Brian invited me to tag along for a hunt on Sunday evening and being that the Dallas Cowboys were not playing I wasn't tied to the TV to watch football.
Little did Brian know that I was not only tagging along but that the wind front that blew in on Friday threw a major kink in me making a trip to the range to verify zero on my Pulsar APEX so on Saturday night I send him a text asking if I can also borrow a rifle/scope setup - Man I suck as a hunting partner
Brian graciously provided a 6.5 Grendel rifle topped with a FLIR PTS 736 riflescope and when we arrived on property he gave me a crash course (tutorial) on how to use it. I would be shooting 123 gr Hornady SST loads and Brian is hunting with his Grendel and 90 gr TNT bullets.
We spooked a couple of nice size boars off the front edge of the property (right by the road) when we arrived which was about an hour after dark.
We were hunting from an elevated oil/gas pad that has a nice view of the lower lands where the hogs have been munching on the winter wheat crop as of late.
On one of our spying runs I was busted by a lone boar (at about 20 yards) when I came to the edge of the elevated terrace to look for pigs. He immediately saw me and I attempted to crouch and appear small (non-menacing) however he wasn't sticking around to find out if I was friend or foe. So for the evening so far that is 3 pig sightings and no shots.
The lunar eclipse was scheduled for around 945 pm and we had a really bright Super Moon with a faint cloud haze that we were hunting under up to and after the eclipse. The winds increased throughout the evening as well.
So around 845 pm on a spying mission I spotted a small sounder of hogs about 200 yards away and informed Brian and followed him on a well made stalk (using cover of trees and oil/gas refining equipment) to a shooting position just inside of 100 yards to our target.
The FLIR PTS 736 was providing a super crisp image and PLENTY of magnification, I later told Brian this was the easiest 100 yard shot I've ever made with thermal.
We anchored 1 of the hogs and a couple of others absorbed some shots but made it into the thick/sharp briars nearby.
We didn't see any other hogs that evening but we enjoyed ourselves on this hunt and I'm on the scoreboard for 2019 !
Happy Hunting !!!
P.S. - the Sionyx Aurora is a neat camera that I feel illustrates the hunting scene (environment) to translate the visual aspects of the hunt beyond what you ordinarily find in through the scope videos or using I^2 or thermal spotters in a trailing camera capacity....
