GTA
General Discussion To Gateway To Airguns => Hunting Gate => : longislandhunter April 21, 2010, 03:00:41 PM
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Yesterday afternoon I spent an hour or so in the backyard range with my .22 Condor and the chrony and I did some "fine tuning" on the power level. When I finished making my adjustments the Condor was shooting Kodiaks at an average of 1080 FPS and shooting ragged hole groups. This afternoon it was time to take the condor hunting :) so around 5 pm I loaded her into the truck and headed for the duck farm. 15 minutes later I was parking my truck in my usual spot at the farm. I loaded a Kodiak into the Condor and headed off on the hunt.
For the first hour I slowly worked my way around the perimeter of the farm like I always do. I saw a couple of g-hogs but they saw me first and I never got a shot at them. I still had plenty of time to hunt so I just kept slowly working the tree lines and grassy areas of the farm hoping to catch a g-hog unaware. At 6:30, as I was slowly working my way along a very thin strip of trees that border one of the larger duck pens, I suddenly saw a g-hog sitting on top of his burrow mound 30 yards ahead of me. The range was fine but there were to many bushes and thick brush in the way to take a shot. The g-hog hadn't noticed me so moving very slowly I crept forward trying to find a shooting lane through the grass and bushes. When I was 20 yards from the g-hog I finally found a small shooting lane through the brush. The g-hog had now gone down to all fours and was now laying on top of the burrow mound and you could tell he was getting nervous. I disengaged the safety, put the crosshairs in between his left eye and ear, moved the scope up 1 1/2 mildots to compensate for the close range and fired. The kodiak hit with a loud "POP" and the g-hog went limp and slumped onto his stomach. I quickly reloaded and approached him since he was right near his burrow but he never moved a muscle except for his tail which went straight up and quivered for a few seconds before going limp.
I took some pics of the hog to share with my fellow GTA huntin buddies and headed home to skin and clean my dinner :)
Friend him up nice and crisp with a heavy dose of cajun seasoning and feasted :)
BTW.... in the first pic you'll see a house in the background.. This is an old abandoned house on the farm. It's falling down and is vacant. I didn't want anyone thinking I would knowingly take a shot with a house in the line of fire :)
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Jeff, great story and photos, thanks for sharing. How does ground hog taste? It looks like it would taste great.
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Yummy! Nice gun too... Can you share the recipe?
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nice story Jeff, and great shot thru the weeds... I love the last pic.(http://../jscripts/tiny_mce/plugins/emotions/images/smiley-wink.gif)
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Nice job of threading the needle Jeff !!!
Your getting more, and more guys interested in tasting Chucks. I think your going to have to do a "A to Z" post on how to skin, prep and cook them to stop some of the drooling on key boards . :D
While I was down in Brooklyn with my brother this past week, I remambered to ask him, and yes, it was the old Robinson place we used to shoot black birds on back in the 60's. Your pictures take me back to those great days. Thanks for posting them.
Paul.
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Nice shooting Jeff! Great pix!
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Thanks guys, glad you liked the pics. I bought my Condor specifically for g-hog hunting and she does very well at her job,,,, I affectionately call her "The Hammer" :)
As for how the g-hogs taste..... they really are delicious. If you think about they're much cleaner animals than chickens and everyone eats chickens. The g-hogs diet is grass, leaves, wild fruits and berries and of course in my case pelletized duck grain :) , doesn't get any cleaner than that. They lend themselves very well to frying, stew, pot roast, barbequing or any other way you'd like to prepare them. My favorite way to make them is what I did yesterday.. remove all the fat and glands, cut them into quarters, coat them in salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder and a heavy dose of that shake-on cajun seasoning then fry them in some oil (I like olive oil with bacon fat mixed in) until they are crispy and a little blackened on both sides then you're ready to eat. Nice and simple and about as good as it gets :)
As soon as I get the new smoker unit I'm buying I'm looking forward to trying out a couple of g-hogs in the smoker :)
JEff
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Okay, I don't know if I would eat one, but that looks pretty tasty to me! Great shooting and great adventure!
(I haven't done any air gun hunting in awhile. I'm stalking the elusive wild turkey with my new, to me at least, Berreta Silver Mallard and some high brass #4 shot).
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I bought my friend Hardy a Big Easy smoker from Char Broil. I have the Big Easy Turkey Fryer. I like them because there is so little mess.
