My buddy and I always enjoy getting out a popping a few caps, but nothing beats a successful night of hog hunting in Texas. That is exactly what we ended up doing on this mild winter night. We knew that a herd of feral hogs had been coming into an earth tank regularly, but we’ve always been too late to the party. However, we headed out a little earlier tonight and crept towards the tank to see if any piggies were already there before we approached.
Of course, we didn’t see a hog around the tank. But then, we noticed a herd of hogs off in the distance — but moving in quickly. Then the footrace was on to see who could make it to the pond first! We rushed to reach the downwind side of the water and almost instantly the herd of feral hogs was upon us. It looked like our early start this night was really going to pay off on this hog hunting trip, and that a little pig population management was about to occur!
With the hogs at the small pond, we had no choice now but to hold our position with guns at our shoulders. Then, on cue, our IR illuminators lit up their eyes as they came running into certain death. Just as we whispered a countdown, face shots were given on the first two hogs. Hog Killer nailed his first one back in the snout and I shot through the eyeballs mine. Hogs starting scattering and shot after shot rang out in the panic. The pond yielded a total of five hogs and 3 took a kill shot straight to the face. The other two got it through the lungs.
We loaded up the better part of a truck load of hogs, then moved on to check out a field that has really been holding some animals where we have also been hog trapping. As luck would have it, we intercepted a lone boar in the field, just of some thick wooded habitat. Just to make sure this big guy went down quickly, we did a three, two and boom, firing simultaneously and dropping the wild boar right where he stood. You have got to love IR illuminators.
We loaded up our sixth hog just to get it out of the field and decided to call it a good night of hog hunting. We skinned out the four smallest pigs and put them in the two coolers we had, and are now looking forward to some tasty BBQ. Hunting has always been a passion of ours, but hog hunting at night with IR illuminators is just plain fun, especially when we end up with some great eating, too!