move again. In about four steps the coyote collapsed into the grass, never knowing we were there. Night vision works!
Of course, pigs also can be hunted
during daylight, especially where hunt- ing pressure isn’t quite so high as on Bill Wilson’s pig ranch. They typically feed in the open during early morning and late afternoon, just like deer. My first Texas pig was taken on the huge King Ranch of South Texas, with the Gulf of Mexico in the background. A small herd (technically a “sounder” of pigs, though I have never heard anybody call them that) was feeding on the grassy sand dunes a few hundred yards from shore. Pigs can smell incredibly well and hear pretty well, but can’t see very far, especially when you’re not moving. My guide and I got within range by bending over and duck-walking toward them, freezing anytime the pigs looked in our direction. Finally we ended up on the top of one dune and the pigs on top of another, close to 200 yards away. That’s not very far for a 7mm Remington SAUM, and at the shot the biggest pig, tan with black spots, dropped into the dune-grass. Some parts of Texas have actual
hills, where you can get up a little high- er and glass for pigs in the morning and evening, especially around any likely feeding areas such as creek bottoms or farm fields. Even after some pigs are located, however, there’s often another “problem”: There are indeed a lot of white-tails in Texas, and they come out to feed in the same places. Deer can see a lot better than pigs, and if deer in the neighborhood take off, any pigs prob- ably will too. The second most common method
of hunting Texas pigs is what’s called “safari-style” or “spot-and-stalk.” Mostly this means you drive around on ranch roads and look for pigs. If they’re close enough to the pickup, you shoot them. If not, you get out and make a stalk. I killed a big black boar with a
tan swatch on his face on a ranch north of Abilene in the winter of 2011, using the spot-and-stalk technique, the hunt hosted by Zeiss Optics and the Sauer firearms company. Sauer was introduc- ing their new Model 303 autoloader in North America, a rifle largely designed for hunting driven wild boar in Europe.
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They thought a pig hunt in Texas might be appropriate, partly because Sauer’s North American headquarters are in San Antonio. Pig and coyote hunting are in-
deed probably the two best uses for an autoloader in America. Both animals are often shot running, and with pigs there’s often a herd of targets. The North America auto of choice is an AR-15, because ARs are accurate and can have decent triggers. But military rifles aren’t all that popular among European hunters, sometimes because
they’re illegal, and European pig hunt- ers also prefer larger cartridges than an AR can handle. Many American hunters don’t
think pigs are all that hard to kill. This is understandable, since probably 98 percent of feral pigs taken aren’t big boars, and they’re often shot under feeders at close range. A .223 will do the job neatly when shots can be precisely placed on stationary pigs, and many pig shooters aren’t worried about recover- ing dead pigs, regarding them as giant prairie dogs.
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www.varminthunter.org Page 35
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