Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game 2015 Pig Hunt-With Pictures

Hey Guys:
It was time for the annual hog hunt.
Last year's story is here: https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbth...41548/all/Trophy_Hog_Blondie_the_Wild_Bo
This year I took my Ruger Alaskan in 375 Ruger. It wears a 4x Leupold. Ammo was 270 grain Hornady Soft points (but we get ahead of ourselves).
I took my buddy Bob this year. He and I went to Thunder Ranch in 2007 for the "revolver" course. I am the “gun guy” of the two of us. Bob is the Martial Arts guy (Fourth Degree Black Belt, Tae Kwon Do). Bob was shooting a Howa 308. Nice rifle. The rifle shot standard federal 150 softpoints well, so he used those.
Trip started out in Eugene, Oregon, at 8 am Friday, May 15. We drove to Medford and visited BlackBird to buy our California pig tags. BlackBird is always worth the trip. It’s a hardware, gun, ammo, hunting, truck supply store. The link is here: http://www.blackbirdshoppingcenter.com/
After getting our tags and soaking in the BlackBird aura, we drove over to Luigi’s Italian Sandwiches for lunch. This is a small drive in type establishment. The entire building is maybe 30 feet long and 15 feet wide. I had the Garbage Grinder. Ham, pepperoni, salami, provolone, heated in the oven. The topped with green pepper, onions, pickles, olives, and olive oil.
AWESOME! Get one if you drive through Medford. Link is here:

http://www.yelp.com/biz/luigis-italian-sandwiches-Medford

Our bellies full, we gassed up and headed down I-5 to Red Bluff, CA. The ranch is 15 miles west of town in the hills. We arrived at 3:30 PM, Friday, May 15. The guide was already there. We unloaded, hit the commode, and went hunting.

The guide has a new buggy, a Kawasaki 4 seater. The impending death of his older Polaris was a subtext for the 2014 hunt.


The guide had already scouted the wheat and safflower fields—which were full of sows with piglets. So we headed North, then West around the edge of the property to a stock pond where the guide has a game camera. We glassed from some high ground as we went. The Game Camera was chock full of pig, deer, and black bear photos. But there was no immediate sign of pigs.

We swung back to the South along the ridge and looked over the feeding sows in the wheat fields. After glassing for a while we identified a couple of smaller hogs. Nothing special. So we headed further south. From here we glassed a pair of boars that had moved in to feed.
We planned our initial approach--coming down a ridge and approaching from a small hollow at the base of the field. When we arrived at the field, we found pigs (mostly sows, shoats, and piglets) in groups. More pigs had moved into the field as evening came on. The groups were North, South, and adjacent to the boars we were after. The wind was from the South, so our approach was limited. The guide quietly glassed, glassed, and glassed some more. Finally he whispers, “Trying to figure out how to approach them”.
After about ten minutes of this he says: “I guess we’ll try to approach when the drop down into the swale.” The field is not level. It has a slow, easy, rolling contour. The pigs stay close together and will eventually wander into a depression and out of sight.
So we crossed the fence and started walking in slowly. Eventually the boars and the herd grazing with them, dropped into a swale and out of sight of the pigs to the North -- who were going to smell us had moved farther North. Now that “our pigs” could not see them bolt, we moved in. The North pig herd bolted, but ours stayed put.
We hurried across the field and down into a small creek bed. We came up the other side slowly. The herd of sows had grazed Northward. The boars moved East and were at the far side of the field. One was big, young and FAT! Bob dropped to prone for the shot, but the rolling field blocked his view. The guide got out his shooting tripod (very nice). Bob was going to have to shoot from standing but the range was only 100 yards. We waited for the Boar to turn and show some shoulder. He did. Bob fired. The boar went down. He struggled to get up twice and fell back down, then kicked, and lay still. The guide says, “Heart Shot.”. Autopsy (ok gut pile) showed that Bob had center-punched the shoulder and tore the top off the aorta.
It still Friday night, we had one pig in the rig, and we moved out toward the skinning shed and to put the pig in the meat locker.

On the way, we spotted a small herd and the guide asked if I wanted a look. I said “OK”. Here is a picture—this also shows the rolling nature of the fields.

We stalked from upwind, and looked them over—small sows and shoats. We stood still and a few grazed to within 30 yards of us. They eventually saw us and moved off. We hopped back into the rig, finished the work on Bob’s pig, and headed to the cabin for dinner.
After dinner, but before the sun had gone down, the guide notices a larger pig in the east pasture, “Let’s go take a look.” Back into the rig. It was “Three-Legs”. Three-Legs is resident boar. He was born there, and had started growing into a good huntable boar when Blondie showed up. Three-Legs challenged Blondie. Three-Legs lost most of an ear and had the right rear leg severely injured.

