While the best of Midwestern bloggers met today at a brew pub in Indy, I spent the afternoon in my gunsmith's basement trying to cobble together a silenced, night vision equipped feral pork killing instrument. Now, I'm waiting for it get dark to see if I can get it to work as intended as well as 'sighted-in'.
Last year the day after Christmas my son, myself, my cousin and a friend took off for a big ranch in western Oklahoma for three days of feral pig hunting. IT WAS A BLAST!
For the un-informed, here's the deal. Feral pigs are becoming a national nuisance, if not an ecological disaster. They destroy crops, destroy and kill off ground nesting game birds, foul water supplies and create erosion problems of nightmarish proportionals. Hell, even the New York Times has officially recognized the problem with an article published in the 'Other Sports' section of the June 21, 2008 edition. Their article states there are estimated 8 million feral pigs running loose in the United States within approximately 37 states and they cause about $800 million worth of property damage each year.
On our December hunting trip we killed 16 of the 'oinkers' in three days and least you think us wanton killers, let me remind you the area where we were hunting is the only place I've ever seen road-killed pigs. (We encountered two the first night.) The locals said they are kind of hard on small cars! Our host said the herds, officially called "sounders", destroy about 4-1/2 acres of wheat every night, which obviously adds to that $800 million figure the NYT quoted.
They are not really 'wild boars' or wild hogs, but domestic pigs gone free.....like several generations ago. The boys in Oklahoma set up solar powered feeders that work as bait sites in order to kill the maximum number possible, but all our efforts resulted in only one and two at a time in terms of body counts per session when our wheat farmer hosts were wishing we could do body counts in the 8 to 20 range at each session.
With that in mind I'm working on what I hope will prove to be the latest word in feral pig elimination tools....a suppressed, night vision equipped AR-15 in .300 Whisper. The night vision is an ITT PVS-14 unit and the AR-15 in .300 Whisper complete with suppressor is a product of SSK industries that I've had for a number of years. Mounting the PVS-14 on the back of the Zeiss scope required some major modifications to get the proper eye relief. We had to move the scope about five inches forward. Now tonight after it gets dark I'm going to try and zero the whole affair and see if it actually works anywhere close to what I hope it will.
The goal is create an accurate, hard hitting, quiet rifle that will require no ambient light to see the pigs at night. Then perhaps we can get in position and create the body counts that would truly made a dent in this situation because pigs have a gestation period of 3 months, 3 weeks and 3 days. That means a single sow can breed twice a year in the wild (3 times in domestic situations) and the boys in Oklahoma are saying their wild hogs are averaging an eight pig average with each wild litter. That mean each sow is replicating herself 16 times each year.
See how this geometric progression business of mother nature can get out of hand?
All The Best,
Frank W. James
Sunday, June 22, 2008
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7 comments:
I thought the gestation period of a pig was 3 months, 3 weeks, 3 days and 3 in the morning...but perhaps that's only domestic sows in confinement.
My dad's a vet (animal doc, not ex-military). When I was younger and had smaller hands and arms than him I was a backup pig puller.
"I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Have fun with that. Make sure and send pics to CA, MA, and IL so their senators can cry.
tweaker
You missed a good time at the blog bash, but I think many of us would have rather been doing what you were doing.
My only regret is we can't do the same thing with Feral humans. The domestic progression has really gotten out of hand there too.
I'm not against folks hunting to feed themselves or even to get rid of varmints. I just wonder what's going to happen in say 3000 A.D. when there is nothing left to hunt but each other.
Joe
There was a problem out on the Olympic Peninsula here in WA, AC, a few years ago, with feral Russian boar. State F&W declared a "no-tag, no limit, 365-day open season."
The season is still in effect, but no one has seen a Russian boar on the Olympic Peninsula since about one week into the open season...
Just to give you an idea of how weird the laws in WA can be, one may own a suppressor, but not "use" it.
Here's how to mount your PVS/14 NVS to the rifle.
http://stores.homestead.com/Laruetactical/Detail.bok?no=98
LaRue Tactical has the finest mounting solutions for AR15's and AR10 platforms. If your .308 Whisper is a flat top reciever then this mount is just as easy as flushing a toilet to mount.
It's a lever mount with an adjustment for tightning the mount with the optic to the reciever.
This will work for ya just fine!!!
Wanted to leave another comment about the LaRue Tactical mount for your PVS/14 NVS.
You will only need to move the scope up about another 2-3" on the top reciever with this mount.
It's one of the best mounts in the industry for the PVS/14 NOD and most all LaRue Tactical mounts are far ahead of the competition on the market today.
www.laruetactical.com
Ask for Black or Austin. Both are incredibly knowledgable with the AR15 and AR10 style platforms and how optics should and should not be mounted.
What variable scope are you using ??? and what kind of ring mounts ? You could mount your variable powered scope on one of their SPR mounts. It also is lever mount with the same outstanding quality that you'd expect from LaRue Tactical.
Hope this helps.
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