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00Spy
12-24-2011, 03:52 AM
I got a chance to hunt with a buddy of mine (Russ) on his land to help deal with feral hogs and to demo my new Pulsar N550 Digisight night and day vision scope for him. The scope was mounted to a Marlin 1895 .45-70 loaded with 325 gr. Leverevolution ammo.



His property is in Montague County, just east of the county seat. We sat in one of his box stands that is located about 140 yards from his feeder. About an hour after we arrived and nearing the end of twilight, Russ spotted a pig under the feeder with his binoculars and told me to shoot it. As I readied my rifle, Russ commented that it was a big pig and estimated the hog's weight at 150 lbs. Needless to say, I didn't need encouragement to shoot it. While I could not see 140 yards with my naked eye, the scope could and did without using IR illumination. I am really starting to like the scope!



I waited until the pig turned sideways and fired. He ran. Russ said he thought he heard the bullet impact. Turns out, the pig was impacted below/behind the ribs as the pig was quartering away, entering the chest cavity from below. There was no exit wound. We waited a bit and then went looking for it. First we went to the feeder where the pig was shot at in hopes of finding a blood trail. There was none. We looked for fresh hog tracks and also found none. So much for tracking it – darned stealth pig. There were hog tracks under and around the feeder, but none were fresh or heading off in the right direction.



So we headed off in the direction it ran which took the pig through some dense vegetation. Still no blood trail. Right after the shot, we had heard quite a bit of noise when the pig went through it and thought that the last 20 seconds or so of noise was the pig's death shuffle. After a brief search, we found him about 100 yards away from the feeder, behind trees and brush from us. The reason why we didn't find a blood trail was because the hog's bullet entry wasn't bleeding. The reason why we didn't find this pig's tracks was because the pig wasn't making normal pig tracks (explained below).



So we loaded the pig in the back of golf cart. As this point, Russ revised his weight estimate for the hog to be at least 200 lbs. I could not tell one way or the other. In my world, there are two weights of hogs. There are hogs you can lift yourself and hogs that you can't. So we took his heart girth measurement. He turned out to be 220 lbs.



Examination the hog revealed some interesting things. His tusks were broken.. He smelled awful (my first stinky boar). Also, it turned out that the hog is mulefooted (hence not finding typical hog tracks). This condition is fairly rare in feral hogs, apparently being able to be traced back to breeding hogs for this condition back in the 1800s, if I recall correctly, though from what I find online, they may have first come to Texas with the Spanish. As a breed, the height of their popularity in the US apparently was in the 1800s and today they are considered amongst the rarest of pig breeds with just a few hundred registered individuals. Being mulefooted is a condition called syndactyly. It results in the pig having a single hoof per foot (like a mule or horse) instead of cloven hooves.



And last, this pig had been spied on the property for the last several months because of a specific wound. The hog was missing a large chunk of flesh over the thoracic vertebrae (the hump) The gash was oriented diagonally across the top of his back and it is still an open wound at tge center of it. The amount of flesh missing was about the area of a softball-sized circle and nearly an inch deep at the center. This pig had not lived a cushy life.



So the new scope worked well. This pig is my longest distance shot and recovered pig. And in what is now a tradition for my family, I will buy a tub of chocolate chip cookie dough for us to celebrate!


http://texashoghunter.com/oldatt/100_1213.JPG

cabledad
12-24-2011, 03:17 PM
I didn't think a 550 scope would stand up to 45 70 with levereoution ammo,I quit them in my 45 70 encore because they were too tough to shoot.Went to remington 405 ammo.Congradulations on your hog.Chuck

00Spy
12-24-2011, 06:08 PM
Hey cabledad,



Thanks for your concern. One of the reasons I got the Digisight was because it was supposed to handle a lot more recoil than the standard NV optics in my price range could handle. The first couple of hogs I took were with a Marlin 1895 with Leverevolution ammo. I really like the gun and like the ammo's performance. So I was bummed to learn that some of the NV gear I have could not handle being mounted on the rifle.



I spoke with folks at both ATN and Night Optics about my scopes and both places said not to shoot anything over a .308 with them. Apparently some of the higher end optics do handle recoil much better, but they also cost about 3-5 times what the Digisight costs.



Pulsar does not rate their scopes by caliber, but by joules. The Pulsar N550 Digisight is rated for up to 6000 joules of muzzle velocity recoil.

http://www.pulsar-nv.com/product.aspx?prid=13



My Leverevolution 325 gr. ammo leaves the barrel of my Marlin 1895 somewhere around 1850-1900 fps.

Your Rem 405 gr. ammo looks like it might be going as fast as 1330 fps.



At 1900 fps, the Leverevolution 325 gr. ammo runs about 3550 joules

At 1330 fps, your 405 gr. ammo runs about 2160 joules



So both our loads are well within the tolerances for the Digisight.



Here is an online ballistic joules calculator. You can plug in the bullet's diameter, weight, and muzzle velocity and see how many joules occur.

http://billstclair.com/energy.html



In using the calculator, it looks like I could make a custom load using the Leverevolution 325 gr. bullet and pushing it out at 2472 fps without exceeding 6000 joules, but just barely and not that I would try, LOL.

cabledad
12-25-2011, 05:04 AM
I know my shoulder is not rated at 6000 joules of engery. I am trying to trade off a encore 300 winn barrel because I don't care for the kick.I have hunted for 25 years with a 7 mag and loved it.Of course it may have to do with open heart last March changing my outlook on life.Merry Christmas

00Spy
12-25-2011, 03:25 PM
I will tell you what. I don't enjoy shooting the .45-70 off the bench for getting it sighted in and such. That is when it gives me the most problems. I don't think my shoulder is rated for 6000 joules either, but when dressed in my winter gear, I have on enough padding that it is like wearing a recoil pad, LOL.



I do think the .45-70 is fine hog caliber in many loadings. :-) So far, I am 4 for 4 with hogs I have shot with it.

cabledad
12-25-2011, 03:34 PM
That recoil pad is what I call my crying towel.It works.