Three-Legs was no longer a trophy when I saw him in 2014. This was maybe 6 months after Blondie showed up (and only hours before Blondie died) Three-Legs hobbled around like a three legged dog. When I saw him, he was the size of a Labrador retriever—SKINNY. The landowner had watched him grow to be a nice boar, and then shrink away.
One year later—and without Blondie to kick his butt--Three-Legs had grown back to Boar size, but still limped and was missing an ear. We drove right up to him and he “popped” his teeth to warn us. He showed a nice set of tusks. I was ready to smack this pig, but the guide mentioned that he was gonna be a tough “sausage pig”. So I passed— I was looking for meat. Three-Legs hobbled away.
We were up by 5 on Saturday, had some coffee and were in the four-wheeler by 5:30. We headed North (into the wind) and began glassing. By 6 we had spotted some pigs near a stock pond. We drove closer for a better look. The pigs were close together, but there were some large ones in the herd. We dropped down off the hill, parked the rig and approached on foot. Most of the pigs had disappeared, but a lone boar looked promising. We stalked in to about 80 yards. I was trying to set up a shot, when over a dozen sows and piglets, “appeared” out of a hollow filled with tall grass a mere 20 yards from us. They had smelled us. We never saw them.
These pigs moved East, the Boar moved West. Not good. The boar stopped at 100 yards with a T-Post between him and us, right in front of his vitals. I did not take the shot. The boar moved along the East side of the pond. We swung around the West side of the pond. Eventually, he went back to grazing and offered a nice shot. The guide ranged it at 140 yards. I too a knee and used a T-post as a rest. The boar was facing me, with his right should and chest exposed. I squeezed the trigger—BOOM! The 375 roared, the boar spun around and headed for the high grass. “Lung shot, I heard the hit” says the guide.
We crossed around the pond and looked for blood—none. We tracked the path the boar took into the grass. Nada. I chambered a round and went back and forth, through the tall grass, as if I was mowing the lawn—Nothing. The guide took his gun and Bob, they went through an adjacent field of hay. Zip.
We did this for 30 minutes, then went back to where the boar was standing to sort it out. Using a rangefinder, we got pretty close to where the pig was when I shot. Then the guide says “The barb wire was not broken when you shot”. Sure enough, the wire had a bright, shiny new break in it.


I shot from gap between the trees at the left:




The wire was at 125 yards, the pig at 140. The pig was smacked by some fragments –maybe. Just to be sure, the guide had Bob and I walk an adjacent creek bed to the end of the field while he made a loop around a separate pond that the boar ran toward. Zilch.

So, we moved on. The guide and I discussed meat pigs and he mentioned that there was a fat older sow in the bunch we spooked. “Normally, we don’t shoot the girls, but the drought was hard on the Boars. So the landowner OK’d shooting older sows that were not pregnant or nursing.” This was fine by me, I already had a trophy hog mounted, and the sows are good eating.
We started hiking North, using the terrain to keep us out of sight of the pigs. We found the herd working its way through some safflower that was recently planted. We saw a couple of large pigs, and looked a good shooter. We found Three-Legs, in the middle of herd, munching away. The pigs slowly moved down into hollow. I stalked forward until the pigs were in sight again. We were close now, I could hear then grunting, biting off mouthfuls, and generally acting like pigs. A minute passed, then a small sow grazed to within 20 yards from us. We froze. She looked up. Stared at us, and broke!
We watched as the herd moved up the valley. A sow with some very small piglets was entering the field, a good half mile ahead of them. The two groups met on the edge of the field, where the ground transitions from field to hills. They sniffed around, and returned to grazing. Once again, we moved toward the pigs.
There was no swale or depression for the pigs to move into. Fortunately, they were working some recently plowed ground and were easy to spot. The guide picked out the sow he was looking for. I dropped to prone and the guide set his backpack down to rest the rifle. I drew a bead on the left shoulder of the sow and fired. “Hit!” says the guide. The pig goes down, and gets back up. I run the action, take a bead and fire. “Hit!” The pig moves toward a space between the hills and stops facing dead away from us. The guide calls out the Range, “253 yards.” I draw a bead on the Right ham. “Hit!” The pig stumbles out of sight.
I reload and we begin walking to the where the pig disappeared. She did not go far. We found this pig standing on flat ground, wobbling. We went up the side of the hill and moved in closer. From an improved shooting position, looking over the “crown” or rounded part of the hill, I attempted a head shot to finish the animal. The animal was partially obstructed by a bush. The wobbling head moved in and out of my crosshairs. I fired and missed. I tried a heart shot and connected, but too low. This shot induced the pig to move and face me. A neck shot presented itself. HIT! It was over and I had a brand new scope cut from the last shot.
When we gutted the animal, I was waiting for the smell of a gut shot animal. When the bely was opened, it was full of blood. But all of the vital organs were untouched, save one small bone fragment in the lung. Back at the skinning shed, we found two solid hits in the left shoulder (pulverized is a better term). We also found bloodshot right shank, but no entry wound on the right flank. The right rear leg was shattered through the knee joint (the joint at the bottom of the ham). Based upon the autopsy, this is what we reasoned to have happened.
First shot—hit square in the Left shoulder, but low. Instead of penetrating the chest/sternum/heart area, the bullet deflected down and into the right leg. This is where the small fragment in the lung came from. The pig was at 160 yards.
Second shot, hit square in left shoulder, but lower-this almost severed the leg. The pig was at 180 yards. Third shot, square in the ham, broke the right rear leg, and severed the femoral artery. This is where all that blood in the belly came from. This was at 253 yards. Fourth, was a miss. Fifth, grazing shot at the chest. Sixth shot, clean though the spine.
Conclusion, Pigs are tough. The 375 leaves big holes and nasty wound channels. Bullets do funny things when they hit bone.

Last photo-Note the Ham and Spine hits are visible.



BMT

Cool!

Sounds like you had a great adventure. Thanks for sharing.

Great write up BMT! Thanks for sharing that!

Sounds like a great hunt!!