Hey guys, finally getting around to posting about our terrific experience hog hunting in Georgia! This was our second time headed down to a property near Americus, GA, with open access to about 800 acres of woodlands and swamp. The property is hunt leased by our buddy Mike, but he only cares about the deer hunting, and is more than happy to have us thinning the feral hog population. Here goes, and hope you enjoy reading!
Day 1
We got up early and drove down on Wednesday. The trucks were loaded down with all our gear, and we added quite a bit since last year. Since this was all learn-as-you-go hunting, we had made some significant changes to our gear since last year. Most notably, almost every hunter was now carrying a 6.5 Grendel of some sort. Last year the 5.56 and 300BLK rifles did not perform well on bigger hogs, and while .308 performed great, heavy AR10's got REALLY heavy after a day of trudging around in the swamps. Our rifles were primarily:
12.5" 6.5 Grendel AR Pistol with Sig suppressor, 2-7x33 Leupold., PVS 14 and laser for nighttime.
16" 6.5 Grendel AR Rifle with Aimpoint for daytime, and Sightmark Photon NV for nighttime.
16" 6.5 Grendel AR Rifle with 3-9x40 Vortex for daytime, Pulsar Thermal for nighttime.
16" 308 AR10 with 1-8x24 Vortex and a flashlight for nighttime.
I'll cheat ahead and say that we were immensely pleased with the Grendel caliber, but our optics setups still need some tweaking. More on that later.
Nate and his dad Jeff arrived first Wednesday evening, and set out some sweet corn mixture that Nate had concocted for the pigs. For night hunting, we would primarily be using deer stands set along old logging trails cut in the woods, and we placed the corn about 75 yards away from these stands, on the roads. They often bait for deer (legal down there) in the same places, so the pigs were somewhat accustomed to stealing food from the deer feeders there. My dad and I arrived, and we all selected stands for the night. We didn't have much time to really get the lay of the land, as the sun was setting and we wanted to get to our stands before dark. Everyone selected a spot, and we set out.
I had been waffling on how to setup my rifle for hunting at night. My wife bought me a Flir handheld thermal monocular (~$500) for Christmas. This provided pretty poor resolution, but really good heat signature location out to about 200 yards. For shooting, I had a head mounted PVS 14, with a laser on my rifle, which I thought would be a fair setup for reasonably close range woods hunting. My setup was not ideal.
About an hour in, I heard a couple smaller hogs in the brush over my right shoulder. Eventually, I spotted some heat signatures in the thermal, while holding it up to my left eye. Through my right eye, I scanned with my night vision, mounted to my head on a Crye Precision Nightcap. (Very comfortable, by the way.) Unfortunately, while I could catch glimpses of heat through the bushes with the thermal, the NV really couldn't penetrate the brush at all. The nearest leaves would show up very brightly, making it impossible to see past them into the woods, and shining an IR flashlight only made things worse.
Frustrated, I finally dug out my very bright flashlight and shone it into the woods toward the sound. While white light doesn't seem to really spook hogs, moving it around seems to give away your position and they will avoid your area, which is exactly what happened. At this point, I was pretty irritated that my high-speed setup wasn't panning out, and I was getting sloppy as a result. Thermal, flashlights, and night vision all banged together as I desperately tried to spot the hogs, and between the racket and the lights, I spooked them.
While I felt like a moron, I was still about to get lucky. Another much larger boar came in to the corn shortly after, and he was determined to eat it all no matter how badly I messed up. I spotted him about 100 yards out with the thermal, chowing down on the trail. Unfortunately a branch hung over the trail and once again unable to see past it with the NV, I took it off entirely. I tried the flashlight, but just couldn't make him out that far away through the brush. Finally I dialed my 2-7x33 Leupold all the way up, and found that if I held the flashlight just right with my left hand, I could see the boar's outline through the scope. From there, it was only a matter of aligning the stars to get everything just right, but I finally got a clear broadside view, put it just under his ear, and squeezed the trigger!
He dropped on the spot, but kicked around enough for me to give him an insurance shot as I walked up. We didn't weigh any of the pigs, and while this one was no monster he was full-sized. Maybe 150 lbs.
