Hey everyone,
don't know if you remember me posting the Remington 700 Carbine .308 I found in my attic. Well, I cleaned the thing up, shot a box of rounds through it and went out hunting.
We started about 30 minutes before light and hiked about an hour until we were at the beginning of our hunting trail. We crossed about 3 valleys and we heard a grunt on the side we had just come from. I set up under a guava tree and aimed in the direction we heard the hog. It was too thick and we were looking down through trees at the thing. We didnt even see it, but it was making lots of noise, probably thought we were pigs and was trying to talk to us or something. So we sat and rested for about 30 minutes in hopes we would spot the thing in an open patch and get a shot off. The shot would have been about 70 yrds and downhill. We decided to pass up the hog after about 10 minutes of not hearing it clambering around the loose lava rocks in the valley.
We hiked for about 3 more hours of hiking, we finally started to come to the end of our trail. It pretty much dead ended into a mess of blue bush. Swampy ground underneath, huge puddles and clay mud. It was a mess getting through this. Literally so thick we could climb on top of the trees. Im sure we made so much noise with our machetes and falling through the bushes that we scared every pig out of there. After busting our asses through this bush for about an hour we finally got the other side, crossed a river and were in the rose apple forest. It was rose apple season and the ground was littered with them. This small patch of trees is my friends secret hunting ground, one of the few places rifle huntable for hogs on Kauai where you dont need dogs. We got to the edge of it, it's probably about 7 acres big, with a river running through the center. The rose apple trees grow to be about 20 feet tall, with smaller ones around 5 ft underneath.
When we got in, the sign was present. Fresh tracks everywhere, the trails were worn down like half a foot into the muddy soil. Most of the tracks were around 120lb size, with some smaller ones, a bunch of piglets and a few giant 200+ tracks. I sat up in a tree to beging with and my friend pushed through the northern side of the rose apples. I was up in the tree for about 40 minutes when I hear *pak pak.....pak*. The sound of my friends Ruger 10/22. He had been sitting on the river bank when he heard something coming down the river, splashing. He set up and waited, when the hog came around the corner, it must have saw him and spun around, thats when the first two shots were fired, a miss and a lung shot. the third shot must have missed as well. The thing took off and he called me on the radio to tell me what happened. There was no blood trail so we said we'd look for it after sweeping the rest of the forest. We started to walk south on the east side of the patch on a trail that went around the perimeter.
About halfway through the patch, my friend froze, and me being the dummy that I am took like three more steps and heard thunder. There must have been like 4 or 5 good size pigs in the herd, because I could feelthose things running like 20yrds away from me. Cursing my stupidness we kept moving. My friend chose to probe into the rose apples and I stayed on the perimeter. So I kept going and started to here this wheezing noise, like something snoring. So I stood still for awhile and checked my surroundings out. There was a huge fallen log probably from Hurricane Iniki in 1992. Right behind the log like 20yrds away there was a skinny little rose apple tree with like 3 leaves at the top moving. Every time I'd hear the wheeze, the leaves would move. So I was like 'yeeees...'. I crept up behind the log and sure enough like 10 yrds away there was a hog lying on the ground, I stood there for about 5 minutes watching the thing, I couldn't tell which way was the head and which was the butt, so I just held my gun on the thing and waited until maybe I could tell. I guess the thing must have smelt me and jumped up, let a squeal and took off. I squeezed off a round, heard the pig fall and start squealing. Then I could hear it take off again crashing through the bushes and stopping, the moving again, then stopping. So I jumped up on the log in case the thing decided it didn't like me.
It had laid down again like 50 yrds from where I fired my first shot. I threw the bolt and chambered another round, it's back was facing towards me and it was lying on its side. I aimed right for where its head meets its neck and fired another round. The thing got flipped over from the .308 bullet to the neck, made a hole the size of a baseball through its spine.
Turns out, the pig my friend had shot at with his 10/22 was the same thing. It had run about 400 yrds or maybe a little more from where he shot it. One 22 bullet went through one lung. The wheezing I heard was a sucking chest wound. The thing would have laid there and died and never been found. Dont use a .22 unless you have a guranteed brain shot. Or if its like 40lbs or under I would use it in the vitals. My first shot from the .308 blasted straight through the things snout, I don't have a good pic on my computer of it, but it broke one tusk and destroyed the bottom jaw and nose of the hog. Second went in the back of the neck, broke through the spine and exited out the neck. The shooting this day was less than perfect, but we got the job done.
By the time we had the thing gutted and skinned and deboned it was about 5:30 and we were still a good 4 or 5 hour hike from the truck. So my friend went ahead and started cutting us a trail out of there. I had about 35-40 lbs of meat in my backpack. We didn't get out until about 11 at night, needless to say I slept like a baby that night. Fun day...
here's some pics
evan
don't know if you remember me posting the Remington 700 Carbine .308 I found in my attic. Well, I cleaned the thing up, shot a box of rounds through it and went out hunting.
