Montague 10 - Thermal Hog Hunt

You know it is going to be a good hunt when your first kill comes before you even take out the rifles!

Dave Krebs took me hunting in Montague County to several properties where he does hog and predator control. It was a beautiful evening, temps in the low 80s with a nice breeze. I don't have a lot of the usual data this time as this was just a fun hunt. However, for those who are interested, I am shooting my normal 6.5 Grendel with Hornady SST 123 gr. ammo and Armasight Zeus thermal sight. Dave was initially shooting a 7.62x39 AR15 with a new Sig Sauer Echo 1 thermal reflex sight and later changed to a 6.5 Grendel with an IR Hunter MKII 2.5x thermal sight.

I now refer to Dave Krebs as Dave "Cardio" Krebs. We made some very long stalks and Cardio's mindset is something like this..."The hogs are over there and we are over here and so the more time we are over here the less time we can be shooting hogs over there." So any time that we could move in high gear, we moved in high gear and we moved in high gear a LOT. No time got wasted debating strategies or goals. It was simple. We go over there and we shoot them and we don't shoot the livestock. This made for very pleasant, if not breathless, hunting.

The video is a little longer than normal, but that is because there are multiple shooting sequences and the last one was rather complex. I tried to edit it down far enough without losing the situational context.

No necropsy this time!

Great video looks like a lot of fun.

Can you give some distance to the animals? Watching the video it appears you held the scoped dot at same location even at near to far, new to this thermal stuff. Does all thermal work the same?
Great video and explanation.

As we were blowing and going, moving and scooting on terrain unfamiliar to me, I cannot begin to tell you exact distances. I know i post distances in most of my other vids, but just don't have the insight to do it here. What I can tell you is that most of the shooting was 50-150 yards. As I zero for 100 yards, there is no reason to change POA.

Man that's some fun right there. Love it when everywhere you look there are hogs and when you shoot it confuses them and they stick around or at least don't run completely away.

I wonder sometimes if some hogs are deaf or something, they don't seem to react at all to gunfire. In the grand scheme of natural processes, a deaf hog isn't the worst genetic trait, they use scent and sight more then noise esp since there aren't really any natural predators for hogs. But then You introduce gunfire and it be lens a deadly trait to have

Thanks DNS, I do understand. Your vids are amazing.

A well deserved break from the technical aspects of the hunt!

I still thoroughly enjoyed the video

Your deaf comment reminded me of an Aggie joke. This Aggie scientist is working with fleas and the test went something like this. The Aggie scientist put a flea down on a piece of graph paper with distances metered on it. He slapped the table by the flea and yelled "JUMP!" The flea jumped X distance and the Aggie recorded the result. Next, he pulled off one leg and repeated the process and the flea jumped a shorter distance and the Aggie recorded the result. This pattern of declining distances continued until the Aggie got down to the last leg. He pulled off the last leg, put in flea on the start point, slapped the table and yelled "JUMP!" The flea did not move. He slapped the table and yelled "JUMP!" and the flea still did not move, so the Aggie recorded in his notes, "...and when the last leg is removed, the flea goes completely deaf."

There is no indication that whole sounders of hogs or even just several individuals are deaf. There is every indication of hunters misinterpreting behavior for ability as with the Aggie and the flea. Hogs that have not been hunted often do not understand that the loud BANGs mean there in death from a bullet, often fired from considerable distance (versus most threats in nature that require direct contact to be a threat), and so do not have any sort of direct behavior to respond to such a threat until they learn and understand it.

I have had hunters tell me that hogs are blind as the hog clearly looked at the hunter, but did not run away, therefore the hunter has assumed that the hog could not see him. Hogs actually see fairly well. In fact, they can navigate through the woods while running without running into trees they see so well and do it at NIGHT. Just because a hog may look at a hunter and not run simply means that the hog is not fearful of the hunter, hence has no reason to run.

When it comes to noise, I have found that hogs operating alone tend to be more suspicious of the sound of my approach than hogs among cattle or hogs in a sounder. It isn't that the hogs with cattle or in a sounder are deaf, but that they are more apt to assume the noise of my approach is just that of the cattle or other hogs, not some predator coming to shoot them.

I have heard the same stories about the poor eyesight and hearing on deer as well, again, simply the hunter misinterpreting behavior and expected behavior for ability.

Nice going all around!

Way to go.

Lots a bacon on the ground. Good shooting (with camera and gun) 😜👍

Great video and great shooting.

Another great video.