Culled a little guy yesterday

I took a day off from work yesterday afternoon and went up to my place to shoot at the neighbor’s shooting range with target rifles.

We were setting up 600 yards up from the backstop when a sounder of about 9 pigs showed up out of the grove about 500 yards down range from us. There a sow with couple little ones and some medium size ones. We were all set up and went prone on shooting mat looking at the sounder through the scope. Within a minute the sounder had crossed the range and went into grove on the other side. Just then we noticed one pig was still in the range. He was one of the small ones and he was walking on 3 legs as he couldn’t use one of his front legs. He was hopping along a little and then stopped. I wasn’t in the mood to shoot a pig as I just wanted to shoot the target but I felt bad for the little pig and decided to put it out of it’s misery.

My neighbor ranged the pig at 497 yards so I did a quick check on my cheat sheet and calculated that I need to bring up 20 clicks on the scope. As I sight in on the pig he moved about couple yards and then stopped again. One final call on the range gave me 501 yards so I settled the reticle on the center of the shoulder and let it fly. The round hit the shoulder and the pig flopped up a little and then dropped to the ground. I used my 300 Win Mag with my handload of 178gr A-Max @3,045 fps from my rifle. While I have shot targets at longer distance, this was the longest range I’ve shot an animal.

I went up to the pig to check his front right leg but it was hard to tell as the round pretty much removed that side of the shoulder including the leg. He was a little guy of about 12 lb. I didn’t want to spend the time cleaning the pig so I just threw him in the ice chest and then cleaned him later after I finished shooting. One thing I learned is that it’s a lot easier to skin the pig soon after shooting it than later.

The little guy is sitting in my cooler with spices and lemon juice right now and will be going on the grill tonight after work. Yum!

Here is a pic of the little pig. I blurred out some of the wound.

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