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GRANT: (Whispering) Are you rolling?

GRANT: (Whispering) Here we go.

GRANT: Wednesday, and it’s been another great week at The Proving Grounds, with Tracy finding some more antlers, and Adam and I seeing just how effective the Razorback XT ammo is.

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GRANT: The only real chance you have to eliminating a hog population is when you first start finding sign – when that population’s small and you can get on it with an initial attack.

GRANT: We started that last year, about an hour from here, on my friend’s farm, by putting up a trap that the Missouri Department of Conservation had loaned me and baiting it for hogs.

GRANT: We used whole kernel corn and we had whitetails, and turkeys, and coons, and coyotes, and almost everything going in the trap, except the wild hogs.

GRANT: Groups of hogs are called sounders, and we had five or six hogs in that small sounder. They would circle the trap but never went inside.

GRANT: We all got busy during deer season, doing the stuff we do here at The Proving Grounds, and I wasn’t able to go over and really try to hunt the hogs with any intensity.

GRANT: So after deer season, Adam and I started re-baiting the site by an old blind that’d probably been there a decade, to see if we could get those hogs in shooting range. Once again, we saw turkeys and deer, but no hogs at that site.

GRANT: We really started studying the pictures and the sign. It’d become obvious that that blind was on the very edge of the range those pigs were using. We needed to get more central, to have a better chance of seeing ‘em in daylight hours.

ADAM: And then, we could shoot that hillside, easy.

GRANT: We put up a Redneck blind, overlooking the soybean field, and along the wooded draw that there was a lot of hog sign in, that we knew they were going from bedding to the soybean field, using that draw as cover. We kept corn out, downhill from the blind, and started getting a pattern of the hogs using it in daylight hours.

GRANT: Knowing that I had multiple pigs coming in, and I might need some rapid shots, I asked another friend of mine if I could borrow his AR-10.

GRANT: Two inches.

GRANT: AR-10’s are chambered in .308 rounds, and are made for rapid fires, but extremely accurate.

GRANT: Same hole.

GRANT: The Razorback is simply designed to be a controlled expansion, or slow expansion, bullet. That’s critical when you’re shooting larger hogs because they have a cartilaginous shield over the shoulder, and hogs roll in dirt, or mud, all the time, and impacting that mud that really sticks in their hair is a lot different than going through a fluffy deer hide.

GRANT: My mission is to reduce the size of this hog population. Boars won’t help much in that mission, but reducing a sow, especially if there’s only a couple, can cut that reproductive effort in half.

GRANT: March 6th and a super windy day but we’re out chasing hogs, trying to make sure that population doesn’t increase in southern Missouri.

GRANT: The dinner bell has rang – the porkers should be coming.

GRANT: The winds were predicted, literally, to be between 20 and 40 miles an hour. We didn’t know if the hogs would move or not, but it’s a day we had to go give it a try.

GRANT: As the hours rolled by, from 1:00, 2:00, 3:00, 4:00, and 5:00, I’m thinking we might get skunked again chasing hogs at my friend’s ranch. But at 5:30, from 180 degrees opposite direction than what we’d anticipated, Adam and I both heard some noise.

ADAM: (Whispering) Grant.

GRANT: (Whispering) Are you rolling?

ADAM: (Whispering) Yeah.

GRANT: (Whispering) Here we go. The front one.

ADAM: (Whispering) What?

GRANT: (Whispering) The front one.

ADAM: (Whispering) Okay. Okay.

GRANT: (Whispering) I got a little grass over the kill zone, we got to let it take a step.

GRANT: (Whispering) Okay.

GRANT: (Whispering) Stay on the front one.

ADAM: (Whispering) Okay, I’ve got it. (Inaudible).

ADAM: (Whispering) Which one? Kill him. Far left one?

GRANT: (Whispering) Far left.

ADAM: (Whispering) Okay, I’m on it.

GRANT: (Whispering) (Inaudible) Over here, over here, over here, over here, over here.

GRANT: I took a heart shot and instantly, she started running uphill at a quartering away angle, with several of the pigs following her.

GRANT: Stay on ‘em. Stay on ‘em.

ADAM: Still on her.

GRANT: Are you on the pigs?

ADAM: (Inaudible)

GRANT: I’m in the middle.

ADAM: Okay.

GRANT: Are you on the pigs?

ADAM: Yeah. Big group of ‘em running due north.

GRANT: I’m good. I’m on ‘em.

ADAM: I think I’m gonna have to…

GRANT: I’m on ‘em. I’m on the back one, I’m on the back one.

ADAM: Okay, go.

GRANT: Pork. Baby. From noon to 5:49, we waited in the Redneck and then, the pork went down.

GRANT: There’s one of the little pieces of bacon, right there.

GRANT: March 6th, about sunset, and I’m out of breath from excitement.

GRANT: A very large hog. You can see the size of this head, and everything going on. Now I shot at a little bit of a angle, as you replay it and see what was going on, but clearly, I took the heart and lungs out. If I had shot my favorite deer load, a silvertip, which has rapid expansion, it would have never made it through this big sow.

GRANT: Pigs have a great sense of smell and you can see why, because of that huge snout and it’s very strong – made for rooting, does a lot of damage in agricultural fields, and even native vegetation, where it’s digging for tubers, or insects. But even more importantly, they’re a fierce predator. Look at this mouth. Even this sow, look at those canines coming off there, called whittlers on a pig. They find a fawn bedded, they can catch something – they’re gonna eat it.

GRANT: Yeah, if you let me drag all the weight of this one. (Laughter)

GRANT: 146 pound sow. Now, she came in with some piglets and a slightly smaller boar, but there was no option for me, because my mission here is to reduce the overall hog population that’s doing damage on this farm. I could take this sow out, and save a minimum of 1.5 litters a year, but if I took that boar, there’d be another boar around. You know if you’re in a control mode, you want to aim for the sows. If you’re trophy hunting, wait for a large boar. But my mission was control, took the sow first. As many piglets as I could get, second.

GRANT: Thinking two for two was pretty good, until I came home and saw what Tracy had been up to.

TRACY: (Inaudible)

UNKNOWN: I’m hoping for Bean Flipper (inaudible).

TRACY: I know.

GRANT: This antler’s from a buck we call Rae’s Funky 8. My youngest daughter, Rae, named one of the food plots Rae’s Field and we started seeing this deer back in velvet, in that field. This two and a half year old buck’s a mover. We had him at several camera stations this year and if he continues that for a couple more years, he’ll certainly be on my Hit List as a buck that moves during the daylight, covers a fair amount of territory, and probably will be a buck that we can harvest.

GRANT: Now, there’s a lot to happen between two and four and a half, but they never get four and a half, unless you pass ‘em up at this age.

GRANT: There’s more to finding sheds than just a gee whiz, I found sheds. You can kind of tell about the health of the herd by how it’s shelled off there. Was it a clean shed? How big they are per age class and where they are during the late season, to help you position those stands in the upcoming late season.

GRANT: Whether you’re chasing hogs, or chasing antlers, I hope you get out and really enjoy Creation. Thanks for watching GrowingDeer.tv.