If you want the short story - just click on the video aboveFull supplemental report below:DNS invited me along to Bosque County to continue our assault on the feral swine who continue to visit the Land Owners property.
At this time of year the fields are crispy and have been harvested of their agricultural supply which makes stalking quite LOUD and limits our ordinarily stealthy approach.
Being that we figured much of this out over a month ago we installed a Hog Eradication Feeding Station (HEFS) at the North end of the property and in 3 weeks of monitoring we've encountered hogs only once at the location. Game Cams indicated upon arrival that there had been a grand total of zero visitations by hogs to the HEFS since we last dealt death to two of their hog bosses last Monday - I suppose they got the message...
We decided to forego sitting and relying on wishful thinking that hogs would show and we headed to the crispy wheat/oats fields to perform Overwatch at sunset and beyond.
<<<What's not to like about this view as the sun goes down>>>
After about an hour of watching a couple of deer walk the field we split up and I scouted the neighboring oats fields where we've taken many hogs over the last 6 weeks. Last week we saw zero hogs on the field and as I made the 15 minute commute on foot I discovered no hogs on the oats field. I submitted my text report to DNS and we decided to give it an hour before trying the varmint caller. Well 10 short minutes later we had a sounder enter the field from the South and I relayed this observation to DNS who made the commute in under 10 minutes, this would not be the last time that he demonstrated superior efficiency on this hunt....
We setup on this sounder and while the video doesn't illustrate fully the error of my ways I committed a horrible act by switching my reticle color to offset the largest (and first) hog that I intended to shoot. The issue being that these swine had just emerged from a bedding area and some were dry while others were wet making for different color *thermally rendered* hogs. I should have played the odds and chose a color that offset the majority of the pigs BUT I like a challenge apparently.
So after calling off the first countdown as I changed my reticle color DNS obliged by doing a recount and the 60 Seconds of Carnage began.
I must admit I was a bit jumpy after letting the hammer drop on my first hog - chalk it up to this being the 2nd highly anticipated (by me) hunting debut of my 308 AR-10 that I built and spent the last six month troubleshooting or my general perky disposition - either way I cut loose on 8 shots in the first 13 seconds with a grand total of 3 hits on target which isn't particularly effective
Meanwhile DNS goes 2 for 3 on his first shots and then takes an unexpected pause from the action to clear a malfunction, he does this very efficiently while I continue to chase pigs with my shots. He demonstrated excellent resolve under the circumstances and kindly communicated to me that he was "out" for the moment and when he returned the rifle to functioning he makes the longest shot of the night on a sow - the Dude has Skills.
All in all, we recovered 8 hogs and this brings our two month tally to near 70 on this property.
I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to hunt with DNS and I hope you all have a Happy 4th of July