fridged cold hog hunt

[jjhack]

Well here is a really nice wild hog I shot this past weekend with my Bow. Check out the thick skin on this bugger. Broadside shots with anything less then perfect placement and a 100% razor sharp broadhead will be big trouble on big old boars. This was shot at 24 yards quartering away and the hog went approx 40 yards falling withing sight of the shot. There was not a single drop of blood on the ground!

I also had the good fortune to shoot the beautiful whitetail with bizzare double antlers. Look close at the bases.

 

[Dampland]

Man, those things would be a little scary at night walking past my stand.

Great shot, and nice buck too!

 

[Speckmisser]

Nice hog, JJ. You definitely have a honey hole up there!

 

[oneclearshot]

That's a Monster Hog for sure Hack! What type of Broadhead did you "Stick" him with? That deer's a nice one too....how do you classify that fella? Is he a "Spike" AND a "Four-by-Five"....or just atypical? Nice huntin' pardner!

 

[Piker]

That's what I call a successful weekend!

nice pics.

Were you hunting in Washington State?

 

[jdhowe75]

Nice hog and buck. What is your archery set-up?

 

[41mag]

Nice tusker fer shur. Also love that rack on your nice deer. The more unusual they are the more I like them, especially when based on a typical frame.

Nice weekend indeed.

Also for some of those bigger hogs, some of the folks I know here who hunt them with bows, have gone back to using the aluminum arrows. This allows them to add about 100gr or so of salt to the inside of the shaft. Upon impact the salt will slam forward and drive the arrow on through the thick plate on the shoulder. This is what they tell me and I figure it must work to some degree as they always seem to bag some decent boars.

Me, I wil just stick to keepin my bullets heavy and supersonic.

 

[bigtusker]

hey Hack, where you hunting these boars?

 

[jjhack]

My archery set up is as follows: Mathews Legacy set at 65-68 lbs, No-peep rear sight, Single pin lever adjustable front sight. I think it's made by HTH? , Beman 400 classics with 125 grain Slicktricks. 5 arrow Mathews quiver. Here is a bit better detail of the trip.

I was gone for the better part of the last two weeks hunting. Being home just a couple days in between. I had some hunting with some of my best friends and in great habitat for several species. I was able to harvest two outstanding animals which made it that much better. The first was an unusual whitetail. I was hunting for a mule deer when this odd whitetail showed at the very last moments of the closing light. We were able to see the antlers were big and he was in a good location for the shot, although the wind was blowing pretty good and it was darn cold too. After seeing him I ranged the distance to between 260-300 yards depending upon where we were on the ridge. It was a steep down hill shot. Because I was wanting a mule deer I was not anxious to shoot this whitetail. However I was not really in a hurry to leave him remaining alive either.

My hunting partner and I must have said "what do you think" back and forth to each other 3-4 times. I finally said "well let me look through my rifle scope and see how steady a shot I could take". I laid prone and tried to settle the crosshairs in the wind. My eyes were watering and it was getting dark fast. ..........Time to shoot or call it a day.

Well as you can see from the photo, I usually take what the bush gives me and this turned out to be an excellent choice. Check out the additional tines comining out of the base. It's as if he was growing another set of antlers!

Ok as if that was not good enough I go up north to hunt with two friends and they have found wild hogs living free near a wild boar rancher who had his fenced terrorized several years ago and claims to have had all 280 hogs of all ages escape. Today the Canadian government offers a 50 dollar bounty for a pair of ears from these hogs. They have killed very few as the region is vast and mostly roadless private ranch/farm land. Wheat barley,and oil being the primary resource.

They had been seeing hogs near dark at a cattle stock pond visible from the only major road in the area. There was a strip of timber between the wheat fields stretching about 4-5 miles and about 100-300 yards wide. There was a lot of debate about how to ambush these hogs. With a rifle the options are more flexable. However I was bow hunting. I needed to be 25-30 yards from the hog and have a still target. After much debate and planning I decided to set up a tree stand where any hogs pushed would go between the pond(frozen solid) and the tree line or edge of the forest. I hung two of my jackets on coat hangers in the forest in line with my stand to act as blockers. The hogs seeing them would hopefully run to the side where I was at. On the edge of the opposite tree line I hung a jacket, and another about half way across the width of the forest. I then drove the others to the main road and dropped them off. There were the three guys I was hunting with. The landowner, his son, and my hunting partner. they would do the slow push. It is critical when doing this that the line remain even. One faster or slower guy will allow game to sneak back through the line. They had about an hour to push the distance we chose. I figured I could sit still in the 15 deg temps that long. After about 30 minutes in the wind 15 feet up in that tree I was feeling cold. My toes were tingling and my face was frozen. I stood and drew my bow and thought about climbing down several times. This was not going to get better and I had no idea where the pushers were even at.

