Russian Boar – The ExhaustNotes Blog

El Puerco Times Two: Part 2

By Joe Berk

An upfront warning: If you’re squeamish, you should skip this blog.

It rained hard after Tom, John, and I returned from our first day’s hunt, but that was okay. The Dunton Ranch has nice accommodations. Heat, hot water, cooking gear, refrigerator, shower, comfortable bunks, and more. Just bring food and ammo. It’s a gentlemanly way to hunt, and if nothing else, John and I are gentlemen. No more pitching tents and sleeping on the ground for us.

Subaru Outbacks, parked in front of our Dunton Ranch cabin. John and I are both Subie fans.

When Tom picked us up the next morning, he told me my hog weighed 219 pounds, and that he recovered the bullet. It had come to rest just inside the hog’s hide on the opposite side of where I shot it. I was very interested in seeing that bullet. Tom had prepped the hog and two sides of pork were hanging in the Ranch’s freezer. Tom told us he had stood outside in the rain the previous night skinning and dressing it. My pig weighed 219 pounds.

Tom showed me the bullet. My hog was a clean kill, but the bullet had failed. Its lead core separated from the cupper cup. Not that it made any difference to the pig.

My bullet, post impact. The copper jacket should the bullet had mushroomed nicely (which is what you want), but when I turned it over, I was disappointed (see below).

My bullet’s copper jacket. The jacket peeled back nicely. The lead core was gone. It should have still been in the jacket. John’s bullet would behave the way it was supposed to, but mine had not.

Tom told me the bullet had cleanly impacted the hog’s spine and taken out a fist-sized chunk of it. The hog was dead before it hit the ground, but the bullet had separated. It bothered me enough that I called Hornady when I returned home, and I’ll tell you about that later in this blog.

Tom, our guide, and Baja John checking the zero on John’s .25 06 Browning. The zero was exactly where it needed to be. We were good to go.

John’s rifle is a beautiful curly maple Browning A-Bolt chambered in .25 06. That’s a cartridge I had never owned, but not because I didn’t like it. Everything I’ve ever read about the .25 06 has been positive. Flat shooting, accurate, easy to find ammo and brass for…it has all the right things going for it and it rings all the bells. And I love A-Bolt Brownings. John’s rifle is all stainless steel, it has an octagonal barrel, and it wears a Nikon 3×9 telescopic sight finished in silver to match the rest of the rifle. It’s a beautiful firearm.

When John first bought his Browning several years ago, he visited us and we spent some time at the West End Gun Club zeroing it. John hadn’t shot the rifle too much since then, and he wanted to check the rifle’s zero before we hunted. Tom took us to a place where we could do so by firing at a pile of large boulders he knew to be a hundred yards away. John fired two shots and both hit exactly where he intended.

I took my Ruger with me again, but I already had my pig. I didn’t intend to shoot my rifle again unless we encountered a Russian boar.

Yakkety Yak! Yaks on the Dunton Ranch. Shooting a yak is not something that’s made my bucket list. Your mileage may vary.

Although we had seen several Ossabaw hogs yesterday, none were around that second morning. Tom said he had been out earlier (before retrieving us) and he hadn’t seen any pigs, either. He said the previous night’s downpour most likely had driven them away. We did see several yaks and a bison. Dunton keeps a lot of game on his ranch. Neither John nor I had any desire to shoot one of these large animals.

A Dunton Ranch bison. These are too cool to shoot, in my opinion. Your opinion may be different. I respect your right to be wrong.

After riding around in the truck and walking most of the morning, we finally spotted several hogs. Tom scoped them and put the distance at 77 yards. It was John’s turn at bat and he took but a single swing. Just as had occurred the day before, all it took was one shot and it was game over. The .25 06 did its job.

John and his Ossabaw. We both had our pigs for this trip. Our hunt was a success.

When we walked up to the pig, we grabbed a few more photos, including the one of John and I posing behind his pig. It’s the photo you see at the top of this blog.

Tom asked if we’d like to go to one of the blinds and sit around waiting for a Russian to possibly stroll by while he dressed John’s pig. I asked if they would enter this part of the ranch with the Ossabaws present. “Yep, they will,” Tom said. “They’ll mate with the female Ossabaws.”

“I guess they’re not too particular,” I said. John, Tom, and I had a good laugh.

