TFBTV: Texas Hog Guns

    Texas has been overrun by hogs, which have created a startling problem for farmers and landowners across our great state. For these pesky pack animals, sometimes grandpa’s 30-30 wont cut it so modern hunters have decided to bring more modern equipment.

    Hog collaborate in packs of over 20 animals at one time, so modern sporting rifles are a popular choice for hunters these days to reduce hog populations across the state. Traditionalists still prefer bolt or lever guns, but we seem to produce more lovely bacon with our setups!

    Happy hunting everyone, and please do hit that wonderful subscribe button. We sincerely appreciate you viewing TFBTV!

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    The full transcript is below …

    – Hey guys, this is Alex C. with firearmblog.com.

    We’re back at you with another video today, again I’ve got my friend Patrick here.

    – What’s going on, everybody? – And we’re going to talk about Texas hog hunting.

    I don’t know if you guys know, but hogs in Texas are a really big issue.

    They destroy millions of dollars worth of crops every year, and they cause a lot of damage to property, even people sometimes. – [Patrick] Yeah, but they are tasty.

    – (laughs) They are tasty, they are also very dangerous.

    So, for a dangerous animal, which, usually when you talk about dangerous game, you’re referring to a lion or something with big teeth and claws, but a lot of people get hurt by hogs, plus the tools for modern hog hunting are modern sporting weapons.

    – Yeah, well, whenever you run across them, they’re generally in packs, so you need more than four or five rounds to take them out.

    – That’s true, Granddad’s lever action rifle won’t kill 20 hogs. – [Patrick] No.

    – Unless you’re a cowboy action shooter, and you’re better than I am at doing that kind of thing.

    So I guess that’s possible, but for handicapped shooters like ourselves, we rely on high capacity magazines and other stuff that’s pretty common to today’s I guess what you’d call tactical marketplace.

    – You say high capacity, I say regular capacity. (laughs) – Regular capacity I guess is more appropriate.

    It’s kind of cool that this stuff has made its way from that era, to the arena of hunting.

    – Yeah, I mean, the rifle that I use is a pretty close copy of a Mk. 18, and this a gun that they’re currently using right now to go ahead and fight the War on Terror.

    But it works great in a hunting environment as well.

    – Absolutely, why don’t you tell them a little bit about your gun and why it’s laid out the way it is.

    – Yeah well, like I said, I kind of mimicked the Mk. 18 a little bit.

    But I went ahead and built in on a Spikes lower.

    And it’s got a ALG trigger.

    I don’t recall which one I’ve got in there.

    It may be the enhanced one or something.

    But it’s got a Nickel-Boron coating on it, makes it really smooth, easy to clean.

    I’m bringing a full-auto carrier in here, just a standard no-name.

    And then…

    I’ve got a Matech backup iron sight with your traditional fixed front post, just ’cause I think it looks cool.

    I went with a BCM Gunfighter charging handle, ’cause I’ve got problems with my wrist, bringing it over and charging an AR-15 the traditional way.

    We got an EOTech up here, I like the short, tiny ones.

    If given the opportunity to hunt with night vision with a, what is the PBS-14 I think, it fits real nice in here, or if I wanna run a MagnaFire, that’s great as well.

    I ran with a Knight Armament RAS that I kinda had lying around that I picked up off of somebody, I don’t even remember when I bought it but, it’s just really comfortable for me.

    – Oh, it’s important to note, also, it is a short-railed rifle. – [Patrick] Yes this, this is an SBR, I paid the 200 dollar tax to the ATF, I hope they enjoyed my money. – [Alex] (laughs) Right.

    – I’m running in the MOE grip as well, and in the little compartment in the bottom, I’ll store a spare firing pin and bolt, because I have had issues in the past with bolts breaking, or something like that.

    And then up front we’ve got a SilencerCo Trifecta flash hider, which is a great flash hider, and it really makes mounting my Saker pretty straightforward, and easy.

    – I’d like to emphasize the importance of suppressors when you’re hog hunting here.

    You can take out a lot more hogs, because it’s obviously a lot quieter before they run.

    Usually on the first shot, if you’re not you know, running a suppressed rifle, they’re gone, and they’re fast, too.

    So you better have a quick trigger finger.

    If you have a suppressor and a quick trigger finger, that’s even better.

    – Yeah, I mean, you may be able to go ahead and get four, five, six of ’em, – Oh yeah, absolutely. – [Patrick] before they start dispersing pretty well.

    – He’s probably one of the…

    Hardest-on-his-guns-people I’ve ever met in this life.

    As a matter of fact, I came up with the nickname Dusty, because we went on a hunt one weekend and, it got so dirty and grimy, (Patrick laughs) with him dropping it and banging it around in the back of the side-by-side, that it didn’t even look like a gun, it looked more like a dirt clod.

    – Well I…

    What we did is, while we were out, we went out dove hunting and we also were you know, taking hogs as well, but I hung it from the, the little roll cage on the side-by-side, and it just stayed there all weekend.

    And when we pulled it off at the end of the weekend, we were curious to see if it’d run after it was just caked in dust, I wish we had a photo to show you guys but, it ran flawlessly, I’ve been nothing but impressed with it.

    I mean it’s been a fantastic gun.

    – Absolutely.

