02 March 2025, 20:23
Bobby TomekNosler 100 grain BT continues to impress
Well, this little bullet continues to impress me. Around midnight, a medium-sized boar showed up near the top of the creek bank. Despite no visible moon, I had just enough twilight to take a shot, thanks in part also to frozen winter grass that helped the hog stand out.There's not much more to tell: The range was about 140 yards, and he was slightly quartering. So I placed the illuminated dot of the Zeiss Classic 8x56 a few inches behind shoulder with hopes it would be aligned with the opposite shoulder, thus taking out vitals in the process. The 100 grain Nosler Ballistic Tip, launched at 2840 fps from the 24" 6.5 Bullberry, did just that and more. The audible impact in the still night air was quite loud.
In addition to heavily damaging the liver, wrecking the lungs and separating the heart from its plumbing, it continued on and left a quarter-sized hole through the opposite shoulder, which it fully exited.
I lost sight of the hog at the shot, and I didn't pick up any heat signals in my old Leupold thermal monocular. We figured he tipped over into the creek bed, and after a couple harrowing incidents over the years, we have a rule out here: NO going into there to retrieve a hog in the dark. It's steep, slick and dangerous. But as it turns out, he swapped ends and headed east, tipping over after a short dash and landing in a small depression, which explains why I could not see him in the thermal.
So I got up this morning, stepped outside and didn't even have to conduct a search. Several buzzards had already found him and were just beginning their feast. Because there's been confirmed bird flu in vultures just 50 miles from here, and because it was a warm night, the hog -- after carefully getting a couple photos with my phone and opening the ribcage to assess the bullet's path -- was returned to nature and not butchered. I hated to lose the meat, but the risk was simply not worth it.
