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AR-15's used for hunting

Ranb

Penultimate Amazing
Ranb
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Anderson Cooper just got done with a short segment on AR-15's used for hunting wild hogs that destroy crops. A reporter interviewed a farmer who claims that he has lost up to 18 acres of newly planted seed in two nights at a cost of $9000 to wild hogs that root up the ground. He and other farmers hire Hog Swat to eradicate the hogs. http://hogswat.com/ The owner of Hog Swat was interviewed and he was of the opinion that an AR-15 with night vision and a 30 round magazine was the optimum tool for his business.

Interesting that CNN would finally acknowledge that an AR-15 is useful for something other than murdering school children. I guess I can stop holding my breath now. :)

Ranb
 
On cable TV, I recently saw an outdoors show that featured loud guys in camo flying around in helicopters using semi-auto rifles to shoot feral hogs. No hunting involved.

If blasting and eradication are what you are after, the AR15 is the perfect tool for the job. Yee Ha.
 
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fishbob said:
On cable TV, I recently saw an outdoors show that featured loud guys in camo flying around in helicopters using semi-auto rifles to shoot feral hogs. No hunting involved.

If blasting and eradication are what you are after, the AR15 is the perfect tool for the job. Yee Ha.
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Well this is a new topic to me but yes, the AR is very much the right tool for the night hunting this guy is doing (no helos, no yee ha).

As I understood it... if you're lucky enough to get a dozen hogs at once, the first shot scatters all the rest. Boar, sow, old, young... doesn't matter. They all must be killed (I hope the meat, if useful, gets used). 30 round mags make perfect sense.

The numbers I caught from the segment... 4-5 million feral hogs in the US causing ~$1.2 billion a year in crop damage.
 
WildCat said:
Are hogs considered varmints?
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Invasive species. In Arkansas, there is no regulation on hog hunting and trapping except for those that would affect other game. You can shoot 1 or 1000. Day or night. 365 days per year. You don't even need a hunting license. Most varmit hunting will have at least some regulation. It is illegal in Arkansas to transport or release any feral hog.
 

I disapprove of it and so does John.


Really. An interesting argument for use of such a weapon in pest control. While hunting is sometimes aimed at pest control, we do run the risk of conflating this practice with what most people would consider hunting. Not every pig hunter needs to massacre the herd.
 
Cylinder said:
Invasive species. In Arkansas, there is no regulation on hog hunting and trapping except for those that would affect other game. You can shoot 1 or 1000. Day or night. 365 days per year. You don't even need a hunting license. Most varmit hunting will have at least some regulation. It is illegal in Arkansas to transport or release any feral hog.
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I just thought up a new state motto. Arkansas: near the center of the country but at the edge of civilization.
 
Cain said:
I just thought up a new state motto. Arkansas: near the center of the country but at the edge of civilization.
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Bah. I live in LA (lower Arkansas) about 7 miles from the Louisiana line. There's not alot of private land edge of civilization left here - though it may seem so to the urban denizen. (My river camp is well off the beaten path, to be sure, about 35 miles to pavement.) My residence is semi-rural - hell, we even have city water!
 
I was biking thru path between fields 3 days ago and stumbled on about huge 8 hogs.

Where are those AR 15 wielding guys when you need them ?


Thankfully the hogs decided to flee the other way rather than charge me :p.
 
Ranb said:
Anderson Cooper just got done with a short segment on AR-15's used for hunting wild hogs that destroy crops. A reporter interviewed a farmer who claims that he has lost up to 18 acres of newly planted seed in two nights at a cost of $9000 to wild hogs that root up the ground. He and other farmers hire Hog Swat to eradicate the hogs. http://hogswat.com/ The owner of Hog Swat was interviewed and he was of the opinion that an AR-15 with night vision and a 30 round magazine was the optimum tool for his business.

Interesting that CNN would finally acknowledge that an AR-15 is useful for something other than murdering school children. I guess I can stop holding my breath now. :)

Ranb
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It's good at killing a lot of living targets quickly and efficiently. The hogs are just a type of target. No doubt, for professional hunters after wild pigs, they are a tool that ticks all the boxes. Fast rate of fire, low recoil, high capacity magazines that can be changed easily, easy to aim and direct that fast rate of fire consistently. Quite obviously, they do what they were designed to do well.
 
