There’s something about sneaking in on hogs under starlight with the wind in your face. I had them on camera and parked about 250yds away and started slowly stalking in from downwind. I count my steps trying to calculate my distance and start slowing down considerably as I get closer and start smelling them.

Once you catch their scent you ease along tree to tree keeping the scent strong in your face until you can hear the soft feeding grunts and finally the chomping of their teeth. You bring the gun to your shoulder, eyes closed, because it seems to improve the other senses.

Your pointed to the sound and smell and open your eyes looking in the scope as you click on the red light. It’s at that point that you realize you have gotten a little too close, lol! You find the biggest in the sounder and squeeze the trigger.

At the shot it’s nothing but a dust cloud in your face due to the high winds. The fact that the dust continues let’s you know your aim was true as one is lying there kicking his last bit of life away. You’re scanning side to side to make sure all the others left and not coming at you.

When all is clear, you click the light back off and wait until your heartbeat settles back down and the rush of adrenaline subsides. The night slowly returns to normal and you ease up to make sure the hog is down for good.
After hauling the big boar off, the deer were back feeding in less than 40 minutes.

Wanna be that sounds like a good time to me

been out trapping pre dawn and all the eyes looking back at my red head lamp

not really anything we can hunt besides raccoon and coyotes like that here in the dark but it does sound like a rush

I have walked up on deer to about 5 yards and popped on the white light and the freeze just stuck there for what seems like an eternity but is probably 5-10 seconds

I can see why people did it , a skill for hard times I would say for sure.

Wanna Be Nice size pig and a good story to go with it

Brings back memories of my central Florida days

...and a head shot too.....

Or a skunk.

I shot this hog last night. Third time is a charm. I shot him three months ago in the front shoulder with a 6.5 grendel and he was back on camera a month later with a crippled rt front leg. I shot him a month ago with a 12 ga load of BB Hevishot. He was back on camera two days later. I have gone after him at night several times - only to find he had already left when I got there. Set the alarm for midnight last night. Woke up and looked at text pics and he was in a spot I feed the deer - gorging on expensive feed. I pulled on my clothes and headed out on the ranger. Walked in the dark the last 200 yards. Couldnt find the hog in the thermal where he was supposed to be. I had bush hogged a 100 yard area for my field of fire. Found him in the thermal just about to exit the field. He didnt run off from the .450 bushmaster. I have embraced my hogs. We have no quail, no rabbits, very few turkeys or ducks. We have deer and hogs. I fire my gun maybe once or twice a year at deer. I might shoot a couple hundred times at hogs.

That's a true feral WannaBe! Didn't realize Hampshires were in the wild, very interesting!

I see a fair bit of Hamp blood in the hog population on one of my properties. Eight miles away, the Hampshire characteristic is fairly rare. I probably average killing 100 or so hogs a year and maybe 10% have Hamp coloring. But that percentage is biased as I tend to pick hamps to shoot when there isnt an obviously big or pregnant hog in the bunch.

Nothing like stepping om a snale. Nothing feel like it.

I wear snake boots at night walking so I don’t really worry about them. Luckily the only times I’ve been hit were in snakeboots. Feels like someone taking a good size branch and whacking your boot with it. The first time I didn’t even realize it until I looked down.

And man I’m jealous of a thermal. I just put the Wicked light on my AR and flip it on when I get to where I can smell or hear them. Spartan cameras are my “thermal” so to speak. I will have one one day and when I get it I’m gonna take a week off of work and sleep all day and hunt a week straight all night and shoot anything 4 legged that ain’t a deer, lol.

I count my steps the first 100-150yds to give me an idea after I check the map and see how far away I am when I start. The good straight wind last night gave them away at over 100yds. I actually got almost too close. Just kept going tree to tree until the stench was strong and I could hear the teeth chomping on the peanuts. Corn is a lot easier to hear, but I’m cheap and the peanuts are free. When I hit the light they were probably less than 30yds. People tell me you can’t kill hogs with a red or green light and our hogs don’t seem to mind it at all. They one shot was the biggest and first to raise his head, so he was first in the scope.

I was going back tonight, but the hog guys are coming tomorrow and I told them I’d hold off. We’re supposed to have three groups with dogs in the morning so hopefully we’ll get a few more.

As far as the Hamp in him, he only had it on one side…the other side was solid black. I’ve never seen anything like it before.

Most of ours are black or mousy gray
But we get the occasional hampshire and gloucester old spots

My good buddy loves the spotted ones, calls them exotic swine
I don't discriminate, I kill them all!

Interesting stuff, I'm glad we don't have them here.

Yukon, yes be glad. I hate them! They will run off our deer. I was hunting my climber after a buck and heard deer blowing near my ladder stand. Through optics I could see deer running then stopping to blow. I just knew we had a trespasser, so I climbed down, went to the truck and swapped out bow for the AR and went hunting. Instead of someone, it was a stinking hog. Shot him and by the time I drug him to the road and went back to the truck, the deer were back in feeding, lol. I haven’t found anyone that has hogs say they are glad they have them!

This is a pic at 0630ish this morning after shooting the hog last night…didn’t affect them at all!

Heck wannabe the one and only hog I shot was off a feeder in Florida. They scattered after the shot but before to long a few were back out and one was rooting under the dead boar for the corn he fell on. Most stayed in the thick stuff but some were coming out within minutes. I would imagine it wouldn't take long in other places either?

It just depends. When I bought my place twenty years ago, we saw and killed a lot of hogs in daylight - including around feeders. As time went on, they became more and more nocturnal. Now, they are almost totally nocturnal - rarely see one in daylight. Not only are they nocturnal, most dont show up on cell cam until two in the morn and gone by five in morning.

I spend more time and ammo hog hunting than any other hunting sport. In our state, it is legal 24/7/365