Well, finally got some time to finish this post so here goes.
Like I said, I took the 1250 .22 to the duck farm armed with a supply of Crow Magnums. Wanted to test out the Crow Magnums on thick skinned G-hogs. Last G-hog hunt was with the RWS 350 .22 Magnum using RWS Super Hollow Points and those pellets worked extremely well on the G-hogs. This hunt would let me know how the Crow Mags performed.
I loaded a Crow Mag into the 1250 and headed off to hopefully sneak up on a G-hog. I decided to head down the dirt road to the other duck farm where they raise the egg laying breeder ducks. There is a nice, lawn like, green trail that run around the duck pens and through the thick marsh reeds and the G-hogs love that tender fresh grass so I figured I could easily find a G-hog to shoot.
Didn't take long for me to find a target. As I rounded a bend in the path I saw a brown patch of fur moving in the grass. It was a small, young G-hog feeding on grass so intentively that he didn't notice me, the distance was about 15 yards. I put the crosshairs on his head, lowered the scope just a bit to compensate for the close range and fired. As soon as the gun fired the G-hog took off running and disappeared into the thick marsh reeds on the edge of the trail. I waded into the reeds and began searching and found his burrow a few yards into the reeds. He had made it back to his burrow. Didn't see any sign of blood, fur or anything else to indicate he had been hit so I assumed that I had simply missed, however the next G-hog I came across would lead me to believe that I hadn't missed at all.
I went back on the hunt and moved along the trail. I followed the the trail to it's end without seeing another G-hog so decided to head over to the main farm and hunt the tree line near the stream. As I still hunted along the tree line I saw another small G-hog feeding in the grass 30 yards in front of me. He hadn't noticed me so I crept closer and managed to close the gap to 15 yards. He stood up on his hind legs and offered me a perfect head shot. Put the crosshairs on him, pulled the trigger and heard the Crow Mag slam home with a "PoP". The little hog fell over at the impact but to my amazement he started walking quickly towards the underbrush at the tree line. I had loaded another Crow Mag after the first shot so I put the gun up to my shoulder again, sighted on the G-hog and fired again, this time striking him in the neck. I heard the pellet hit and the G-hog stopped moving forward, but he was still alive and trying to pull himself forward as I walked up to him. I loaded another Crow Mag and put the final shot directly into his head.
After taking this hog and seeing how poorly the Crow Mags had performed I now doubt that I missed the first G-hog. I still can't be sure, but I really think I hit that G-hog but the pellet simply didn't put him down. Well, I put my dinner in my game pouch and continued still hunting and searching for another target.
I made my way to a field just north of the farm where there are several acres of vegetables being grown. The duck farm rents this piece out to a local farmer but I have permission to hunt on it and the growing vegetables draw in rabbits, birds and especially G-hogs. I surprised a small G-hog munching away on tender squash plants, but he was alert enough to detect me and made a bee line for his burrow which was on the edge of the dirt road. He made it home safely so I went back on the hunt.
As I was slowly working my way along the edge of another small field, covered with lush grass, I saw a medium sized G-hog in the middle of the field stand up on his hind legs to survey the landscape. He hadn't seen me so I calculated my stalk and got to work. I worked my way to a shooting position behind a large tree 25 yards from the feeding G-hog. Leaned the gun on the tree trunk, adjusted the AO and waited. Sure enough, after about 2 minutes the G-hog stood up again for a look see. I Put the crosshairs dead on his head and pulled. WHAM, heard the Crow Mag hit home and watched the G-hog fall over. Loaded another pellet and put the scope up to my eye for another look. To may amazement the G-hog, which had fallen over onto his back after the impact, rolled over onto his belly, got up on all 4 legs and started walking towards into the tall grass behind him. I ran towards the moving tall grass that was giving the G-hogs position away, but as I reached the spot what I found was the burrow entrance. The G-hog had made it back to his burrow.
The shot on this last G-hog was a dead center head shot hit for sure. I have no doubt it was a fatal hit and the G-hog died, but unfortunately he made it all the way back to his burrow. The 2nd G-hog, the one I managed to harvest, also took a good hard hit and almost made it back to his burrow to die. Long story short, after this hunt I am not impressed with the performance of the Crow Mags on G-hogs and I won't use them again to hunt them. The Crow Mags have worked well for me in the past in other rifles on squirrels and rabbits, but this hunt indicated what I consider to be poor performance on G-hogs. The RWS Super Hollow Points on the other hand performed extremely well on G-hogs when used in the RWS 350. My 350 and the 1250 are in the same power category, are equally accurate and were used on the same game at the same basic target ranges so I consider this to be a fair test and comparison of each pellets performance on G-hogs.
When I cleaned the G-hog at home I managed to recover 2 of the 3 Crow Mag pellets from the carcass. Below you will see a pic of the 2 pellets with an unfired Crow Mag between the 2 fired pellets for comparison. I cannot determine whether these 2 pellets were the 1st, 2nd or 3rd shots I fired but both pellets do show good hollow point expansion even though they failed to take down the g-hog cleanly. I am not saying the Crow Mags are not a good hunting pellet, far from it. I have used the Crow Mags effectively to take squirrels, rabbits and birds and they have worked very well. However based on my hunting results I won't use the Crow Mags again for G-hogs. I guess the G-hogs are just a little to "tenacious" and thick skinned for the Crow Mags to work effectively on them. The good news is that my 1250 has the same POI with Predator pellets as it does with the Crow Mags so I'll simply switch over to the Predators when hunting G-hogs with the 1250. I've used the Predators before on G-hogs and they are simply awesome.
I took a couple of pics of my harvested G-hog dinner when I got home. Hope ya like em.
Jeff
