This past weekend we had Bob, owner and operator of Texas Predator Posse and contributing writer for Predator Xtreme magazine come out for a hunt. It was 100 degree's when we started our hunt but it soon started to cool down. After a short ride in the Ranger Crew, Clark my partner @ THC spotted 5 hogs with the thermal FLIR, so I put the 6X Raptor on them to confirm that it was indeed hogs and find our best approach for the stalk. We climbed out and grabbed our shooting sticks and AR's with the night vision scopes and the stalk began. We had to cover close to 400 yards across a cotton field, under a bright moon. Our stalk was made easy because of the ANVIS 9 helment mounted goggles we were wearing, you have such great depth perception with these goggles. Tony Pernales (www.tonyptv.com) was our camera man for the night, he was equiped with a pair of goggles and a night vision video camera. (the big shoulder mount type)

Now I was worried about the lack of cover we had, and such a bright moon, but we worked across the field of knee high cotton, to where a center piviot was irrigating the field. We used the noise of the pump and the piviot itself as a back drop. These hogs never knew we were there, we stalked into @ least 50 yards, set Bob up on his sticks and waited for Tony to give us the green light. When Tony was ready, I told Bob to pick out a big one and let her rip, he must have been cocked and locked waiting on me to make the call, because he fired and a big sow hit the turf. Now the 5 hogs was 4, but just as quick as the sow had dropped, 15 more got up. they were wallowing in the edge of a slough in the middle of the cotton and we had never seen them because of the tall plants. We had hogs running all directions, and Bob was doing some serious work on them. When it was all said and done we had 5 on the ground.

We quickly gathered up our loot and snapped some photo's. After we were done with those hogs , we were back on the Ranger in search for more. Not 15 minutes into the ride, Clark found a lone boar. He was headed our direction, so we stopped and waited to see the point of intersection. We moved on up into positiion and waited on the boar to close the gap. Now he did'nt waste any time getting there, but when he should have stepped up on the levee..........nothing. Clark started trying to get our attention, the big boar had stopped on the side of the levee for a snack, we moved Bob and Tony into position, and when it was right Bob put one Partition behind the ear from about 25-30 yards. That hog reared up on his hind legs as to do a "High Five" then rolled down the steep slope. This bruiser turned out to be Bob's largest hog to date, he was bumping all around the 275# mark. We finished up with one more boar, but he was not even close to being as big a the "High Five Boar" .

So seven hogs was the total for the night, we had a ball and I feel like Bob did too. I hope he got what he needed for his article. Ya'll watch for it in Predator Xtreme coming soon.

Jed