Florida Hog Hunt

From the backseat, it felt like one of those nightmares you have after eating pickled jalapeños right before bedtime.

It was darker than the inside of my credit rating as strange trees whizzed by the windows like a bad dream. We bounced along on one faceless road after another and I had no idea where I was, where I was going or what would happen when I finally got there. Two near-strangers were chatting in the front seat and several military-grade weapons were strapped right behind my head as I futilely looked around, trying to make sense of the surroundings.

Where Am I?

I wasn’t being taken to a lonely spot by anti-government rebels in some southern hemisphere backwater, to be tortured and ultimately shot as a Yankee spy. In spite of obvious similarities to an over-wrought secret-agent drama, my current situation didn’t involve any international drama. I was going hunting — specifically night-time feral hog control hunting in northern Florida.

This was definitely a high-adventure activity and I soon discovered chasing groups of nuisance porkers in the dark is just behind defusing nuclear weapons and right ahead of alligator wrestling in terms of sporty adventure. In all, it is a fine and heady mix of exhilaration, fear and hearing loss.

Our guide for the night was Heath Porter, the president of Night Ops, Inc., a Florida-based manufacturer of custom AR-platform rifles built specifically for predator hunting and feral pig control.

Heath used to guide hunters professionally on his pig control hunts but soon realized leading strangers armed with semi-automatic rifles around in the dark wasn’t the best way to maximize your lifetime memberships. “The money was good,” Heath noted, “but I want to live.”

Our hunt started well after sunset north of Choctawhatchee Bay in the Florida panhandle. Heath is hired by area farmers to maintain some semblance of control over the pigs, which are a major nuisance. If you haven’t seen what pigs can do to farm field, it’s stunning — the end result looks like somebody used the field for artillery practice. Meanwhile the pigs are next door, doing the same thing.

Late Night Gunfire

After dodging through the trees on a rutted sand road leading into an old phosphate pit, Heath, myself and another writer checked the zero on our rifles near what appeared to be a dangerous hobo camp. Nobody bothered us, nor appeared bothered by the rifle fire at 10 p.m. Shortly thereafter we headed out.

Heath has a large selection of fields where farmers want him to cull porkers along with livestock-killing coyotes. The operation is a simple spot-and-stalk but as with most things, “simple” isn’t the same thing as “easy.”

We began driving around in the dark on lightly traveled rural roads, scouting passing fields with thermal imaging scopes. We soon spotted a “sounder” of 30 or so pigs then parked and rapidly shambled semi-quietly through pitch-dark fields until within 80 or so yards of the grunting porkers. The pigs were clueless on the inky moonless night as they went about their business destroying the peanut field and driving the farmer to bankruptcy.

Florida Bedlam

Pigs ran everywhere, like angry fire ants after you kick over the anthill. Though ants do sometimes bite, they don’t weigh north of 200 lbs. nor sport fighting tusks. It was a highly exciting moment — a mixture of gunfire, snorts, shouts, squeals and general mayhem. Some pigs dropped instantly, others took a few more shots to connect as you figured out the lead and angle through the thermal scopes. I was surprised to discover, from a standing start, pigs are much faster than thoroughbred racehorses or so it seemed.

I was using a Ruger Model 556 lower with a home-built 300 AAC Blackout upper receiver, mated to a FLIR Apollo Pro 100mm optic (which they won’t sell to ordinary civilians anymore as of January 2020). If I did my job, the 300 BLK is pure poison for pigs.

When it was over, a grinning Heath asked, “What did you think of that?”

Through chattering teeth, all I could manage to say was a strangled, “Ungummph, pgwaaaf” which roughly translates to “Wow, that was cool!”

I was shaking like a hypothermia victim, my ears tinkled from the permanent damage done by more than 60 rounds of rifle fire (I’d forgotten my ear plugs) and my chest heaved like I had just run a marathon. I also knew most types of hunting had just gone down several notches in my book

Our crew stayed out until a bleary-eyed 4 a.m. and wrought significant damage on the pig population while seven coyotes also fell to our efforts. It was truly one of the most memorable hunts in my 40 years of blood sport.

Best of all, I discovered zero could be a pretty exciting concept.

Bits and Pieces

First off, let me discuss our reader mail policy. As you can imagine, we get tons of both email and “snail mail.” In fact, due to the more “experienced” nature of our readers, we probably get more physical mail than virtually any other magazine. I know this is the case for firearms magazines as I’ve discussed the matter in depth with my fellow competing editors while sitting around campfires and greasy spoons.

Anyway, at both GUNS and American Handgunner, we have a policy of the actual editors reading our mail. The task is not delegated to a Junior Assistant Associate Deputy Editor, because we don’t have any, plus we feel communication with readers is a critical matter.

Having said this, please note we are one of the leanest “top tier” magazines in the business, which is one reason we’re still in business. We don’t have to support a large editorial bureaucracy so we still have money to buy paper and ink. However, it also means reader mail sometimes has to take a back seat to other more time-sensitive tasks such as editing stories.

Rest assured every letter and email gets read. Sometimes immediately, sometimes a month later. Unfortunately, without excess time on my hands, I simply can’t reply to everyone, especially those occasional letters starting with “Dear dumb stupid head …”

So — your input is valuable, a real human will read it but sadly, we don’t always have the time to return the kindness. Of course, if anyone wants to make a huge endowment to us, I’d be happy to spend all day on a beach, sipping frozen drinks and reading letters …

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