into high gear, but made a serious error.  In their surprise/confusion, they turned 90 degrees and were now crossing from my left to right back towards the thicket I was in.  This rapidly decreased their range from me.

Offhand, standing I was having the time of my life!  Put the dot in front and fire!  One went down, hard!

I adjusted on the lead hog and actually saw dust fly from impacts.  

Hogs are fast!  even though one was down, and the leader had taken hits, I decided to adjust onto the third mover.  

I fired several rounds before I got a hit, the hog stumbled, good enough.  With dogs handy I knew we would catch up to it.  

They were now in the thicket to my right.  I did not have a clear shot through the brush, so I called to my companions, "I shot three!  Two wounded heading for you!"

The lead hog tumbled over.  Succumbed to his wounds.

The leader tumbled within eyesight of the other two hunters.  The cripple ran/stumbled to the leader and stopped for an instant.

The angle was bad, so I did not make another shot.

I figured two down, one to go.

I took off after the cripple.  Hogs, even ones that are severely wounded can overcome their injuries and keep running.  This one did just that.  I tried several more snap shots through the trees but gave up and went back for the dogs.

I met up with my buddies and saw what I had shot.  The leader was the largest boar I had ever killed.  From the looks of him he would touch 300 lbs!

The other hunters had already field dressed him.
I told them I had tried to get the cripple but it had outrun me.

We went to the other down hog.  She was a sow, that would easily outweigh the boar!  She was huge (yes, I have pics I will post)

Her back was broken so we cut her throat.  Left her to bleed out and went after the cripple.

I turns out the cripple had stopped only a few hundred yards into the woods.  We got the dogs onto her and gave chase.  Amazing how they can run wounded.  

The dogs fought and trailed her for over 400 yards.  I got to the scene and saw her sitting down, exhausted and surrounded.

I tried to call the dogs off to get a clean safe shot at her, but they would not leave.  The other hunters showed up and I went in and got her by her hind legs.  She was smaller, maybe 150lbs.

We tied her up and decided to call it a day!

That brought our total to 5 hogs down.  We field dressed the remaining pigs, loaded them in the truck and headed home.

I finished dressing the large sow last night.  The other pigs were divided up for dog food and people food between the others.

Freezer full of meat, mind full of memories and a heart full of pride in my choice for a weapon!

BadAssJohn, if you are reading this, it is your former Bushie that I am using for my hog/brush gun.  Flawless!

TheRedGoat


PS, I almost forgot, when I was trying to lead the hogs, the Aimpoint website flashed into my mind of a reddot on the nose of the hog.

They need to update that site.  You gotta put the dot about 3 feet in front, most of the hits were to the hindquarters.

Lead boar took three hits.  The first (and biggest sow) took one to the back.  I recovered the round in her opposite side hide.  Half moon shaped.

The cripple had been hit in the hip.  Broken pelvis and she still ran nearly half a mile!

I'm sure it's just a matter of time before the invitations for the First Annual North Texas Bohunk AR15.com Hog-B-Cue go out.

TRG...what type ammunition was used?

Curious Jim

Now here I go checking out this thread because I figger it's gonna have nekkid Britney pics on it or sumptin'.

I'd still use my M1A over any .223.  I got three dogs, too bad there are no hogs here in northern AZ, you're having all the fun!

Sounds like you had a roaring good time!  I wish I was there to experience it myself.    

So, do you eat the squealer, too?   Pork veal?

CJ

I wonder when the PETA wannabe's will come in talking about how unethical of a hunter you are; yadda, yadda, yadda.  Just like in the other hog thread.  Anyone who complains about how you hunt them has probably never been hog hunting or doesn't know that they are dangerous animals and just might charge you after watching thier buddy/cousin/daddy/son fall beside them.

Here is a great story showing the mentality of wild pigs.

A few friends of mine from work went down to south Texas last month to go javelina hunting with bows.

One of the guys was sitting in ambush waiting for a little herd (about 10) javelinas walking down the sendero to get a little closer before he shot. Once they were close enough he picked out one pig and shot it. It didn't drop right away and ran off into the scrub brush with the others. While he was tracking it, making his way through the brush he heard a commotion going on in front of him. When he could finally see he was amazed when he saw the other pigs attempting to eat the one he had just shot while it was still alive! He ended up killing another one while it was occupied with trying to eat his wounded buddy.

If they'll do that to each other, just imagine what they would do to you, given the chance.

