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WINCHESTER HUNT ON TEJON -- Jim Matthews-ONS -- 24jul02
Short magnums up to task on Tejon hog hunt
LEBEC -- The group of four young boars was at the edge of a big, open saddle between two deep oak canyons on the Tejon Ranch. The wind was in our face and the hogs were just 150 yards away. It was a perfect set up. But as I propped the rifle into the cross-sticks, two of the hogs took off at a dead run and the other pair went on alert. Something that had taken such a long time in coming was now happening all too fast.
Ever since last fall, when Winchester announced at the National Association of Sporting Goods Wholesalers (NASGW) Show it would be bringing out a new .270 short magnum, I had been chomping at the bit to get my hands on one.
At the Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show in early February, I sat down behind a new Browning rifle in the .270 Winchester Short Magnum (WSM) at a range in Las Vegas and proceeded to shoot two, three-shot groups around an inch -- actually both just under that -- with factory loads. Dave Campbell, a former Western Outdoor News writer who's now the editor of the NRA's Shooting Illustrated, then proceeded to heckle me while I broke a couple of clay targets set up at 200 and 300 yards with the same rifle. He then sat down behind the same gun and started breaking apart a hubcap-sized red rock on a hillside past the last rifle berm a very long way away. Let's just say over 400 yards.
It was a pretty impressive display of what can be done with a rifle that has an extremely flat trajectory. We walked a way from the bench, our mouths still half ajar and stood next to each other looking back at the red rock way out there on the hillside. Campbell mumbled something like, "That would have been a very dead elk."
Campbell and I have known each other a long time, and we mostly give each other grief, but we agree a lot about big game rifles. Standing there that February day, we both came to the same conclusion -- we wanted one of these .270 WSMs in a Winchester Model 70 Featherweight for our Western hunting. There was obviously nothing wrong with the Browning A-Bolt, but we're just Winchester Model 70-kind of guys at heart. Blame Jack O'Conner.
Fast forward this scene a few months to me thundering across Highway 138, going faster by the minute, rushing to get to the Tejon Ranch to meet Kevin Howard, a public relations specialist for Winchester and Browning firearms and Winchester ammunition, along with a host of other companies. Kevin had invited me to join nine other writers on the Tejon to shoot a couple of hogs with the new Winchester short magnums and the new Platinum Tip shotgun slugs. He didn't have to twist my arm when he said he would have a .270 WSM there to shoot. I drove faster.
It turned out I wasn't late and we were all caravaning up to one of the Tejon's lodges by mid-afternoon two Fridays ago with permits in hand and pig tags stamped with the Tejon's emblem. I was honored to be with a group ripped off the mastheads of the nation's biggest hunting and shooting magazines -- Lee Hoots, editor of Guns & Ammo, his two associate editors, Payton Miller and Aaron Decker, Scott Rupp, editor of Petersen's Hunting magazine, his wife Diana Rupp, who is editor of Wing & Shot magazine, well-known freelance gun writer Dick Metcalf, Fishing & Hunting News regular contributor Jim Niemiec, Jan Libourel, the editor of Gun World magazine, and Jerry Springer, who runs the Western Hunter website and has a new television show.
There was time to make sure the rifles and shotguns Howard had brought were tacked in and shooting right on for each of us, and then we headed out to hunt. Springer and I hunted with young guide Jason Williams that first evening, and we immediately found a group of hogs with perfect meat-sized pigs. After following them on foot for an hour, Springer eased down a ridge with a Winchester Model 1300 scoped slug gun to within 20 yards of the hogs. When they flushed like a covey of quail, Jerry shot them that way, picking one bird -- I mean one pig -- and keeping after it.
His first shot clipped his pig's flank as it crossed right to left, so he swung further forward for his next shot and sagged the hog with the big slug hitting mid-hog just below the spine. Amazingly, the hog kept on its feet and veered away from Springer, and the next shot took it almost in the same place but angled out through the far shoulder this time and the pig went down hard, kicking it's last.
"That was really neat," said Springer, standing over the young 150-pound sow, and it grew dark. "It was like shooting sporting clays."
We were the first one's back to the lodge, but before 30 minutes had passed, the meat pole was sagging. Nearly everyone had taken at least one hog that first evening, and several hunters had taken two pigs. The wounds left by the big slugs in Springer's hog -- and several of the other hogs taken with shotguns -- were gaping and impressive. Most dropped on the spot or within a very few yards. There were no surprises with the rifles and the new ammo. Most of the hunters were shooting the new 7mm Winchester Short Magnum and Fail Safe slugs, a bullet that has been used at similar velocities in other rounds successfully all over the world on game. Most were quick, one-shot kills.