The ground was frozen solid, walking on the leaves sounded like walking on broken florescent light bulbs. Stalking was out of the question. The wind was blowing hard too, especially up in this tree. I had my hat on and my hood up. It was so windy my eyes would water each time I would stare into the wind the direction to drivers were coming from. I stood again to draw my bow a few times and burn some calories to get my blood to circulate. All of a sudden I see a hog fly past my stand as fast as a pig can run. It did not look big but what the heck the plan seemed to be working a little bit anyhow.

A few minutes passed and two very large hogs were coming by. I saw them behind me which would not offer any shot. When they saw the jacket the stopped and stared. I felt a shiver coming on and wondered if I would even be able to shoot accuratelty. The bigger one turned and trotted back the way he came. The smaller one turned and followed. They ran about 100 yards and stopped. I could only see dark spots in the bush. Then they turned and came back towards me. Again they saw the jacket( I suspect)and stopped. They were both 50 yards away. The brown one was just a bruiser with visible teeth. I would say he was 400 pounds and I'm not stretching this one bit. The smaller black colored one was also very large and had smaller visilble teeth.

They seemed stumped as to what they were going to do. The drivers had pushed them and the jackets had stopped them. The bigger one started slowly walking towards the frozen pond. What luck! he will be right where I need him in a few more steps. Then the black one starts following behind. They stop in the bush far to thick to shoot and about 35 yards away. Then another small pig shows up and bites the big brown one. He lets out a squeal and they run around in a circle all around me like some kind of joke! I don't know what to do or which one I can shoot. The little one is a female and mean as the devil. She is so angery, maybe from the drivers pushing her she is biting both the bigger males when ever they get within range of her teeth.

The bigger male is now about 15 yards and all I can see is his head and hind quarters. A tree blocks all the good stuff. The black on comes walking straight to me, also not a good shot. I'm standing and really shivvvvvvering now. Unsure I can even draw my bow! The black one turns slightly and starts to walk away from me. I draw my bow and they all freeze from the little noise they hear. I put my aimpoint on the last rib of the big black hog, allign the rear no-peep sight and slowly squeeze the trigger. At that instant the arrow burries itself 2/3 into the hog. He runs about 25 yards and spins around and around before running about ten more yards. The he stands and wobbles a bit before falling over. ..........Funny it's not nearly as cold for that instant! The other hogs bolt and vanish into the bush. My hands are so cold I'm not sure how I can climb down from this stand.

As far as the salt in the arrow shaft! Well all I can say is good for them. I doubt I would be able to get my arrows to fly well enough with a variable balance point in the shaft. How the heck could you get consistant POI with variable amounts of shifting weight? As far as it providing extra drive to the arrow, I rather doubt that some little bit of salt would provide even a slight improvement over an "unsalted" arrow. I hate to just come right out and say BS but this is sounding some kind of practical joke to the inexperienced archer.

First to have any inertia in the impact you would only be able to fill 1/2 the shaft at the most. So how much weight will 1/2 an arrow shaft hold? Not a whole lot to provide additional impact energy, further the salt would likely only begin moving forward when the shaft stopped. Do we really believe that that tiny amount of salt going about 50-100FPS (due to the reduced speed after penetration)would have enough power to drive the arrow any deeper?

What trajectory will you have with the additional weight of the salt? how much speed reduction do you now have with all that weight? Do we think that the slower arrow with its greatly arched trajectory is somehow going to penetrate deeper then much faster arrow with the thinner carbon shaft and a very flat trajectory?

Sorry but I'm not buying this engineering philosophy. It would make for a lot of laughs at an archery club meeting when told to experienced archers though! That was probably the intent all along! On the otherhand if the folks doing this feel it's a benift to them and they are happy with the percieved improvement then good for them and I wish them well with their hunting.

 

[pigdream]

ok call me silly, but these are in Canada? Nothing in Wa. state right?

 

[41mag]

jjhack,

About the weighted arrows, I was simply passing along what was shown to me, as well as explained why. I have only messed with shooting a bow once in my life. That was when I was a teen ager, and what I was doing could hardly be called anything close to bow hunting from what I see folks doing today.