John said he’d like to go back and watch Tom dress his hog. Neither of us had seen that before. I realized I wanted to see it, too. We went back to the ranch proper, and wow, we really had our eyes opened. It’s not like you see meat at the supermarket, all neatly packaged and ready to go.

The first thing Tom showed us was my hog, all dressed out, with both sides hanging in the refrigerator. Tom pointed to where my bullet had hit the hog’s spine. The damage was staggering.

We went back outside and Tom used a Bobcat tractor to lift John’s hog out of the trailer. The hooks had a scale attached, and John’s hog came in at 225 pounds. He outdid me by 6 pounds (not that we were competing).

John and his Ossabaw. The little thing on the chain (it looks like an iPhone) is a digital scale.

Tom went to work on the pig and what followed was amazing. I had no idea dressing out a hog was so labor intensive. It took Tom a good hour and a half, maybe more, to complete the job. It probably would have taken Tom less time if John and I hadn’t asked so many questions and taken so many pictures. All the while, chickens wandered into the area and were eating bits and pieces that fell off the hog as Tom worked on it. They’re carnivores, you know. There were turkeys strutting around, too, but they kept their distance (but not their silence). It was hard not to laugh as the turkeys gobbled up a storm at each other. It reminded me of what passes for political discussion these days.

Speaking of storms, while Tom worked on John’s hog it started raining again. Hard. John and I stepped into the metal building and watched Tom work from under cover. When the rain turned to hail, Tom took a break and joined us in there.

I looked around inside the metal building and realized again that the Dunton Ranch offers all kinds of hunting. It really is an impressive operation. I felt lucky being able to experience it.

The dressing room. Not the kind of dressing room I’d been in before.

Tom finished up his chores on John’s hog and as he neared completion, he found John’s .25-caliber bullet. John used Federal factory ammo with 120-grain jacketed softpoint bullets. Unlike my Hornady bullet, the Federal bullet performed exactly as it was supposed to, mushrooming in a manner worthy of a bullet ad. It was located just under the skin on the opposite side of the hog.

The bottom side of John’s .25-caliber bullet. Note how the copper jacket had flowered out, and the lead adhered to the jacket petals.

The business end of the John’s .25 06 bullet. It mushroomed to more than twice its original diamter and remained intact. This is stellar bullet performance.

That night (which was only the second day we’d been on the Dunton Ranch), John and I decided to head into Kingman for dinner. We could have cooked in our cabin, but we were reveling in our pig-hunting success and we wanted to celebrate. Tom recommended a Mexican restaurant in town (El Palacio) and his recommendation was a home run.

My Mexican plate at El Palacio. It was great!

On Interstate 40, headed back to California, just west of Kingman. It was clear sailing all the way home.

The ride home was enjoyable. It rained hard all night Tuesday and it rained as I was leaving Wednesday morning, but as soon as I passed Kingman I could see the skies clearing. It was an easy ride back to California. I stopped at Del Taco in Barstow and had a taco (they’re the best Del Taco anywhere).

Once I was home, I unpacked, ran a patch soaked in Patch-Out (my preferred rifle solvent) through the No. 1’s barrel, and then I called Hornady. I spoke with a nice guy there and told him what happened with my .30 06 bullet. “It happens,” he said. It’s more likely to happen, he went on, if the bullet is traveling at extremely high velocities or if the game was too close (before the bullet had a chance to slow). I explained that my .30 06 load’s muzzle velocity was just below 2900 feet per second (I knew this because I had chronographed the load, I explained) and the hog was a measured 117 yards away (and I knew this because our guide had a rangefinder). The Hornady man was impressed that I knew all that, and then mentioned that if a bullet strikes bone, it is also more likely to separate. Ding ding ding! That was exactly what happened on my hog.

The Hornady engineer told me that one way to avoid cup and core separation is to use a monolithic bullet (they are made of solid copper, with no lead core). He was almost apologetic when he explained that monolithic bullets are more expensive than lead bullets because copper costs more than lead. That may be my next step at some point in the future.

We are not allowed to hunt with lead bullets in California (the folks in our legislature are afraid that we might kill an animal, leave it, and then a California condor might eat it and get lead poisoning). You know, the California Condor, the super rare endangered species (that there are almost none of) might ingest an animal carcass with the remnants of a lead bullet fragment in it and die of lead poisoning. I’m serious; that’s what our politicians here in California are worried about. I shouldn’t be too hard on them, I suppose, because we have something in common. I and the rest of the TDS loonies here in California can both make this statement: None of us ever found any Russians. For the TDS-afflicted, it is imaginary secret agents in Moscow. For me, it is a Russian boar. My Russians are real, though, and on one of these trips, I’ll get one.

