This year has started off pretty good. I've gotten 3 boars and 1 sow in the first two months of the year. I've reconfigured my rifle set-up with my laser back out on the top front of my hand-guard and my red flood light at the right 90 position. I had moved it up to right 45 but there was just a touch of the floodlight's housing hitting the IR illuminator beam to wash the picture out slightly. You can see this affect by moving you hand slowly into the beam and watch the picture lighten up and then go white. Still, I've only been getting stray hogs just after sunset - no sounders.

That all changed last Friday night. I had patterned the hogs on my South feeder to where the sounders were showing up reliably between 930 and 1130p almost every night so was planning to hunt later in the evening. I got down to the feeder just after sunset. I recovered the trailcam's SC card and then let the feeder throw another round of corn before hiking back to camp to study the trailcam images to see if the hogs were still holding to their pattern. On the hike back to camp, I saw a dark spot in the large pasture North of my feeder. The night scope showed it was a lone hog about 200 yards away and no cows in the area. The wind was in my favor so decided to stalk in a bit closer. I used a treeline to block my approach then cut over to step into the field. As I did, a brier bush caught my leaf suit and made a ripping sound as I walked by. I then heard cautionary grunting to my right and swung the scope up to see 2 large sows with one staring right at me 50 yards away - this was a sounder. I immediately shot the first sow between the eyes and tagged the second sow running away.

I then scanned the field and picked up 4 more hogs grouped together at 150 yards (the 4th is behind the one with the crosshairs on it). I shot and connect 3 times but not well enough to stop them from running off and exiting the property.

Note, the actual scope image is at least 4x better than these screen captures (print screen) of the recoil activated video. Both are 3x and, in the longer range image, you can make out the fence at 200 yards. Again, the images are much clearer in the scope.

The recent firmware update fixed the recoil sensitivity so I'm getting reliable video on my shots. While reviewing the scope's video this morning, the 4 hogs were actually starting to come back to see where the lead sow was when I shot. If I had waited for them to get closer, I could have improved me success rate. Essentially, I wiped out this sounder - 2 sows, 4 piglets, and hits on 3 others. It would have been better to recover the three I had hits on but, as it was, I had enough work to do getting the meat off the other sows. The learning process continues ....

Nice shooting!
It's nice to know that you are cutting down on the overpopulation - even if just a bit.