As with most hunting camps, we stayed up way too late telling stories and laughing, and the 4 a.m. wake-up call was too early. But the thought of getting to carry a Model 70 Featherweight in the field again -- and in the hot new .270 WSM to boot -- made it easy to get up. It was my turn this morning.
Tejon guide Steven Ryan and I eased up the main road at first light still talking about where we should go when we saw a group of small pigs right next to the road. We glassed them quickly and saw there was nothing over 80 pounds and went back to discussing. It was getting pretty light so we turned up the road to a place I call Gatlin Flat, thanks to a hunter on one of the Turner's Outdoorsman hunts who emptied his Model 94 here in rapid fire. It was a big, open saddle that was a natural crossing and feeding place for the hogs. I had taken a hog there before and knew of at least five or six others taken in this spot, so we eased up the road.
When we spotted the four boars, it didn't take long to move into position with the shooting sticks and cradle the .270 WSM for the shot. Then the hogs were running. At first, I thought they had panicked, somehow detecting us, but it was just two of the boars doing a little fighting, and things calmed down. Steven pointed out the bigger of the four boars. The young boar turned to face us from behind a log, and the crosshairs settled low on his chest and the gun roared, almost on its own.
As I came out of recoil, I couldn't see the pig and lifted my head up off the stock only to see running hogs.
"Which one is mine?" I asked Steven, swinging on the nearest hog, thinking my boar was one of the runners.
"That one's down," said Steven. "Do you want to take a second boar?"
It only took about two seconds of pondering that question. These were all nice 150- to 175-pound meat hogs, and I had been on five hunts on the Tejon this year where I didn't get to shoot a hog while other guys filled the meat pole. Besides, my freezer was almost out of wild pork. I swing over to another of the boars that had stopped under an oak. As I got the crosshairs on him, he broke into a trot and I swung out onto his nose and began a fast squeeze on the trigger. Just before the shot broke, I had a niggling feeling I was leading too much with this fast round. Boom!
The boar spun around squealing with a shot through his nose just ahead of the brain. I worked the bolt, the short-action cycling quickly and easily, and put a second shot through his front quarters to put the hog down instantly.
Two hogs down in less than 15 seconds with the new .270 WSM. That sort of action will cinch a deal for you. I stood over the two pigs looking at the rifle and holding one of the stubby cartridges in my fingers.
Ever since my own Model 70 Featherweight in .270 Winchester, O'Conner's .270 round, had gone to the bottom of the Gallatin River in a canoe mishap on a whitetail hunt several years ago, I found myself missing the gun. I missed it a lot and I'd planned to replace it. But I never did. A year or so ago, I had even tried to put Dave Campbell's new .270 Featherweight in my truck more than once while on another hog hunt. He caught me each time. Standing there over the two hogs, I suddenly knew why I'd somehow waited.
Since the two hogs had died on opposite sides of a little two-track through the flat, we were able to have then field dressed and on Steven's Jeep in about 20 minutes. We were back in camp a little over an hour after we'd left. Because I were first back the night before and the first back the following morning, there were several writers who were convinced that I really never left camp.
Within two hours, the writers and guides had brought in another batch of hogs. In less than a 12-hour period, there were 18 wild hogs taken on the Tejon Ranch by 12 hunters. By the end of the weekend, the tally was 23 pigs, and easily could have been 24, but Scott Rupp decided that three hogs in the freezer -- Diana's two and his one -- were more than enough at one time.
This was the first hunt where the new 7mm WSM was used in the field, so I was the only one who shot the .270 WSM. Diana Rupp made a terrific shot at 342 yards on a big boar as it angled up a hill with the 7mm, dropping it with a single slug through the heart. Aaron Decker made a shot, also with a 7mm WSM, at a snick over 400 yards on his big boar, but the huge hog required a follow-up shot.
We stayed up late again Saturday night talking because everyone had to tell everyone else their stories. Since someone had brought wine for after the hunt, the stories got much better as the evening wore on. If you read their versions in various publications later this year, call me and I'll tell you how much hyperbole seeped in.
Dave Campbell was conspicuous by his absence on this hunt, but knowing how much he would have loved to have been there shooting the Model 70 in this new .270 WSM, I'm going to call him this week and rub it in. Friends do things like that for each other.