I was the only one fortunate enough to have seen anything besides deer and raccoons that evening, so around midnight we decided to call it a night. We drove to our hotel in town, ready to wake up and get after them the next day!
End of Day 1.
Day 1
We got up early and drove down on Wednesday. The trucks were loaded down with all our gear, and we added quite a bit since last year. Since this was all learn-as-you-go hunting, we had made some significant changes to our gear since last year. Most notably, almost every hunter was now carrying a 6.5 Grendel of some sort. Last year the 5.56 and 300BLK rifles did not perform well on bigger hogs, and while .308 performed great, heavy AR10's got REALLY heavy after a day of trudging around in the swamps. Our rifles were primarily:
12.5" 6.5 Grendel AR Pistol with Sig suppressor, 2-7x33 Leupold., PVS 14 and laser for nighttime.
16" 6.5 Grendel AR Rifle with Aimpoint for daytime, and Sightmark Photon NV for nighttime.
16" 6.5 Grendel AR Rifle with 3-9x40 Vortex for daytime, Pulsar Thermal for nighttime.
16" 308 AR10 with 1-8x24 Vortex and a flashlight for nighttime.
I'll cheat ahead and say that we were immensely pleased with the Grendel caliber, but our optics setups still need some tweaking. More on that later.
Nate and his dad Jeff arrived first Wednesday evening, and set out some sweet corn mixture that Nate had concocted for the pigs. For night hunting, we would primarily be using deer stands set along old logging trails cut in the woods, and we placed the corn about 75 yards away from these stands, on the roads. They often bait for deer (legal down there) in the same places, so the pigs were somewhat accustomed to stealing food from the deer feeders there. My dad and I arrived, and we all selected stands for the night. We didn't have much time to really get the lay of the land, as the sun was setting and we wanted to get to our stands before dark. Everyone selected a spot, and we set out.
I had been waffling on how to setup my rifle for hunting at night. My wife bought me a Flir handheld thermal monocular (~$500) for Christmas. This provided pretty poor resolution, but really good heat signature location out to about 200 yards. For shooting, I had a head mounted PVS 14, with a laser on my rifle, which I thought would be a fair setup for reasonably close range woods hunting. My setup was not ideal.
About an hour in, I heard a couple smaller hogs in the brush over my right shoulder. Eventually, I spotted some heat signatures in the thermal, while holding it up to my left eye. Through my right eye, I scanned with my night vision, mounted to my head on a Crye Precision Nightcap. (Very comfortable, by the way.) Unfortunately, while I could catch glimpses of heat through the bushes with the thermal, the NV really couldn't penetrate the brush at all. The nearest leaves would show up very brightly, making it impossible to see past them into the woods, and shining an IR flashlight only made things worse.
Frustrated, I finally dug out my very bright flashlight and shone it into the woods toward the sound. While white light doesn't seem to really spook hogs, moving it around seems to give away your position and they will avoid your area, which is exactly what happened. At this point, I was pretty irritated that my high-speed setup wasn't panning out, and I was getting sloppy as a result. Thermal, flashlights, and night vision all banged together as I desperately tried to spot the hogs, and between the racket and the lights, I spooked them.
While I felt like a moron, I was still about to get lucky. Another much larger boar came in to the corn shortly after, and he was determined to eat it all no matter how badly I messed up. I spotted him about 100 yards out with the thermal, chowing down on the trail. Unfortunately a branch hung over the trail and once again unable to see past it with the NV, I took it off entirely. I tried the flashlight, but just couldn't make him out that far away through the brush. Finally I dialed my 2-7x33 Leupold all the way up, and found that if I held the flashlight just right with my left hand, I could see the boar's outline through the scope. From there, it was only a matter of aligning the stars to get everything just right, but I finally got a clear broadside view, put it just under his ear, and squeezed the trigger!
He dropped on the spot, but kicked around enough for me to give him an insurance shot as I walked up. We didn't weigh any of the pigs, and while this one was no monster he was full-sized. Maybe 150 lbs.
I was the only one fortunate enough to have seen anything besides deer and raccoons that evening, so around midnight we decided to call it a night. We drove to our hotel in town, ready to wake up and get after them the next day!
End of Day 1.