Damo Hart tells how he has been hammering the local feral pigs with his new Weatherby Vanguard.
When I won a Weatherby Vanguard in the Hunter’s Gallery competition, I chose .270 Winchester for my calibre, which has proven to be an excellent combination.
I really love the feel of the rifle in my hands; it is very comfortable to handle and shoot, and very accurate.
After several outings without spotting anything to christen it with, I had a run of luck over a week and a half and managed to bag 10 pigs with it in all.
It started with a young boar which was feeding alone. I was out with two of my hunting buddies as we sussed out the deer action on my favourite block. A simple stalk and a single shot from 100m dropped him so fast I actually thought he got away!
Three days later I went for a stalk at a location where my cameras had been monitoring two boars that were working a wet gully at very inconvenient hours of the night.
This time, I caught one out on his own just after dawn. Again, a short stalk and a single shot from around 100m dropped it on the spot.
The following weekend I was out checking my cameras for deer on the original block again and came across a good-sized sow and a litter of piglets ripping up the only open area on the property — and only about 50 yards from where I shot the first boar!
I stalked towards them and just before I got settled behind a tree, a vagrant breeze gave me away and a couple of the piglets started to run, but luckily the sow stood there sniffing the air for just long enough for me to drop her where she stood.
I picked off one of the piglets as they fled into the cover behind them.
I quietly stalked towards their grunting sounds and managed to pop two more in between the trees before the others ran into thicker cover.
I collected them and was lining up the four for a photo when I heard the others grunting again over a little ridge to my right, so I sneaked over to see.
They were bunched up among some trees, making their way across the gully floor. I sat on the wet grass and picked off three more from about 60 paces, then winged another, and as I moved up to finish it off I managed to get one more before the lone runt managed to get away into cover too thick to shoot in, and I had one bullet left.
All in all, the new rifle is doing a smashing job of thinning the pig population!
This story was Damo’s entry in the Hunter’s Diary competition, in which you could win one a several Vortex optics courtesy of Extravision. Find out how to enter.
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