I decided last week that I was going to take off Friday and head up to the place on Thursday and have a long weekend and get after the hogs. I hadn't seen any hogs since opening weekend of rifle deer season when I shot 3, but they have been tearing up the place and even plowed the dang front yard the previous weekend. So Thursday night I load everything up, including a sandwich, and head down to the blind. Get there and wait until dark, then switch on the thermal and big old nothing happens. Switch out the batteries, nothing. I PM Jason at Outdoor Legacy Gear where I bought the scope and he's responding back with things to try, and I eventually walk back up to the house and plug the scope into the laptop with the USB cable and it comes on. All I can figure is the charger was squirrely since the lights showed charged when they weren't. So I charge up 2 more batteries and about 11:30 I grab the Bog Pod and the rifle and slip down to the meadow. Scanning the woods from 200 yards out I can see a herd of hogs in the trees along the creek. I kept slipping up on them until I got within 100 yards, picked a big one and shot. She went down, then hogs were going in every direction so I shot another one and it kept going through the woods. When I walked up to her I could see the blood trail of the other one with the thermal but never found the second hog.

Friday night is misty and damp and I get to the meadow around 6:30 and get set up. Around 7:30 or so the first hog comes in and he's down.

Around 9:30 two boars show up and I let them get lined up just right and shoot through the first one and the one behind him folds up, the first one takes off bouncing off trees.
Boar 2:


I stayed in the blind and around 9:30 another boar- black and white- comes out and passes between the two dead ones and then he joins them.


During all this I had the coon traps set out and ended up catching 2 Thursday night and 3 Friday night and 1 Saturday night.
Friday's haul:


Saturday it's hurricane -force winds all day and clears off. I figure the meadow is shot up so I go to the Big field and set up. The clear night really showed me what the thermal world is all about. The detail you can see through the PTS536 is amazing- I could see a rat running back and forth to the feeder at 210 yards. About 10 or so a big boar comes out and I nail him, he snowplows through the field a bit and was thrashing around so I put another round in him. When I finally go down there he's bigger than I thought. I don't know what he weighed but he was hard to even roll over. I hooked him up to the 4-wheeler and dragged him out of the field.



Sunday I'm back out there 8 hours later and he looks bigger in the daylight.


All told it was a great weekend and I am a believer in thermal now and won't be without one ever again. Kudos to Jason at OLG for all his "pre-sale" consultation- he really helped tailor my selection to my type of hunting- mine is mostly sit at known blinds and wait versus spot and stalk due to the layout of my property. He steered me right.
Rig: Rifle- Daniel Defense/Ambush 6.8 SPC, FLIR PTS536.

Congrats!!

Nice job !

Heck yeah!!! Nice work!

That's a great first night! Good work

Sounds like a great trip. I just bought a thermal and am waiting on my 6.8 upper to arrive. I hope to have a successful outing just like yours.

You will be hooked. I recommend the Hornady 120 SST for the 6.8, it puts the hurt on them. Only problem I have now is I'm not young anymore so after deer hunting all day I don't have the energy so I start my hog night hunting after the deer season..lol.

Awesome!!

PP that's exactly what I'm using - the factory 120 SST factory loads- I was using it with lots of success in an earlier rifle and that's all I've used in the DD- it groups and performs so well I am not messing with it!

Dang, it was like a shooting gallery !

Did you ever get time to eat that sandwich ?

No video of the shots ?

Good job!

Finally ate the sandwich. Not going to let that get away...
I finally figured out how to turn the video on night 3. Now if I can just figure out how to get them on the PC

That's great to hear because I already bought several boxes of those rounds and a few mags. Upper should be here this week

Very nice

Nice shooting there Sir. Thermal is on the list for sure

Sweet!

Couple more victims this weekend. The coyote was in a group of 9 that were eating the last of the three hogs shot last weekend. I watched him through the thermal and you could tell he was the boss- the others were cowing down to him and he was obviously the alpha. Since there were so many coyotes in that field I went to the other field Saturday night and got this one. Pretty big- took the 4-wheeler to budge him.

Congrats!