Short magnums up to task on Tejon hog hunt
LEBEC -- The group of four young boars was at the edge of a big, open saddle between two deep oak canyons on the Tejon Ranch. The wind was in our face and the hogs were just 150 yards away. It was a perfect set up. But as I propped the rifle into the cross-sticks, two of the hogs took off at a dead run and the other pair went on alert. Something that had taken such a long time in coming was now happening all too fast.
Ever since last fall, when Winchester announced at the National Association of Sporting Goods Wholesalers (NASGW) Show it would be bringing out a new .270 short magnum, I had been chomping at the bit to get my hands on one.
At the Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show in early February, I sat down behind a new Browning rifle in the .270 Winchester Short Magnum (WSM) at a range in Las Vegas and proceeded to shoot two, three-shot groups around an inch -- actually both just under that -- with factory loads. Dave Campbell, a former Western Outdoor News writer who's now the editor of the NRA's Shooting Illustrated, then proceeded to heckle me while I broke a couple of clay targets set up at 200 and 300 yards with the same rifle. He then sat down behind the same gun and started breaking apart a hubcap-sized red rock on a hillside past the last rifle berm a very long way away. Let's just say over 400 yards.
It was a pretty impressive display of what can be done with a rifle that has an extremely flat trajectory. We walked a way from the bench, our mouths still half ajar and stood next to each other looking back at the red rock way out there on the hillside. Campbell mumbled something like, "That would have been a very dead elk."
Campbell and I have known each other a long time, and we mostly give each other grief, but we agree a lot about big game rifles. Standing there that February day, we both came to the same conclusion -- we wanted one of these .270 WSMs in a Winchester Model 70 Featherweight for our Western hunting. There was obviously nothing wrong with the Browning A-Bolt, but we're just Winchester Model 70-kind of guys at heart. Blame Jack O'Conner.
Fast forward this scene a few months to me thundering across Highway 138, going faster by the minute, rushing to get to the Tejon Ranch to meet Kevin Howard, a public relations specialist for Winchester and Browning firearms and Winchester ammunition, along with a host of other companies. Kevin had invited me to join nine other writers on the Tejon to shoot a couple of hogs with the new Winchester short magnums and the new Platinum Tip shotgun slugs. He didn't have to twist my arm when he said he would have a .270 WSM there to shoot. I drove faster.
It turned out I wasn't late and we were all caravaning up to one of the Tejon's lodges by mid-afternoon two Fridays ago with permits in hand and pig tags stamped with the Tejon's emblem. I was honored to be with a group ripped off the mastheads of the nation's biggest hunting and shooting magazines -- Lee Hoots, editor of Guns & Ammo, his two associate editors, Payton Miller and Aaron Decker, Scott Rupp, editor of Petersen's Hunting magazine, his wife Diana Rupp, who is editor of Wing & Shot magazine, well-known freelance gun writer Dick Metcalf, Fishing & Hunting News regular contributor Jim Niemiec, Jan Libourel, the editor of Gun World magazine, and Jerry Springer, who runs the Western Hunter website and has a new television show.
There was time to make sure the rifles and shotguns Howard had brought were tacked in and shooting right on for each of us, and then we headed out to hunt. Springer and I hunted with young guide Jason Williams that first evening, and we immediately found a group of hogs with perfect meat-sized pigs. After following them on foot for an hour, Springer eased down a ridge with a Winchester Model 1300 scoped slug gun to within 20 yards of the hogs. When they flushed like a covey of quail, Jerry shot them that way, picking one bird -- I mean one pig -- and keeping after it.
His first shot clipped his pig's flank as it crossed right to left, so he swung further forward for his next shot and sagged the hog with the big slug hitting mid-hog just below the spine. Amazingly, the hog kept on its feet and veered away from Springer, and the next shot took it almost in the same place but angled out through the far shoulder this time and the pig went down hard, kicking it's last.
"That was really neat," said Springer, standing over the young 150-pound sow, and it grew dark. "It was like shooting sporting clays."
We were the first one's back to the lodge, but before 30 minutes had passed, the meat pole was sagging. Nearly everyone had taken at least one hog that first evening, and several hunters had taken two pigs. The wounds left by the big slugs in Springer's hog -- and several of the other hogs taken with shotguns -- were gaping and impressive. Most dropped on the spot or within a very few yards. There were no surprises with the rifles and the new ammo. Most of the hunters were shooting the new 7mm Winchester Short Magnum and Fail Safe slugs, a bullet that has been used at similar velocities in other rounds successfully all over the world on game. Most were quick, one-shot kills.
