After three misses on one > (have not seen it again so far) and another miss (have not seen this one again either) on a second hog :-[, I finally scored on two today ;D. Maybe I should have gone to the range first to get in some practice instead of going out cold turkey???

I won't be counting the two misses as kills, but it will be interesting to see if they ever show up down the road.

Anyway, both kills came with the 17 HMR. The first one I saw was this past Tuesday while scouting one of my regular farms. It was standing on a pile of manure and split before I could get set for a shot. I went back today, set up a hay bail blind and waited. After a long wait and glassing in other directions, she finally showed up, standing up on one of the manure piles. This time I was ready. Her back was to me and then she turned towards the right and the Marlin barked. She dropped, but without the smack of the larger calibers, it's hard to tell it they're dead on impact.

So I walk over to where I think she should be and there's no body. Now I'm pissed! Especially after my previous misses. I looked and looked and finally found her at the bottom of the next manure pile over. With the lack of depth of field on my range finding binos, it's hard to get the right perspective, especially at the shorter distances. This one was 80 yds. She's a young female who looks like she might still be nursing? Couldn't find the entrance, but the exit is obvious. Here are the pics. Sorry about the cell phone quality!



After the retrieval and the pics, I head over to another of my regular farms where I had my second miss. That one is no where to be seen, but another that I have seen twice is right there on top of a weed covered dirt pile waiting for me. He goes about his business as I set up using the hood of the truck to steady my aim. This one is also facing away, but I'm not waiting and let the 17 grain V-Max fly straight to the tarket and he drops right where he was standing. Nice thing about the 17 HMR, you can watch everything enfold due to very little recoil. This time no indication of an entrance or exit wound. Here are the DRT pics of a relatively young male.




Hope to be able to post more of my efforts in the weeks and months to follow.