As for how much weight and so forth, it adds up quicker than you think. When you figure that a 30/06 case hold up to 63GR of powder, it isn't too hard to see where a 30" arrow shaft that is roughly 3/8" in diameter could hold that much salt. As for how it shoots, well I guess it does OK. From what I was told, they stand the arrow up on the knok end and tap it. This settles the salt in the end. Then all they have to do is shoot when the hogs come. As for being BS, well might be, but I doubt seriously that they would buy a box of aluminum arrows and sit around putting salt in all of them if they were just tryin to BS someone. Might be wrong.

I was simply adding what a couple of folks I know here do. Since they have been shooting bows most of their lives and guideing bow huntsfor the past 10 years, I figure they know more about it than me.

 

[jjhack]

41 mag, no offense to you as you have said you have no experience with archery. However this salt in the arrow is right up there with toads giving warts, and snakes biting their tails to form a hoop to roll down long hills. There is no doubt that a heavy arrow penetrates deeper. The moving mass of salt is not any benifit at all though. There is absolutely zero advantage in doing this other then some bubba's with limited knowledge in physics making it up and actually believing its true. Or as I said in the above post making this whole silly story up so they can embarras somebody by having them repeat it!

 

[Rancho Loco]

Originally posted by jjhack@Nov 30 2004, 06:17 AM
snakes biting their tails to form a hoop to roll down long hills..

Hey - it's true! I've seen it...

Nice pig.
Good story.
Great pix.

 

[BOHNTR]

I think I've heard everything now. Salt in an arrow to add kinetic energy. Hhmmmm, okay whatever makes them happy. I don't think I tried that experiment in arrow penetration for my physics experiment in college.

I agree with jjhack, the salt will not add any significant advantage in regards to arrow penetration. Besides, no need to pour salt in an old wound!

(Ha)

 

[gwhunter69]

Great pics...thanks. I wish they were my pics...

 

[PRO Hogger]

Doesnt Steel Force have an Arrow Weighting system? I believe I saw it on there web site. They used it to add wt to carbon arrows.

 

[nofear25]

Great pics.... Congrats.. Nofear

 

[jjhack]

Pro Hogger, maybe they have something to add weight but not an internal moving inertia system to somehow aid in penetration.

A couple problems, why salt? it will corrode the aluminum in time. Why not sand? At least that would be a little more believeable.
Since this is for hogs how can you keep the salt in the back of the arrow when aiming unless always shooting up hill.

The noise of the salt shifting inside the arrow will be quite loud at 20 yards as you have the arrow pointed down and lift the bow up to draw. Since most hunters worry about the noise of the shaft being drawn through a wisker biscuit or across a prong rest the noise of the salt would be far more then then either of those.

Since pigs will be shot at a lower level then the bow is held the arrow tip will nearly always be pointed lower then the knock upon release. Now you have salt spread across the whole arrows length or the majority near the insert. Upon releass the arrow is going 200 plus feet per second and the solt is not moving until the back of the arrow stops it. Imagine the change in velocity and the shock to your accuracy at that moment. If hunting from a tree stand the salt would always be in the tip, not the back.

Now let me explain a thing or two about using an inertia darting system to deliver drugs to big game. As many of you know I'm a Professional Hunter in South Africa. We must dart and move big game frequently. We use an inertia darting system to deliver the M99 to the game which disables them for a while.

The darts are filled with a measured amount of M99, then a spacer which is quite heavy is placed behind the drug inside the cylinder. the remaining space is filled with a fiber batting or thin spacers depending upon the manufacturers recommended practice.

When the 2" long sryinge needle penetrates the hide the much larger aluminum sryinge body hits the skin and comes to an instant dead stop. The inertia weight will slam forward pushing the M99 through the needle and into the animal. This is a far different use then the salt in the arrow theory. First we are pushing fluid and second we have a tightly fitted cylinder with batting and proper balance.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that some of these folks saw something like this on a nature show and figured it might be a good idea for them to try it out. They just forgot that there was drugs inside the dart and batting used as filler to keep the components where they should be during flight.

 

[superduty]

I don't know anything about salt in shafts and impact but I do know a nice hunt when I see one. Outside of the cold it looks like you had a great time. Congrats.

 

[larrysogla]

jjhack,
That boar's head/tusks/snout brings my adrenaline to overflow just by looking at the computer monitor. That must be a real heart pumper seeing it in close action.
Wow!! Congratulations!! God Bless. larrysogla.