Red Goat... great job!  Wish I could have been there backing you up with my Armalite...

I second Sundrop... what ammo were you using?

I went back and checked the first thread.  He was using South African surplus at that time.

[url]http://www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?id=100955[/url]

Jim

[beer]

please forgive my ignorance as i am not a hunter and not familiar with the South.

what kind of piggies are these?  wild?  feral?

just curious.  i keep picturing the fat, lazy, sleeping sows one sees at a state fair.  somehow i just don't think that's what you're talking about.  [;)]

Something like this

[img]http://www.floridawildlifeunlimited.com/HPhog.jpg[/img]

Thye are talking about feral hogs. Kinda like the Arkansas razorback mascot.
Very dangerous critters from what I hear.
Never been hunting, but I'm getting the itch.


[smoke]
{edited to ad for Ponyboy: Dammit, that's TWICE someone has beaten me with a response!!!}

"Gee, Grandma, what big teeth you have!"

*shiver*  definitely not the fat, lazy piggie i was thinking of.  thanks for the info guys.  what do they taste like?

Chicken

Pick your own recipe [url]http://www.3men.com/sausage.htm[/url]

Damn, I'm getting hungry!

Jim

They taste great. Much leaner meat than the pork you buy at the store. Rarely can you get any bacon off them at all. There's a guy not far from here that processes all of our pigs and makes the absolute best breakfast sausage I've ever tasted.

Sorry for the delay in responding.  I have been at theMesquite Gunshow today with Mojo, Jarhead_22, his lovely wife, Heartless, and ETH.

Good food, good times, good friends.

Mojo,

I was not able to clean all five.  One went home with another hunter for his brother to dress out.  One went home with my main hunting buddy to be processed (boiled) for dog food.

Two went home with me.  The largest sow, and the intermediate boar.  I processed the sow, but I ran flat out of room for the boar.  No big loss.  the hounds had chewed him pretty good.  Lots of fecal material was embedded in the meat, would have only been able to recover/use 20-30lbs of meat from him.

I was too tired to process him.

Jarhead_22, I really was thinking that any further hogs will require an emergency response eating team of AR15ers to come down, bring beer and plan to eat the next day.  A standby team ready to go at 24 hrs notice...

Sundrop,  South African Surplus.  Seems to go through my Bushmaster like candy.  I used to have 1200 rounds.  Suddenly I am down to only 270.  Hmmm...  Time to call Eric the Ammoman...

Chairborne,  .223 is my only semi-auto carbine or light rifle.  I tried the .270 Savage bolt action.  I took a nice boar with it, but it does not offer the compact firepower of the Bushmaster.  Light rounds mean no brush penetration, and no exit wounds.  With almost 900 pounds of meat harvested  (Sow 225, Boar 275, Sow 300, Sow 150) with a single magazine of .223 it is hard to argue with the economics....

Cmjohnson,  I eat all I can.  the others are killed to reduce the population.

Cypher214, so far the PETA folks have not carried a torch for the feral hogs.  Big, ugly, vicious, nasty creatures are hard to defend.  Disney has not made any movies about wild hogs.  Akuna Matata, right?  Heck even Disney had that hog passing gas and rolling in the mud.  

ARLady, wild, feral Texas hogs.  

Darkstar, as things develop I will try to get a few ar15ers on the place to back me up.  Will try to let you know if/when I can organize a hunt.

TheRedGoat

"The Ar15.com eating team"

That has a very nice ring to it.!!

Let me be the first to sign up for the 24 hour response team!!

Ok, here is the deal.  AR15.com DFW-Hog Eating AR15.com Response Team.

I had to dump one hog in the creek today)no room in the refrig, too tired last night to deal with it).  From here on out there needs to be a group of guys and gals that are ready at a moment's notice to show up at my place with the ability to cook, serve and enjoy a feral hog.

No kidding.  To be a member you need to be able to drive to Canton, Texas, hit a beer store along the way (I have a keg cooler, but it is not always stocked with beer), and be able to drive home (or find a local motel) the same night.  

A true DFW-Hog Eating AR15 Response Team member can  drop everything, grab some beer, throw a few hunks of wood into their pickup and head my way quick-quick.  

BUT, and this is the big BUT, you need to be low maintenance and light as the wind.  Summer is coming, soon.  You need to be swift of foot, and large of digestion.  