As with most hunting camps, we stayed up way too late telling stories and laughing, and the 4 a.m. wake-up call was too early. But the thought of getting to carry a Model 70 Featherweight in the field again -- and in the hot new .270 WSM to boot -- made it easy to get up. It was my turn this morning.
Tejon guide Steven Ryan and I eased up the main road at first light still talking about where we should go when we saw a group of small pigs right next to the road. We glassed them quickly and saw there was nothing over 80 pounds and went back to discussing. It was getting pretty light so we turned up the road to a place I call Gatlin Flat, thanks to a hunter on one of the Turner's Outdoorsman hunts who emptied his Model 94 here in rapid fire. It was a big, open saddle that was a natural crossing and feeding place for the hogs. I had taken a hog there before and knew of at least five or six others taken in this spot, so we eased up the road.
When we spotted the four boars, it didn't take long to move into position with the shooting sticks and cradle the .270 WSM for the shot. Then the hogs were running. At first, I thought they had panicked, somehow detecting us, but it was just two of the boars doing a little fighting, and things calmed down. Steven pointed out the bigger of the four boars. The young boar turned to face us from behind a log, and the crosshairs settled low on his chest and the gun roared, almost on its own.
As I came out of recoil, I couldn't see the pig and lifted my head up off the stock only to see running hogs.
"Which one is mine?" I asked Steven, swinging on the nearest hog, thinking my boar was one of the runners.
"That one's down," said Steven. "Do you want to take a second boar?"
It only took about two seconds of pondering that question. These were all nice 150- to 175-pound meat hogs, and I had been on five hunts on the Tejon this year where I didn't get to shoot a hog while other guys filled the meat pole. Besides, my freezer was almost out of wild pork. I swing over to another of the boars that had stopped under an oak. As I got the crosshairs on him, he broke into a trot and I swung out onto his nose and began a fast squeeze on the trigger. Just before the shot broke, I had a niggling feeling I was leading too much with this fast round. Boom!
The boar spun around squealing with a shot through his nose just ahead of the brain. I worked the bolt, the short-action cycling quickly and easily, and put a second shot through his front quarters to put the hog down instantly.
Two hogs down in less than 15 seconds with the new .270 WSM. That sort of action will cinch a deal for you. I stood over the two pigs looking at the rifle and holding one of the stubby cartridges in my fingers.
Ever since my own Model 70 Featherweight in .270 Winchester, O'Conner's .270 round, had gone to the bottom of the Gallatin River in a canoe mishap on a whitetail hunt several years ago, I found myself missing the gun. I missed it a lot and I'd planned to replace it. But I never did. A year or so ago, I had even tried to put Dave Campbell's new .270 Featherweight in my truck more than once while on another hog hunt. He caught me each time. Standing there over the two hogs, I suddenly knew why I'd somehow waited.
Since the two hogs had died on opposite sides of a little two-track through the flat, we were able to have then field dressed and on Steven's Jeep in about 20 minutes. We were back in camp a little over an hour after we'd left. Because I were first back the night before and the first back the following morning, there were several writers who were convinced that I really never left camp.
Within two hours, the writers and guides had brought in another batch of hogs. In less than a 12-hour period, there were 18 wild hogs taken on the Tejon Ranch by 12 hunters. By the end of the weekend, the tally was 23 pigs, and easily could have been 24, but Scott Rupp decided that three hogs in the freezer -- Diana's two and his one -- were more than enough at one time.
This was the first hunt where the new 7mm WSM was used in the field, so I was the only one who shot the .270 WSM. Diana Rupp made a terrific shot at 342 yards on a big boar as it angled up a hill with the 7mm, dropping it with a single slug through the heart. Aaron Decker made a shot, also with a 7mm WSM, at a snick over 400 yards on his big boar, but the huge hog required a follow-up shot.
We stayed up late again Saturday night talking because everyone had to tell everyone else their stories. Since someone had brought wine for after the hunt, the stories got much better as the evening wore on. If you read their versions in various publications later this year, call me and I'll tell you how much hyperbole seeped in.
Dave Campbell was conspicuous by his absence on this hunt, but knowing how much he would have loved to have been there shooting the Model 70 in this new .270 WSM, I'm going to call him this week and rub it in. Friends do things like that for each other.
