Wulf Outdoor Sports – A Tactical Hog Hunter’s Best Friend

When it comes to tactical hog hunting, there are several necessary ingredients, and a ton of optional ones. Like real estate, you start with location, location, location. And while hogs are gaining ground across the country, East Texas is a particularly great place to hunt feral pigs. Land owners use words like “infestation” and “overrun” to describe the hog problem there. The Wulf Outdoor Sports Wild Hog Roundup encouraged and equipped hog hunters of all stripes to make a difference. Encouragement came through organizing the twenty county competition, and putting together the $28,000 purse. Equipping came through their robust product section both in their stores and online.

Case in point – SHWAT showed up with a great tactical hunting kit, but the situation on the ground proved the need for some additional gear and expertise. First of all, night hunting was lights-out dark. There was no moon, and the incredibly thick forest grew trees up to 120 feet tall. There was hardly any sky visible from ground level. You couldn’t see your next step once off the light sand roads. Some of our rifles were equipped with the Insight M6X white light/laser units, but the white light alerts the hogs to your presence. They worked great once the shooting started up close to make sure we didn’t get run over, but that’s a story for another date. For navigating the woods in the dark, we needed other options. Wulf came through for us.

Wulf also came through in their partnership with LaCrosse boots. At one point, it poured rain for hours and hours. We needed boots for the occasion, and these guys came through with what we should have brought in the first place: LaCrosse Venom 18` Realtree APG Laceup Snake Boots. There’s more to this story, and you’ll see it soon on this site, but suffice it to say that not only did the boots work well, but once again, the expertise on hand were the best.

Writer Brian McCombie picked up a green LED flashlight that allowed him spot and illuminate a hog he took with his Armalite AR-10(T) in .308. Wulf also supplied us with a Laser Genetics ND3. This is a pretty cool device that, for our purposes, acted as both a tight beam flashlight for navigating the dark, and identifying our target hogs for team member Jared Hilton. Some users have said that this device, though outputting green light, alerts and spooks the hogs. The guys at Wulf were ready with the solution: Avoid using the tightest beam setting. Sure enough, the hogs didn’t spook when we followed that advice. We’ll have more on that unit another day.

On the high speed side of night hunting, we went equipped with the thermal imaging TUSKIR384 by Nitehog. For spotting hogs, and one unlucky armadillo, this was the thing to have. The sole optic mounted atop a Smith and Wesson M&P15, this device helped us put down a couple of hogs. A L-3 CNVD, a remarkable night vision device also from Nitehog, sat in front of a Trijicon ACOG on an Accurate Armory AR-15. Laser Devices, Inc. equipped us with both a DBAL-D² (Dual Beam Aiming Laser with IR LED Illuminator) and a prototype of their new SPIR (Special Purpose Infrared LED Illuminator). Each of these devices performed exceptionally well, and allowed us to take hogs in the darkest of nights from 40 – 125 yards. Longer shots would have been doable, but the terrain didn’t give us much more than that. We will soon bring you detailed reviews of how we used these, and how they performed, along with lessons learned on the ground.

Speaking of lessons learned, the people who live, work and lease the land where you hunt probably know more about the hogs and their habits there than anyone else. In a great service to East Texas Landowners and hunters like the SHWAT Team, Wulf Outdoors connected both parties. Most of the land hunted by the SHWAT Team was on lease held by David Ellis since 1986. David has watched the impact of the growing hog problem to both land and game. Our team’s night hunts were the first ever with results in all those years.

There’s a lot more to say, a lot more to tell about our experience at the Wild Hog Roundup. We’ll look at the rifles, optics, lights and ammo (did you know you can get a 10% discount on DRT ammo using the promo code “SHWAT”?). In the mean time, you can dig in further using the links below.

Like life, when it comes to tactical hog hunting, the company you keep matters. We’re proud to partner with Wulf Outdoor Sports, a SHWAT.com site sponsor. Two locations in East Texas serve those communities well, and people literally fly in from across the country to access the expertise available there. You and I don’t have to go to those lengths. We can just give them a call or find what we need on their website. Special Hog Weapons and Tactics is all about bringing you expertise, experience, and resources. Wulf Outdoor Sports has proven a great partner in that mission. We’ll have more from the Wild Hog Roundup soon. It will be bigger and better next year. We hope to see you there!