It’s 1:30 in the morning under a moonless West Texas sky right in the middle of nowhere. She’s 19 years old, on her first high tech hunt where the animals actually show up. She’s been around guns her whole life. Her dad has hunted and killed plenty of hogs in these very fields over most of the last decade. She didn’t even know she was coming along tonight, but here she is, behind a 300 Blackout Bushmaster Minimalist kitted up with a Sightmark 3-9x scope paired to a Pulsar Core thermal clip-on/monocular. My daughter Lauren is looking at a group of about 25 hogs and another group of 30 beyond them.
How did we get here?
If you’ve ever heard the expression, “The cobbler’s children have no shoes” you understand where this is going. When we’re around something all the time we have a tendency to under appreciate its significance. To my kids, Tactical Hog Hunting is something Dad does, so what’s the big deal? They’ve seen the pictures, they’ve helped photograph and video crazy cool guns and gear. They occasionally get used as props in stories. They are so close to things so cool they simply don’t have a reference point to be amazed by the experiences.
My daughter has known our guide and my long time hunting partner virtually all her life. Jared is the one who dragged me into hunting in the first place. One of my closest friends, he’s invited me back to the family farm again. Lauren spent the week with friends an hour and a half south of this wheat field. Jared and I have been experimenting with Maker Bullets suppressed subsonic .308 ammo using Remington 700s and chasing wild hogs for the past two nights. It’s been good.
The Pulsar Core FXQ38 thermal clip-on paired to Sightmark Triple Duty 3-9×42 DX scope have worked really well. Additionally, the Bushmaster Minimalist I brought is operating flawlessly, both with subsonic 220 grain 300 Blackout from Team Never Quit (TNQ) and supersonic 125 grain solid copper rounds from Maker Bullets. Seventeen feral hogs are down and accounted for while another four crossed property lines before their clocks finally stopped.
The Women's Outdoor News, aka The WON, features news, reviews and stories about women who are shooting, hunting, fishing and actively engaging in outdoor adventure. This publication is for women, by women. View all posts by The WON
