Since things have been a little slow in this forum, please indulge my posting of a short but successful hunt for wild boar ( vildsvin ) in Sweden. The hunt took place in May of 2016.

First, I have hunted a number of times in Sweden for wild boar. I have hunted from a blind and waited ( vakjakt ), I have hunted a number of times as part of a driven hunt ( drevjakt ). Hunting from a blind, I’ve heard wild boar, but never seen one. Hunting as part of a driven hunt, I seldom saw any alive, but other hunters have shot them many times. And perhaps I should say that these were all “free” hunts, not guided hunts.

Second, having been fortunate enough to travel to Sweden many times, and live there for a year, I’ve been very fortunate to be invited on hunts where I’ve always had an excellent time, even if the “success” on these hunts was nil.

In May of last year, my friend’s boss, Johan, invited me to visit him at his cottage near Karlskrona with the plan being an evening hunt for wild boar. At 7:30 a.m. I got the following email from Johan; a few hours later I set out for the Stockholm Bromma airport and then flew to Ronneby airport.

Dear Jeff!
Looking forward for this day!
Schedule:
Pick up 1510
Test shooting
Pike/herring
Dinner
Boar

Sounds like good day?
Best regards
Johan

A good day indeed! We went straight from the airport to a clear cut where we could do some target shooting to test the rifle – a Tikka T3 .308 with a GRS stock and suppressor. The test shooting showed the rifle to be quite accurate with the three shots from about 50 m going into a half-inch group.

The test shooting was done from a box blind ( jakttorn):


After testing the rifle, we proceeded on to his cottage. We had a short tour of the cottage property; I stayed in a small bunkhouse. After a cup of coffee, we grabbed a spinning rod and a few spoons, then walked down to the dock where Johan keeps a boat. We headed out for 10 minutes or so and then stopped to fish a shallow weedy flat overlooked by a large mansion, the home of a count according to Johan. Since the water level was low, we caught a lot of weeds, so we moved to a deeper channel between two islands. There I caught an eating-size pike, perhaps a kilogram and a half. We kept it and Johan fileted it when we got back to the cottage.




Johan is quite the cook and we had an elaborate dinner starting with smoked eel that Johan had caught, dressed, smoked, vacuum sealed and (I guess) froze. We ate it on hard thin bread and it was really good. The main course was then served – wild boar cheeks that had been slow-cooked, fried ground wild boar, and potatoes. Fantastic! After finishing with a cup of coffee, we packed up our stuff and headed out for an evening hunt.

After a thirty-minute drive, we turned off the main road, and went down a gravel road where we parked at a wide spot in the road. We then walked in a few 100 meters, through someone’s yard, where we said “hej!” – apparently they are used to men in dark/camo clothes with rifles walking through their property! With darkness rapidly approaching, we came to the place where Johan had set up a feeder and a two-hunter tree stand. (No photos of this – it was getting dark and I couldn’t be messing around with the camera when I needed to get set up for hunting!) Johan had also cleared a shooting lane into the woods. But for the most part, I couldn’t see further than 50 meters in any direction. A full moon had risen by the time we walked in, so we had hopes of some illumination from it.

We settled in to hunt for as long as needed. I had dressed warmly anticipating that temperatures would fall, but I was a bit overheated by the time I got in the stand and I only a cooled a little while we were hunting. We heard quite a few forest sounds – the most common being mosquitos buzzing around our head nets! Also geese and other birds. There was no wind, only the slightest of occasional breezes, so every move I made in my rain jacket seemed loud to me. After an hour, there were several times when we heard something moving near us; we heard some splashing from the nearby lake; and also heard a grunting noise. Several times Johan signaled me that there was something nearby.

After an hour and a half, Johan whispered very quietly that there was a boar or two in the shooting lane. (Actually, I couldn’t hear him all that well!) I quietly raised the rifle and looked at two dark blobs that might have been boar. But were they both boar or was one a boar and the other a stump? Hard to be sure! If they were boar, they were either facing us or facing away from us. (Johan was watching through binoculars and later said they were facing us.) Finally, one of the blobs turned sideways, taking on a very clear boar profile. Johan had told me earlier that he usually went for a head shot if conditions were ideal. So, I aimed for the back of the head and shot. I couldn’t see anything but Johan declared that it was a perfect shot and the boar had collapsed on the spot.



We walked down to the boar and, sure enough, it was right there. From the blood, it looked like I had shot nearly exactly where I was aiming, right through the brain. But when we later examined it, we had drawn the wrong conclusion. The shot actually hit about 2 inches further back and went right through the spine. In fact, I don’t think the bullet expanded significantly in the short traverse of the boar – the entrance and exit holes both seemed about the same size: 0.30 inches. But it did the job perfectly.

So, then the work began. We dragged the boar for what seemed to be 100 meters. And it kept seeming heavier. We didn’t have a scale to weigh the boar but Johan estimated the weight at 70 kg (155 pounds) and its age as two years. (And to be perfectly clear, it was a male.) It did not have large tusks, but trying to load it into the back of Johan’s XC-70, it seemed to me to be every bit of 70 kg!
When we hung it up at Johan’s cottage to dress it, it was (stretched out) as tall as me. We completed the “field” dressing and covered it with an insect proof bag to let it hang overnight.




In the morning, we took it to a refrigerated room at the farm of Johan’s friend. Johan planned to butcher it in the afternoon. I though, caught a train for Copenhagen airport at noon.

I was elated at the opportunity to successfully hunt a Swedish wild boar. After perhaps seven or so outings and never seeing one while I had a rifle in my hands, they were starting to seem like a mythical creature!

And so, what sounded like a good day at 7:30 a.m. had, by midnight, become a most excellent day!

Jeff

Awesome story
Night hunts sitting for boars are exciting
I prefer that much better than driven hunts
Perfect size for eating, old ones stink to high heaven
Very addictive hunts these boar outings

Congratulation's !!

Thanks for posting

Waidmannsheil!

A pike and a boar, I consider that a pretty productive outing!

Entertaining story too, well done.

Excellent!

I never realized they had wild hogs in Sweden. I have a question, though. Why doesn't your boar have blond hair? After all, he's Swedish.

All - Thanks for your comments!

Gerry - Waidmannsdank!

Grenadier - I'll have to keep my eyes out for a blond one next time! :-) Seriously, my understanding is that Sweden had wild hogs in the Stone Age, but they were extirpated even before the Viking era. Then, there were some stocked at some point, and in the 1980s they were occasionally seen. Now, they are commonly seen in the south of Sweden - certainly from Stockholm south; I'm not sure how far north they are found. Perhaps a Swedish hunter can shed some more light or correct my understanding.

I would love to have your contacts for high seat wild boars in Sweden. Is it a friend or a company you go with?

It's my friend's boss. I've been on guided hunts for moose and fallow deer in Sweden. But the boar hunt and past boar hunts have all been on the basis of very kind invitations.

No problem, understood, thank you very much for your response.