    You know an SBR, great, compact, easy to tote around, and great to kill hogs with.

    – Absolutely.

    – So you can get some organic hog meat very easily and very quickly with that gun.

    All in all, he runs this gun great, it’s a great fit, and it’s the vain of hogs the whole state wide.

    – That and I wanted to talk a little about running a DBall on this, we’ll learn– – [Alex] Absolutely.

    So anyways, night vision is…

    You know, hogs are very active at night.

    So, Patrick’s got a PVS-7 that he’ll use to drive the side-by-side with.

    – It ain’t easy.

    – No, it’s difficult to drive with a single monocular, because your depth perception’s, well, there is no depth perception.

    – I think we’ve come up across a couple of like, little dips and it looked like canyons.

    – Absolutely, absolutely, the dips looked like canyons, and the canyons looked like dips.

    So it’s tricky, but you can do it.

    But, with a DBall on here, you don’t have to really aim, you just basically have a laser pointer, that’s only visible by IR, so if you come up on hogs, pull it up and you can shoot ’em.

    And this may sound kinda “Mall-ninja” what we’re doing here, but it works.

    – Yeah, it does.

    – And it produces hog meat, and it works.

    Now it’s a little extreme, it might not be traditional hunting, but for a non-traditional animal that collaborates in packs and breeds like crazy– – As a new hunter, yeah I’m gonna be honest.

    I, preferred.

    It’s fun, I really enjoy hunting this way.

    You know, I mean maybe traditional hunting’s just not for me.

    – (laughs) Well, that remains to be seen.

    (Patrick laughs) It is a lot more fun, it’s a lot more fast-paced hunting hogs at night, it’s, it is kind of a rush.

    But that brings me to my gun.

    I have an MP5 I use.

    It’s a HK94 actually chopped and converted and re-marked by TPM Outfitters in Carrollton.

    I’ve done some articles about TPM in the past.

    It’s got a Fleming sear in it, and I’ll also run a suppressor with 147 grain hollow points.

    The reason I like the MP5 with the, the can on there is because it’s super quiet, especially with subsonic ammo.

    You can dump magazine after magazine, and sometimes the hogs won’t even run.

    Kind of an exaggeration, but you can take out a lot of hogs.

    – I will wager a guess to say that, that MP5 with that suppressor is probably as quiet as my 2245 with a SilencerCo barrel on it. – [Alex] It’s very quiet.

    It’s a very quiet gun, also the MP5 is legendarily reliable, this gun runs great.

    It’s compact, especially if you collapse the stock.

    You can fit it inside of the little dashboard-thingy inside the side-by-side, which is nice, that way it doesn’t turn into dusty, (Patrick laughs) by hanging it off (laughs) the vehicle.

    So that gun is a great hog gun.

    It’s uncommon, I’ll also take an AR-15 sometimes, because 223, obviously at rifle ranges, if I’m hunting in a blind, or where we’re walking is a little bit across the fields but, when you have a vehicle, it doesn’t really matter if you have a sub gun with limited velocity.

    I’ve actually killed a hog with a MAC-10, from about 300 yards away.

    Now, I dumped the whole magazine, and I only got three of them but, you know.

    It’s okay. (Patrick laughs) – Hey, it’s three more than you had! – Right, it’s three more hogs than I would have with, you know, no gun.

    So, back to night vision.

    This is kinda comical, but I actually found this at a gun show for a really good deal.

    It’s an old Fero, Generation three, night vision piece with an HK claw mount, that mounts on top of the MP5.

    Now I’ve never actually hunted with this on top of the MP5, but I have used it as a spotting scope.

    I let Patrick with the night vision usually take care of that, because, this just looks ridiculous, and adds so much weight to the gun, and I don’t want to constantly sight it in with the gun.

    – Whenever that’s mounted on a gun, it looks right at home in an 80’s action movie.

    – It does.

    It looks like the scopes from Robo-Cop when they had them on the Barrett.

    But, nonetheless it does make a good spotting scope, because it is magnified, so if we stop, we shut the vehicle off, I’ll look across the field, and if there’s hogs, then we’ll stop the vehicle, creep up, and try and get some.

    And you know, sometimes we get lucky, sometimes we don’t.

    We’re not veteran hunters by any means, we just really enjoy it.

    It’s something that we’re continuing to pursue, and we found that these are the best tools of the trade for us so far.

    – Yeah.

    – But anyways, hopefully we’ll do a hunt soon, or I’ll try and get some GoPro footage or something, so we could post it up on the blog, or at least TFB TV.

    That way we can show you what it’s like to hunt with modern weapons.

    I think it’s kinda cool again, that these aren’t just weapons of war.

    We’re actually applying these to situations where we’re civilians.

    – Yeah, I mean it’s kinda cool to see a weapon that’s you know, protecting our freedom, also put food on my table.

    – Yeah, absolutely, and that it does, that it does.

    But anyways, guys thanks again for watching TFB TV.

    This is kind of a unique video, outside of what we normally do, but we hope you guys enjoyed it! If you did, please hit that subscribe button, and we’ll keep ’em coming.

    Again, thanks Patrick for helping us out.

    – Again, my pleasure.

    Alex C.

    Alex is a Senior Writer for The Firearm Blog and Director of TFBTV.


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