My brother uses a similar unit in a bigger scale for his multiple BBQ championships.
Food and cooking is of high importance to me. :)
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JEFF THE SNIPER. ONE SHOT-ONE KILL.
TOO FAR TO TASTE THAT DELICIOUS 'GHOG'....
/ TAKE CARE JEFF
/GERALD
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Thanks Gerald and Randy....
Randy, if you tried one you'd really like it. As for the smoker,, I'm going to be ordering one of the "Cook Shack" "Smokette" smokers as soon as they are back in stock. Right now they have the black one available but I want the stainless steel model with the electronic meat temperature probe. I'm lookin forward to using it on the freezer full of venison I have and of course the g-hogs :)
Jeff
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YUM! I hope to make you all jealous this weekend by showing you the turkey (I plan) on getting deep fried to a delicate crunch exterior and tender juicy interior.
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From turf to the plate, outstanding Jeff. Great acount of your hunt bro and super shooting and pic's. Have you ever checked around the foundation of that old house, bet there's G-hog homes around it. That look's like the house that I had to clear critter's out of last year hehe, bet that one's a hotel too. Ed
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I'm sure there are a ton of critters around that house but it's completely surrounded by thick, almost impenetrable briars and thick brush. During the small game season I do occasionally take some rabbits late in the afternoon when they are at the outer fringe of the briars, but during the summer the critters that are inside those briar patches mostly stay in there.....
Jeff
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Get out the machete and cut some shooting lane's in hehe. Ed
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That's not a bad idea :o
Jeff
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That was one fat hog! and some tasty looking vittles too.
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Great shot! Nice pics.
I tried g-hog once and didn't care for the taste but may have been the way it was prepared.
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Nice shootin and great pics.
It's rough living in California no groundhogs to shoot, or predict our weather. lol
Alan - NorCal
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Yeah, but you have those copious ground squirrels. :) Always a good thing about living somewhere else. I think the same thing about not having prairie dogs or lots of coyotes. Then I remember how much stuff we DO have to shoo.
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Great account of the G-Hog hunt and excellent photos. That`s a pretty big g-hog....that`s for sure. That last photo`s going to make all the airgunners here hungry.
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great shooting
nice pics
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Nice shot to the fuse box Jeff! Very nice pics of the layout too. I think I know this farm well now that I have seen so many pics. I bet I can drive out there and find it, hehe.
It's not easy shooting a Condor off-hand so good job! I have a tough time shooting my Condors accurately off-hand. Give me something to lean on and they 're all dead-on. Ask me to stand up and shoot with no support and I 'll be 1/2" off target at 25yds moving the gun all over the place :) I like shooting the 36 and 350 springers off-hand better than the AF guns for some reason. Probably because of the design of the Condor(?)..
Oh btw, I got a TT shroud a couple of days ago. The long one for 24" AF barrels - same as you have on your Condor. It's at least 2" longer than the Airhog ones I have. I am not sure a Condor will fit in the 52" hardcase with it on now. It probably will, but it will be a very tight fit I think because I have the Work-Butt on all 3 of them. Tony was selling a new shroud on the TAG so I got a pretty good deal on it after I negotiated the price. It fits both .22 and .25cal barrels, so my guess is so does yours, because he only makes 1 size/diameter shrouds from what he was telling me on the phone. I will try it on and compare it to my other 2 Airhog shrouds. If it's more quiet, I will use it on the .25 TT Condor, and put the Airhog one on the Lemak .25 Condor with the oak stock and start shooting it more. Hopefully it will make its 1st kill this summer. I have only shot it a few times because it sounds just like I 'm shooting .22LR hyper-velocity rimfire rounds (31gr Kodiaks @ >1,000fps). The Airhog shrouds are supposedly not interchangable between .22 & .25cal, so I guess I have both kinds, and now a 3d one from TT! When does it end?!?! :o :D
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your gonna love that TT shroud Harry..... simply amazing :)
Jeff
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Awesome shooting! Man those condors are nice. I didnt know Ghog was good eating. I just nailed my 5th menacing squirrel and mam looking forward to squirrel and dumplings. I will have to keep th eyeys peeled for g hog now!@
Great shooting.
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Awesome story & pics Jeff
I wish we had those hogs in cal.
Or maybe I have just never seen any.
I remember seeing some in Michigan when I
was back there.
I like how you took us from the tunning to the dinner plate.
Thanks
Matthew
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great shooting jeff!