My Ideal Hog Rifle

This is something I have been working on for some time...hogs are always available for sport in Texas...at night, with lights, using bait, anyway you want to kill a hog, you can, in Texas.  This is a golden opportunity - a world where you can hunt anytime, in anyway you would like, with no limits, no tags, no restrictions and knowing that when you take a shot, you will be improving the habitat as hogs are overpopulated and destructive.  Other benefits include them being the 'other white meat' as well as being challenging to hunt, with a hint of danger.  An unending supply of fun awaits.  My hunting experience usually finds me within 100 yards of hogs with them moving endlessly, in sub-optimum  light, before disappearing.  If you could pick your ideal hog gun, what would it be?

I've gone through several iterations and am in a happy place with my recent choice after a lot of field-testing.  I've learned you want a bullet with enough lethality (is that  a real word?) to drop a pig in its tracks when properly placed.  I knew that all along, but at one time I was carrying a .44 revolver with a scope - nothing wrong with the caliber, but a little difficult to place the bullet accurately time after time using a pistol. This lesson was reinforced on a summer night in South Texas, recently.  One night, shortly after dark, using a light, I shot a large hog.  It squealed and ran through the black brush.  This particular summer had brought alot of rain and the grass and black brush was incredibly thick and waist-high.  I decided to head back to the truck and drive to the last spot the hog was seen.  From there I retrieved a spotlight and a pistol without a scope to navigate through the brush.  I took my time and considered all the things that could happen while pursuing a wounded hog in the black Texas summer night.  I had been reading African hunting stories and imagined myself as a PH retrieving an injured animal and wondered how they did it.   It sounds adventurous, almost fun when reading about it, but to step in those boots puts it into a different light.  Dropping a hog in its tracks became much more important than before.  Cautiously, looking for snakes with each step, I followed the blood trail as it entered a tunnel within the black brush.  There was nothing to do but enter the tunnel on hands and knees, trying to keep the thorns from ripping my shirt while keeping alert for the hog.  Splashes of bright red clearly marked the hog's trail - right up to the monster rattler crossing the trail.  The snake's head had already passed and the body was crossing the trail much as a train crosses a road.  And it kept on going.  And it kept moving.  Finally, I decided to shoot the snake.  I held on the snake and squeezed the trigger...and several rattlers in this bush began rattling all around me.  I backed out of the tunnel after checking my backtrail closely and decided I could wait to retrieve this particular hog until a later time.

Next, I moved to a 30/06 with a Zeiss 3X9X50 as a way to improve accuracy and pick up the most light possible.  I began setting feeders to go off 30 minutes after dark and hunted only on moonlit nights.  When doing this, it's critical to know when the moon rises as if it does not come up until 2 AM, there is a lot of dark time until you have enough light to shoot with.  This was pretty successful, but I had some challenges with cloud cover dimming my light and seeing the precise 'cross' in the crosshairs.  I was shooting really large boars that could prove dangerous if you pursue them in the bush and I wanted toknow exactly where the bullet was going.

I progressed to a night light on my feeders so I could see crosshairs clearly on the hogs. This worked great when the hogs would come under the light but sometimes I had educated hogs who would not enter into the light under the feeder - they would skirt around it and never come into the light - all I could see were silhouettes, which absorbed the crosshairs and made it impossible to be precise.

Now I have a scope with an illuminated reticle - a Weaver Classic Extreme 3X9X50 with a 30mm tube.  A .35 Whelen makes a bigger hole than a 30/06, so I got a M700 CDL and had the barrel shortened for ease of use and quick handling.  This has proven to be the best hog rig I've had so far.  I call it 'Thumper' and it optimizes everything about hog hunting for me.  After alot of trial and error hunting hogs in many different circumstances, I think I will be using this rig for a long, long time.

I took this hog recently in the evening on a dark moon.  I climbed into my tree blind after scattering some corn on a hog trail and watched the sun drop beneath the tree tops.  As the sun was brightly in my eye when looking west, I was impressed by how fast it went from bright in my eye, to partially obscured to wholly gone, within seconds.  Then I heard the grunting of pigs.  I looked where I placed the the corn in the trail 50 yards distant but could see nothing with my naked eye.  I looked through my binoculars and a herd of hogs jumped out at me.  Amazing - they were right there, but in the darkness, were invisible to my naked eyes.  Since this hog was the largest, I put my scope on it, and the crosshairs disappeared.  I illuminated the reticle, which lights a small dot in the vortex of the crosshairs, and placed it on the point of the shoulder. The gun boomed as I squeezed the trigger and the hog lie motionless. 

When taking the shot, I did not know whether it was a sow or boar, whether it was big or small - only that it was the largest in the herd and was well within range. I could see only its darkness of form, and when it was broadside.  And that's all that 'Thumper' needs to add to its collection of successes.