The next time I hit more hogs than I can handle, I want to be able to send an email to the DFW-HEART (neat acronymn, huh?) and expect you to show up, cook the hog, have a good time, and be gone before my wife realized what happened!

No kidding.  No joke.  No promises.

Drop me an email.  We will do our best to not let another hog be wasted.

I ain't kidding, folks.  The next time we get an extra hog, I would like to know there is a party minded group of folks that can be here the next morning to enjoy it.  

If you would like to be notified, drop me a line, [email protected] and I will add you to an email list.

TheRedGoat

That is very cool Red Goat! I wish I was within driving distance. I have just one question. Why dump it in the creek? I understand it was wasted by the dogs and beyond your means to process, hence the call to arms, err..eats! [:)]
But why the creek?

-elliott

My wife really gets twisted when I dump hide, bones, viscera etc on the back porch.  Creek (actually not in it, but close to it) means coons, possums, crows, coyotes et al can have their way with it out of earshot of my bedroom window.

I did not dump it into the creek, but within a 100 feet or so.  Sorry for that impression.  

TheRedGoat

Ah hell, don't be sorry about it. I just wasn't real clear what that meant. I couldn't see any benefit in it, but now I do.

My wife gets pissed when I clean squirrel in the kitchen sink. I can only imagine the 300 lb carcass in the back yard. [:)]

What you need to do is set up a processing plant where you can notify everyone of the kill and process it, pack it in dry ice, and send it next day air all over the country. That pig would end up in 8 states by the next day. heh.

-elliott

You smell that?  It smells like work to me.  

TheRedGoat

LOL

Being a card carrying member of PETA myself, [b]P[/b]eople [b]E[/b]ating [b]T[/b]asty [b]A[/b]nimals, I would like to volunteer for duty. [:D]

Bushmaster Carbine 1:9 16 inch barrel, 200 yards when the first shot was fired.  The large sow was hit around 150-175 yards.  Impact was dead center spinal shot.  The round was recovered on her opposite side under the flesh.  Her spine looked like it had been run through a meat grinder.  Fingernail sized fragments of broken bone in a fist sized area.

I really considered taking a picture of the interior cavity to show you guys what that SA ammo did against the bone structure.  It was impressive, very impressive.

The round was bent and looked like a semi-moon shape.

I did not dress the large boar.  However, my buddy who took it home to feed his dogs reported back that the hog had been hit at least three times.  He did recover one round, I have not seen it but it is supposed to look very similar to the round recovered from the sow.

Even though the boar was hit a minimum of three times, he kept running.  I have found only one shot to be instantly fatal to a pig.  Central nervous system hits.  The boar had been hit through the ribs and into the lungs at least once according to my buddy.

The cripple, that was recovered with the hounds I do not know about its wounds.  Although it was obviously hit in the hips, field dressing revealed lots of internal bleeding and a possible a ruptured stomach.  She could not have had her stomach ruptured by that same round that broke her hips.  I am assuming she was hit twice.

The sow that was shot Thursday, took a single hit to her right shoulder.  That bullet disappeared.  From what I can tell upon impact the round turned 90 degrees, buzz sawed across her right shoulder blade and exited.  Massive amounts of soft tissue injury with bone structure destroyed as well.

TheRedGoat

[>(]It all sounds like a dream!

A general question on ammo for hawg hunting:

I handload my ammo.  Would you recommend hollowpoints, ball ammo, softpoints, Partitions,
or solid coppers as in the Barnes X bullets?
(I THINK they're available in .223 but I haven't verified that...)

What grain weight and velocity?

Oh, incidentally, I'm in Florida.  The state
that doesn't want Janet Reno for governor.

The only thing that makes me at all nervous about hunting is the gutting and butchering process afterwards.   I haven't done that.
I don't really know if I'd wimp out or not.

But I'd guess probably not.  I worked in a
funeral home for over a year, and in that job
I have been to the back door of hospitals a bunch of times and I've also been to the medical examiner's office many times to pick people up, and I've literally seen people that were scattered over several tables.   I've seen autopsies in progress, and I swear, I could eat a pizza while watching one.   If human guts don't bother me, I don't THINK animal guts will...but then again, I've never dealt with still warm guts.   Warm bodies, yes (Hospice patients, we get 'em right at the house), but if they've
been opened, they've been refrigerated.

I guess I'll have to find out.

CJ

damn you redgoat, DAMN YOU!
 my hog trip got cancelled, but I see that you had enough fun for both of us!   ahh, now to go back to banging my head against the wall...

