We were shooting under a full moon and with a lamp. The technique was to stalk quietly along a grass strip at the edge of a large wood watching for large black shapes to come out onto the grass strip. They were then illuminated with the lamp to see if they were suitable, i.e. not a lactating sow or one with youngsters at foot. In one evening we saw 33 boar of varying ages. I got a big barren sow of about 90kg and a smaller yearling boar, the shots were taken at 30 yards and just over 150 yards. At one point we sat down on the edge of the wood as we could hear pigs just inside, as we sat there a sow and six piglets came out just 30 yards to our left, crossed the grass and then turned and ran along the edge of the crops, right in front of us. The piglets were quite small so we let them go.
I missed the chance of a really big boar of around 160kg when it was lumped and the stalker gave the OK as I was too close to get a picture in the sights, I thought I couldn't see when in fact the scope was completely filled with boar. Had I had the .457 with open sights I would have got it. We were no more than 15 yards away from him. The .457 was really insurance as on foot with a big fairly unhappy boar you'd want him to go down and stay down!
The boar seemed remarkably tolerant of us as they must have scented us at some stage. The other thing was that we could smell them from quite some distance.
