I was hunting for boar with a few people and had taken up position on a road that gave me a great view up and down the road itself, but I could only see into the thick woods about 10m. Is was COLD and I was just standing there in the morning hours hoping that the beater and his dogs would flush something my way. The approved game of the day were young boar, fox and jack-rabbit. After awhile I heard the dogs barking their “We got something on the run!” barks but couldn’t really tell where they were coming from- the deep snow does some weird things to sound in a forest. All of a sudden I hear something coming towards me! Yea!
Safety off, rifle raised (.223 that day), here comes a boar! And boy, if it ain’t moving SLOW. Just a trot run, really. And it is coming straight to me…with 3 small bodies bobbing along behind it- great! A momma boar and 3 yearlings- I see grey hair, not light brown, so they are probably a year old. Can’t really tell the size because they are 10m away and the momma could be big or small, comparatively. But since they are coming to me, a better shot is to be had when they cross the road 3 meters from me…quick clean kill, and I won’t have to go drag it back from the thick woods. Plus, the snow is sorta deep and I can only see the top of the young boar’s bodies, but the road is clear, so I can get a good shot in.
I hear the dogs, and they sound close, real close.
I drop to my knee get the scope on the momma boar, and trace her progress. Two ways that I know how to shoot an animal on the run: track it (follow it as it runs, but it is hard to do with a scope) and spot shot (aim at a point that you know the animal is going to run through and pull the trigger the instant you see the head appear in the cross hairs). I figure on the latter and watch the momma boar go through my hairs and over the road, followed immediately by the first young boar.
My finger starts to pull the trigger. Now, on this rifle it has two triggers. the back one sets the front one for ‘butterfly’- basically the trigger gets half-cocked and all you need to do is breathe hard on the front one and it will fire. Great for accuracy, but I personally hate it because I invariably try to put my finger ON the trigger to wait, and I end up shooting early. So this time I didn’t have it set, I had a normal pull on the front trigger going.
My brain goes into ALARM! mode and I don’t know why, but I stop pulling the trigger. I look up and see the ‘young boar’ and his kin. My brain must have seen the head’s outline and processed the information damn fast, cuz I didn’t conciously recognize the dachshunds. And yes, they are listed in books as ‘wild boar two-coloured long-haired dachshunds’.
I walked up to the path they crossed and saw blood. I should have shot the ‘momma’ boar because it was hurt and couldn’t outrun the dogs. It might have been shot by another hunter within the past day or maybe got in a fight or ??? But it was hurt and going slow.
One of the dog’s owners was further down the hill from me and saw the same thing. He, however, had a clear view of the dogs for a long time and was just shaking his head wondering why the boar was going so slow.
I got handed a damn powerful lesson for free. ALWAYS make sure of your shot. ALWAYS. I don’t think I would have gotten in trouble with the people, it was a very strange thing to have happen, but still, I’d have shot their family pet just because I ‘knew’ I had a clear shot on the young boar.
This is also a reason why I want to get my own rifle, not just borrow my FIL’s. He insists on using scopes in all situations, and I personally can’t stand the damn things in close up hunting like this. A 10 foot shot with a scope? WTF? I want my Browning Lever-action .308 with a heads-up dot scope good to 50 meters MAX, and otherwise doesn’t get in the way when shooting in close-range woods like these (or just go without). With that I would have seen the dogs earlier, not just when a head popped into the cross-hairs.
-Tcat
