Hey chieftam, Where in Texas are you coming?? You ever do much hog huntin?? We usually have a blast bayin' em up with the dogs and catchin em live. You can take em to certain drop-off plants (processing) and they will pay ya pretty good for the live hog. They sell it as an "exotic" meat somewhere over seas???? Go figure...anyone who has ever seen a wild hog knows there is nothing exotic about it

 

I'm going to be hunting in Shackelford County, east of Abilene. I will be there the first week of February. I have friends that tell me they go with friends in Florida where they hunt hogs with dogs and catch them live. Uh, no, not this guy. It might be fun, but I would rather shoot them. My dad used to raise hogs and some of those dang things could get pretty mean, so I imagine what a wild boar could do. Dad was also a livestock buyer, and when I was young we would go help him move the hogs from pen to pen, or load them into the stock trucks. We used slap sticks, which had a wooden handle and a heavy canvas flap, about 4"x20" attached at the end, and we used shock sticks, which were battery powered shockers that you used to get the hogs attention and get them to move. Even with those things, it was dang difficult to get the hogs to go where you wanted them to go. I don't think they felt a thing. No, I think I will shoot them. I am also looking to bring back a couple of good eaters, I'm not really that interested in a wall hanger.

On a side light, it was 50 degrees here in Minnesota yesterday. I took my Competitor 30.06 pistol out to the range after I remounted the 2x7 scope. I took 5 shots at 100 yards off a sandbag, and put all 5 within a 1.5" circle. Man do I love that pistol. I wasn't even really trying for a good group, but that thing just shoots. I was using 180 grain powerpoints. I think this thing will do just fine on hogs.

 

I used to have a Lone Eagle 7mm-08 (my namesake). I sold it to buy a new Browning Gold for pheasant hunting. It was a fun gun to shoot and really rocked the ear drums even with hearing protection. It had interchangable barrels ranging from a .22 cal to a .300 Win Mag. I had it topped off with a Burris 1.5-4x scope.