How ironic that two days after Jack Murphy's post on aerial sniping and our follow-on discussion of pig plinkin', the Wall Street Journal runs a piece on how the tactical market is influencing feral hog hunting.
Tactical Hog Control, started in 2009 by Texas ranchers Clark Osborne and Mr. Dreher, is among a handful of next-generation outfitters across the South offering a new style of hog hunting designed to appeal to hunters' inner commando. Each client on a nocturnal hunt with the two men suits up with roughly $40,000 of military-grade gear, including semiautomatic rifles like the DPMS AR-10. The men prowl bumpy pastures and farmland in off-road vehicles bristling with gun racks and infrared headlights.The equipment, combined with many states' loose restrictions on hunting feral hogs, allows hunters to shoot a number of pigs in one outing.
"I believe every man in the U.S. has a tactical gene," said Rod Pinkston, an Army veteran and former Olympic sharp-shooting coach whose Jager Pro guide service conducts high-tech hog hunts in western Georgia. "They've always wanted to be a soldier, a SWAT team member. We're the closest thing to combat that these guys are ever going to experience."
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So true. And though the story doesn't touch on hog hunting from a helo, it's interesting to re-introduce the discussion over the applicability of this kind of hunting with real-world training. And it sure looks like a hell of a lot of fun, though as a hunter myself, I'm not a huge fan of just leaving meat for the coyotes...