"It's good to be the King!"

I had more fun than the law should allow!  Still grinning two days later.  Only problem is all other hunts are going to seem ho-hum now.  

Catching three top quality hogs in the open has been a dream for a while.  Was amazing how much fun it was.

TheRedGoat

I have a 16" Bushy Shorty inbound as we speak.  I was deciding what to put on top of it.  I do believe that I may go with an Aimpoint after this topic.  :)  Even if the only large target around here is my mother-in-law.  Known with great affection as "speed bump".

Penetration is key.  No soft points.  You don't need/want expansion.  You want to hit deep, break bones and try to get an exit wound.  The .223 does everything except exit.

Heck, I shot a medium boar in the fall in the gut using a handloaded, brass tipped, match .270 round.  A real hot load.  It lodged in the hide on the opposite side.

It takes one heck of a round to go all the way through even a medium hog.  

Try to get bone structure, and plan to chase them unless you hit the spine/brain.



I doubt you would wimp out.  I learned a great way to field dress over the weekend.  3-5 minutes and you are done.  

1.  Roll the hog onto its back.
2.  If it is a boar, carefully slice away the genitals
3.  Slice carefully along the length of the belly, to the throat.  (keep fingers in the wound to lift away from the guts with the knife blade)
4.  Cut slightly off center to cut the sternum.
5.  The entire cavity is now open, cut the throat/larynx.
6.  Pull the larynx/lungs toward the anus.  
7.  The entire mass of lungs, heart, kidneys, liver, bowels will come out in a mass.
8.  There will be a small section of bowel still attached to the anus.  Slice off the tail and "ring" the skin around the anus to free it.
9.  Carefully pull the tail and remaining bowel into the cavity
10.  Roll the hog back onto its chest to drain.

Two things casue a problem a problem with meat in the field.  Urine and feces.  If you are lucky the hog will have evacuated its bowels and bladder prior to dying.  Most of the hogs that have been shot and wounded are 'evacuated.'  The live captures ussually are not.

No kidding it took less than 5 minutes to dress out a hog in the field.  Of course you don't get to eat the liver, heart, lungs, kidneys et al using this method, so you might want to wait till you get home to dress it if you like to eat these parts.


BTW, if you do happen to like the innards (which I do) you can make a great braunschweiger using them.  

TheReGoat

TRG,

Post this on the PETA website...I wan't to hear a nuclear detonation down in the Norfolk area!  Damn...those people would absolutely wig out if they saw this story...hee...hee...hee.

What do you think?  Shouldn't we educate our greenie-animal "rights"-commie-whacko PETA nuts on the fun of a piggy hunt?
(Damn, I hate it that those people have their HQ in my state.)

[;D]

I'm telling you, even the PETA folks aren't trying to stop people from attacking wild hogs.  Nasty, smelly, vicious animals are real hard to cuddle and love.

TheRedGoat

Redgoat:
Thanks for posting and keeping us updated!
One of the critters I have always wanted to hunt is the Javalina. Feral hogs will do.
I think they had problems in N.H. and will have to check it out once the back is better.
Till then I will read your posts and wish I was there! (I suppose that is one problem with being a damn Yankee! (That and our gun laws))

REDGOAT,
So what's the best BBQ recipe for them hogs?

[img]www.ar15.com/members/albums/1GUNRUNNER%2FBrian%2520and%2520Hog%2Ejpg[/img]

Hey TRG-- where did you go hunting? I have been wanting to hunt hogs for some time now, and can never find a place.

Also-- where is Canton? I will go look it up...

Canton is about 60 miles east of Dallas.  I am hunting near the Kaufman and Van Zandt county line.

I promise to keep everyone posted on the chances of hunting with me.  It is a long complicated story as to how I am able to hunt this land.  I am only hunting there by permission, of all the hunters (about 10 guys) who had the same permission last year, I am the only one with remaining privileges.  

Everyone else was shown to the door.  Leasholder is real touchy.

TheRedGoat

Thanks 1GUNRUNNER for posting the picture.  I'm not sure why Hunting pictures kept giving me an error on the picture?!?

Mojo, I'll let you know asap.  Keep in touch.  

Funny thing, I was explaining to a colleague here today how to cut the throat on a large sow.  Pocketknife still encrusted.  Yuck.  Guess I wasn't fininshed cleaning a pig afterall.