Anyway, it might be time to start experimenting with monolithic bullets. Maybe it’s a good thing we have that no lead law here in LooneyLand.

To get back on topic: Our hunt was a rousing success. The Dunton Ranch showed us a great time, and John and I each got our pigs. I can’t wait to do it again.

Missed Part 1 of the El Puerco story? It’s right here.

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El Puerco Times Two: Part 1

By Joe Berk

It had been way too long since I hunted pig, and that was a character flaw I aimed to correct. Baja John immediately said “Hell, yeah” when I asked if he wanted to join me on an Arizona pig hunt, and it was game on. I’ve known John for half my life, and that means I’ve known him for a long time. We’ve done a lot of trips through Mexico and elsewhere on our motorcycles. We know how to have fun.

My Ruger No. 1 in .30 06. It’s a long time favorite. I mounted a 4X Redfield the year I bought the Ruger, and it’s never left the rifle.

Getting ready for the hunt was nearly as much fun as the hunt itself. I knew I’d be bringing my 200th Year .30 06 Ruger No. 1A with me. It’s a rifle I’ve owned and hunted with for 50 years. You’ve read about it before here on the ExhaustNotes blog. On a previous hunt, I used Hornady’s 150 grain jacketed softpoint bullet in my Model 70 Winchester and it worked well. I had not developed a load with that bullet for the Ruger, though, so I set about doing that. The secret sauce was 51.0 grains of IMR 4064, which gave an average velocity of 2869.3 feet per second (with a tiny 14.1 feet per second standard deviation) and great accuracy. The load was surprisingly fast for the Ruger’s 22-inch barrel; the No. 1 shot this load at the same velocity as my Weatherby’s 26-inch barrel.

A week before the hunt, I checked the Ruger No. 1’s zero at 100 yards. The first shot from a cold and oiled barrel was a scosh high; the next two were right on the money. The rifle was ready.

I knew I needed binoculars, which I already had, and a way to carry ammo (which I didn’t have). I found a cool belt-mounted ammo pouch on Amazon; the next day it was delivered to my home.

A cool little belt-mounted ammo pouch. It costs $8 on Amazon.

I had everything I needed; I loaded the Subie and pointed it east. We would hunt on the Dunton Ranch, about 325 miles away in Arizona. The weather was going to be a crapshoot. Everyone was predicting rain, and they were right. We would be lucky, though. It would be overcast and rain a lot, but not while we were in the field.

My six-hour ride under gray skies to Kingman was pleasant. It rained a bit, but it stopped just before I reached Kingman. Sirius XM blasted ’50s hits the entire way.

On the road to the Dunton ranch. I had a travel mug full of coffee Sue had prepared for me. I enjoyed the drive.

When I arrived at the Ranch, Tom (our guide) met me. John wouldn’t be getting in until later that evening. Tom asked if I wanted to hunt that afternoon, before Baja John arrived. You bet, I said, and we were off.

Ossabaw hogs in Arizona. They are an even-tempered pig. They are what Tom calls “meat pigs.”

Scott Dunton keeps his ranch stocked with at least three flavors of hog, including Russians and Ossabaw pigs. I had not seen a Russian boar on my last hunt, and I would not see one on this hunt, but that’s okay. It’s good to set goals in life, and one of my goals is to someday get a Russian boar. It didn’t happen on my Dunton Ranch pig hunt a decade ago, and it wouldn’t happen on this trip, but we started seeing Ossabaws almost immediately. Wikipedia tells us that the Ossabaw pigs are descendants of feral hogs on Ossabaw Island, Georgia. The Ossabaws were originally released on that island by Spanish explorers in the 16th century. Imagine that.

Tom and I set out and like I said above, we saw Ossabaws fairly quickly. I told Tom that I really wanted to get a Russian. “They’re smaller, they’re harder to find, they’re nocturnal, and they’re mean,” Tom said. “Some boys out here last week got a nice one.” He told me he could set me up in a blind, but the odds of seeing a Russian were low.

A while later, we came upon a group of Ossabaws. Tom had a rangefinder and he scoped the distance at 117 yards. “What do you think?” he asked.