Another pest species that such weapons would be useful for is nutria. Nutria were released into the Southern swamplands years ago to provide grist for the fur trade.... Which collapsed. Soon, millions of the oversized, semi-aquatic rats were over-running the Everglades and similar areas.
The hunting technique is by airboat with quick-firing rifles....

I understand that yet another invasive species, the python, is making inroads into the population... Tasty snack for a big constrictor.
 
Bikewer said:
Another pest species that such weapons would be useful for is nutria. Nutria were released into the Southern swamplands years ago to provide grist for the fur trade.... Which collapsed. Soon, millions of the oversized, semi-aquatic rats were over-running the Everglades and similar areas.
The hunting technique is by airboat with quick-firing rifles....

I understand that yet another invasive species, the python, is making inroads into the population... Tasty snack for a big constrictor.
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:D :D :D

I swear... I was going to put in my first post that the Nutria should be added to the list. Thanks for getting them in there.

If there really was a god... Nutria would eat kudzu.

:D
 
Sideroxylon said:

I disapprove of it and so does John.


Really. An interesting argument for use of such a weapon in pest control. While hunting is sometimes aimed at pest control, we do run the risk of conflating this practice with what most people would consider hunting. Not every pig hunter needs to massacre the herd.
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But in North America, they ought. It is an invasive species.
 
The semi auto AK in the original 7.62 x 39 is good feral pig medicine, and in the former soviet one of the most popular hunting rifles was a civilianized version of the Dragunov sniper rifle in 7.62 x 54R

http://www.dragunov.net/tiger.html

In the AR platform, with the right barrel and good glass in the original 5.56, you have the makings of a great varmint rifle for ranges up to 500 yds - a tuned AR w/atch ammo is a 1/2 MOA rifle.

In the AR10 platform, you can run .308 and .243, and the same accuracy potential is there, so extended range varmint or deer/elk sized game are on the list too.

Personally, I've watched the "you don't need to hunt with an AR15!" and "You don't need 30 rounds to kill a deer!" assertions as just more evidence of the complete lack of knowledge of the subject matter by the anti's.

Such commentators don't want to be informed of aummunition capacity restriction requirements by state fish and game agencies, solved by 5 round magazines, and they absolutely don't want to be informed of minmum caliber restrictions (5.56 or.223 Rem. is forbidden as a deer caliber in many areas) When some politician wants to claim that the issue calider AR round is "high-powered" the last thing they want to hear is that in fact the round isn't considered powerful enough to take White Tailed deer sized animals with:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-tailed_deer#Size_and_weight

Size and weight

The white-tailed deer is highly variable in size, generally following Bergmann's rule that the average size is larger further away from the Equator. North American male deer (also known as a buck or stag) usually weighs 60 to 130 kg (130 to 290 lb) but, in rare cases, bucks in excess of 159 kg (350 lb) have been recorded.

The female (doe) in North America usually weighs from 40 to 90 kg (88 to 200 lb). White-tailed deer from the tropics and the Florida Keys are markedly smaller-bodied than temperate populations, averaging 35 to 50 kg (77 to 110 lb), with an occasional adult female as small as 25.5 kg (56 lb).[5]

Kind of difficult to claim the round is "high powered" if it isn't considered adequate for killing animals in the average weight range of adult humans.
 
Ranb said:
Anderson Cooper just got done with a short segment on AR-15's used for hunting wild hogs that destroy crops. A reporter interviewed a farmer who claims that he has lost up to 18 acres of newly planted seed in two nights at a cost of $9000 to wild hogs that root up the ground. He and other farmers hire Hog Swat to eradicate the hogs. http://hogswat.com/ The owner of Hog Swat was interviewed and he was of the opinion that an AR-15 with night vision and a 30 round magazine was the optimum tool for his business.

Interesting that CNN would finally acknowledge that an AR-15 is useful for something other than murdering school children. I guess I can stop holding my breath now. :)

Ranb
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The Ak 47 is also a prime elephant hunting weapon.
 
Cylinder said:
Invasive species. In Arkansas, there is no regulation on hog hunting and trapping except for those that would affect other game. You can shoot 1 or 1000. Day or night. 365 days per year. You don't even need a hunting license. Most varmit hunting will have at least some regulation. It is illegal in Arkansas to transport or release any feral hog.
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I was asking because there's a show on TV about game wardens, and in several episodes California game wardens are going after pig poachers. I thought it odd that there would be any regulations about killing pigs, they really should be eradicated as much as possible.

As far as I know only extreme southern Illinois has feral hogs, so we're lucky.
 
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