We started about 30 minutes before light and hiked about an hour until we were at the beginning of our hunting trail. We crossed about 3 valleys and we heard a grunt on the side we had just come from. I set up under a guava tree and aimed in the direction we heard the hog. It was too thick and we were looking down through trees at the thing. We didnt even see it, but it was making lots of noise, probably thought we were pigs and was trying to talk to us or something. So we sat and rested for about 30 minutes in hopes we would spot the thing in an open patch and get a shot off. The shot would have been about 70 yrds and downhill. We decided to pass up the hog after about 10 minutes of not hearing it clambering around the loose lava rocks in the valley.
We hiked for about 3 more hours of hiking, we finally started to come to the end of our trail. It pretty much dead ended into a mess of blue bush. Swampy ground underneath, huge puddles and clay mud. It was a mess getting through this. Literally so thick we could climb on top of the trees. Im sure we made so much noise with our machetes and falling through the bushes that we scared every pig out of there. After busting our asses through this bush for about an hour we finally got the other side, crossed a river and were in the rose apple forest. It was rose apple season and the ground was littered with them. This small patch of trees is my friends secret hunting ground, one of the few places rifle huntable for hogs on Kauai where you dont need dogs. We got to the edge of it, it's probably about 7 acres big, with a river running through the center. The rose apple trees grow to be about 20 feet tall, with smaller ones around 5 ft underneath.
When we got in, the sign was present. Fresh tracks everywhere, the trails were worn down like half a foot into the muddy soil. Most of the tracks were around 120lb size, with some smaller ones, a bunch of piglets and a few giant 200+ tracks. I sat up in a tree to beging with and my friend pushed through the northern side of the rose apples. I was up in the tree for about 40 minutes when I hear *pak pak.....pak*. The sound of my friends Ruger 10/22. He had been sitting on the river bank when he heard something coming down the river, splashing. He set up and waited, when the hog came around the corner, it must have saw him and spun around, thats when the first two shots were fired, a miss and a lung shot. the third shot must have missed as well. The thing took off and he called me on the radio to tell me what happened. There was no blood trail so we said we'd look for it after sweeping the rest of the forest. We started to walk south on the east side of the patch on a trail that went around the perimeter.
About halfway through the patch, my friend froze, and me being the dummy that I am took like three more steps and heard thunder. There must have been like 4 or 5 good size pigs in the herd, because I could feelthose things running like 20yrds away from me. Cursing my stupidness we kept moving. My friend chose to probe into the rose apples and I stayed on the perimeter. So I kept going and started to here this wheezing noise, like something snoring. So I stood still for awhile and checked my surroundings out. There was a huge fallen log probably from Hurricane Iniki in 1992. Right behind the log like 20yrds away there was a skinny little rose apple tree with like 3 leaves at the top moving. Every time I'd hear the wheeze, the leaves would move. So I was like 'yeeees...'. I crept up behind the log and sure enough like 10 yrds away there was a hog lying on the ground, I stood there for about 5 minutes watching the thing, I couldn't tell which way was the head and which was the butt, so I just held my gun on the thing and waited until maybe I could tell. I guess the thing must have smelt me and jumped up, let a squeal and took off. I squeezed off a round, heard the pig fall and start squealing. Then I could hear it take off again crashing through the bushes and stopping, the moving again, then stopping. So I jumped up on the log in case the thing decided it didn't like me.
It had laid down again like 50 yrds from where I fired my first shot. I threw the bolt and chambered another round, it's back was facing towards me and it was lying on its side. I aimed right for where its head meets its neck and fired another round. The thing got flipped over from the .308 bullet to the neck, made a hole the size of a baseball through its spine.
Turns out, the pig my friend had shot at with his 10/22 was the same thing. It had run about 400 yrds or maybe a little more from where he shot it. One 22 bullet went through one lung. The wheezing I heard was a sucking chest wound. The thing would have laid there and died and never been found. Dont use a .22 unless you have a guranteed brain shot. Or if its like 40lbs or under I would use it in the vitals. My first shot from the .308 blasted straight through the things snout, I don't have a good pic on my computer of it, but it broke one tusk and destroyed the bottom jaw and nose of the hog. Second went in the back of the neck, broke through the spine and exited out the neck. The shooting this day was less than perfect, but we got the job done.
By the time we had the thing gutted and skinned and deboned it was about 5:30 and we were still a good 4 or 5 hour hike from the truck. So my friend went ahead and started cutting us a trail out of there. I had about 35-40 lbs of meat in my backpack. We didn't get out until about 11 at night, needless to say I slept like a baby that night. Fun day...
here's some pics
evan