My mind was racing. I started thinking about Mike Wolfe on American Pickers. He often says the time to buy something is when you see it. You don’t know if you’ll ever see it again. I thought it would be cool to have John there when I shot a pig, but I didn’t know if we would see any later. I wanted a Russian; these were Ossabaws. But they were there. I could hear Mike Wolfe: The time to shoot a pig is when you see one. “Can I shoot one of these and then take a Russian if we see one later?” I asked.

“You can do whatever you want,” Tom said.

Tom set up his tripod, which is a cool field version of a rifle rest. I had never used one before (I’d never even seen one before). I looked at the Ossabaw 117 yards away through the 4-power Redfield. The hog was standing broadside to me. Fifty years ago, I used to shoot metallic silhouette pigs that were a third that size at three times the distance (385 meters, to be precise), with no rest, shooting offhand. But that was 50 years ago. My eyesight isn’t what it used to be, my ability to shoot a rifle offhand isn’t what it used to be, and hell, I’m not what I used to be.

It was time. I rested the Ruger in the tripod rest and held on the hog’s shoulder. I watched the reticle sashay around against the hog’s dark form and started applying pressure to the Ruger’s trigger. Things felt right. I was in the zone. I didn’t hear the shot, and I didn’t feel the recoil, as is always the case for me when hunting. The hog fell over, away from me, just as a metallic silhouette javelina would do.

“That was a nice shot,” Tom said. I don’t think he said it because I was the client. He probably sees a lot of misses out here from other clients. The hog’s rear legs twitched in the air.

“Should I put another round in him?” I asked Tom.

“No, he’s gone,” Tom answered. “It would just destroy more meat.” I looked again and the hog was still.

Success: 117 yards, my Ruger No. 1, and an Ossabaw hog.

We walked up to the hog. I could see where the bullet entered (satisfyingly just about where I had aimed). I was surprised; I could not find an exit wound. When I .30 06’d a hog at the Dunton Ranch on my last visit, the bullet sailed right through. Not this time, though. More on that later.

I posed with my Ossabaw for the obligatory Bwana photo. Tom and I struggled to roll El Puerco over. We tried to lift it onto the back of the truck and could not. Tom told me he needed to get the trailer (which had a winch), and he told me he would drop me off at a blind. “You might see a Russian come by,” he said. That was enough for me. “I’ll come back out here later with John to pick you up.”

I got comfortable in the blind, which overlooked a watering hole about a hundred yards away. I scoped everything I could through my binoculars, imagining every rock and bush in my field of view might be a Russian. I felt like a Democrat looking for the imaginary Russians (I really wanted to see one, but they just weren’t there). A small group of Ossabaws showed up at the watering hole. I watched them through my binoculars. They did what pigs do, and then they started meandering around a bit. Towards me.

An Ossabaw hog just outside the blind’s window. Were they coming for payback?

Golly, I thought. The Ossabaw hogs were getting close. Then, they literally walked right up to the blind. I could feel it rock around as the pigs rubbed up against the walls. They know, I thought. I had shot Porky (or maybe it was Petunia?) and it was payback time. They had come for me.

I could hear the pigs grunting just below the blind’s window. I remembered my iPhone. I took a picture, holding the phone just outside the window. I don’t mind sharing with you that I was more than a little bit afraid. My Smith and Wesson Shield and its nine rounds of hot 9mm ammo were back in the Subie. The sportsman-like snob appeal of hunting with a single-shot rifle suddenly didn’t seem like such a good idea. I had my one round I could put in the chamber, but I wouldn’t be able to reload quickly enough if the pigs wanted to exact their revenge on me. One shot. I was the Barney Fife of pig hunters.

Nah, I thought, these are just pigs being pigs. Or were they?

If you crank up your computer’s volume all the way up and listen, you can hear their grunts.

After the pigs had their fill of terrorizing this septuagenarian New Jersey refugee, they wandered off. My heart rate returned to its normal bradycardic 50 bpm or so. I went back to glassing the surrounding vista. Nobody’s going to believe this, I thought.

An hour or so later, Tom and Baja John were back in the truck. No Russians had wandered by. I was glad John had made it okay but I was disappointed I had seen no Russians. I imagined I knew what Adam Schiff must have felt like when Robert Mueller testified before Congress. Where the hell are these Russians?

Stay tuned: El Puerco Part 2 airs tomorrow!

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