LUKE SHARES A BIG ADVENTURE AND BIG EVENT
I’ve got a lot to share with you this week. I’m looking forward to our 4th annual Outdoor Ron de Voux in Greenville this Saturday, and we will discuss that in a bit. But first, I just have to tell you about possibly the most exciting wild hog hunt of my life – and I’ve been on lots of hunts! I’m not a ‘trophy boar’ hunter. I usually pass up bigger boars for smaller ‘eater’ hogs. I know the plan is to remove hogs from the landscape but, to my way of thinking, every hog removed is a good thing, regardless the size. I love cooking and eating wild pork, and it’s those 75to 125-pound hogs that I settle my crosshairs on. I have lots of hunting opportunities, including some very good land within a half mile of my house. My farmer/ rancher buddy allows me to set up a couple of feeders and hunt when I wish. I spend a good bit of time in the woods around here and have a good ‘handle’ on the best spots to set up to hunt. In the course of the past couple years, I have seen a really big boar twice. My neighbor also spotted him once and also described him as the biggest boar he’s ever seen as well. How big? Guessing the weight of a wild hog is ‘iffy’ at best. I will bet my best hunting rifle the hog weighs 250 pounds, possibly 75 pounds more! He is BIG. The overgrown porker has been hitting my friend’s plowed field the past couple weeks, probably in the middle of the night and with no real pattern. He has rooted craters three feet deep in the soft earth. A couple days ago, I decided I needed some fresh pork for breakfast sausage and settled into my spot under an old bois d’ arc tree about 50 yards from a corn feeder. A shift in the wind just after dark carried my sent directly to where I expected the hogs to be. I decided a warm bed might be better than fruitlessly watching skunks, kangaroo rats and raccoons munch corn. On the way out, I used my AMG Global Vision Rattler scope to scan the big field the big boar had been ripping apart. I spotted what I thought was two hogs near the middle of the field. On closer inspection I learned it was one hog, a very big one! With a stiff wind blowing from the boar to me and a black night with only a hint of moon, I stalked within 45 yards. I was shooting a 50 caliber Umarex Hammer big boar air rifle pressured to 4,500 psi. Long story short, I hit the boar behind the sheath that covers his shoulder and the big bullet kicked up mud on the far side of the hog, a lethal pass through shot. The boar made a dash to the south and ran across a property line into land I didn’t have permission to enter. The entire event was filmed through the scope’s onboard camera. It’s now on our TV show, A Sportsman’s Life, available many places but easy to find on YouTube. My farmer buddy is happy the destructive boar is gone, but how I did want to photograph that big hog up close!