My dad and I don't get to do much hunting together, so earlier this year we intentionally planned a hog hunt to coincide with the week that the high school he teaches at was on spring break. We decided to try our luck at a hunting ranch in East Texas that I had been to before. We got there the night before our hunt after getting dinner at a diner in the nearest town about 20 minutes away. The weather for our hunt could not have been timed better. That evening a cold front came through and the temperatures swung from being in the 80s and humid to dry, cool, and in the upper 40s the next morning.

We woke up early and were ready to go when the guide showed up, and we were in our blind just after sunrise. I had brought three rifles with me for this excursion to give me and my dad a couple of choices for what to use. I had brought my Henry H9 Provider (chambered in .360 Buckhammer), my late grandpa's Ruger M77 "tang-safety" model (chambered in .270 Winchester), and my grandpa's Marlin 336 (chambered in .35 Remington). I let my dad choose what he wanted to use and he opted for the Marlin since it was the lightest of the three and he didn't want to fight the weight if shooting off-hand. I opted for the .360 Buckhammer since I hadn't had a chance to use it on game yet and wanted to use this opportunity to do so. We were both shooting my handloads - my dad using 200-grain Hornady FTX bullets charged with Leverevolution powder and I was using 200-grain Sierra Pro-Hunter bullets over CFE BLK.

After getting set up in the blind, we settled in to begin the waiting game. There were a couple of cushioned swivel chairs in the blind, but mine kept sinking on me, so I ended up sitting on a folding chair that was also in the blind. Due to the temperatures, the metal chair was frigid, so I put my soft gun case on the seat to prevent my hindquarters from freezing. We didn't say much, but honestly, that was OK - sometimes it's nice just to be present with someone doing the same thing, and it allowed us to both enjoy the nature. If I am being honest, there was one moment where I had a bout of performance anxiety - I didn't want to make a bad shot in front of my dad if a hog did step out. But remembering that this was about the experience and not the result helped to recenter myself and the moment passed.

We had been there about 90 minutes when all of a sudden a light colored hog with dark spots appeared out of the brush off to the right. I pointed to get my dad's attention and whispered the word "hog" as it trotted at a decent clip across our field of view. It was moving too fast for either of us to try to get a shot off, so we let it pass in hopes it might come back. It moved off to our left and down the fence line behind us. We continued watching to see if more hogs would come from the same direction, but none did. A few minutes later, my dad nudged me and off to his left, a small group of hogs was coming back down the fence line, including the one we had just seen. I thought I counted six with one noticeably larger than the others, but couldn't be sure since they were moving up and down the fence line, and while they stopped periodically it was never for long. My dad had offered to let me take the first shot, so I shouldered my rifle, resting it on the wooden window sill of the blind. It was difficult to get a sight picture I liked with the hogs moving back and forth so much. They would move behind some brush, come out the other side, stop briefly, and keep moving. I watched them for several minutes in the scope as they moved back and forth and disappeared and reappeared. One of the hogs moved off to the right of us and disappeared and we didn't see it the rest of the day, leaving five in the group in front of us.

When the group came out from behind some brush about 50 yards away, a black one stopped briefly and I decided to try my luck, pulling the hammer back and squeezing off a shot. The shot rang out just as the hog took a step and I saw the hog move off with the others and disappear behind a different section of brush. I immediately wished I hadn't taken the shot - it had felt a little far back and to see the hog move off afterwards meant I had to have missed or merely wounded it.

When the group came out the other side of the brush, I decided to try again, running the lever to eject the spent case and chamber another round. Another hog stopped briefly, and being more confident in the sight picture on this one, I squeezed off another shot. The same thing happened this time and the sounder moved back behind the brush it had come from, with the second one I had shot at going with them.

At this point I was somewhat demoralized, wondering how I could have missed or wounded two hogs at that range. Three of the hogs came out from the brush on the other side and continued down the fence line. I waited for the last two to join them, but as they continued to move further on, the two I was waiting on didn't appear. And that's when it hit me - I was only counting three hogs because the other two were down. My dad realized it too, and we switched spots so that he could get set up for a shot. He wanted the big hog in the group and when it stopped long enough, he took a shot, but similar to before, the big hog moved on. When it came around the other side of the brush, it stopped and he took a second shot. It dropped instantly in plain sight.

My dad was worried that perhaps he had gut-shot it, but I reassured him that if it dropped instantly like that, there was little chance it was a gut shot. While he was watching the big hog to make sure it didn't get back up, I looked over to the right where the other hogs were just in time to see the light colored hog with dark spots go down. I pointed it out to my dad and we were both puzzled since he hadn't aimed at that one - the only thing we could figure was that either his first shot missed the big hog and hit the spotted one, or the spotted hog had been behind the big one and somehow his second shot had hit both. Either way, we were both thrilled - we had taken four shots and we were counting four hogs on the ground.

As the last hog finally hightailed out of the area, my dad and I unloaded our rifles - four hogs were way more success than we had anticipated and we didn't want to push our luck. When the guide showed back up, he asked how things had gone and I told him that we had taken four shots and had counted four fewer hogs. He was slightly skeptical, but when we made it down to where the hogs were, he confirmed it saying, "Y'all were right - four for four!"

Back at the skinning shed, we determined that both of my dad's hogs had been lung shots. The first hog I had taken a shot at (the one I wasn't 100% pleased with), turned out to have been a liver shot and only clipped a lung on the way in - still highly lethal, but not quite ideal. The second hog (the one I had felt more confident about) had been a solid heart shot. One of my takeaways from the experience was just how much margin the .360 Buckhammer and .35 Remington have at those distances. It's hard to appreciate it until you see the effect on game, but it's no wonder they have the reputation that they do for being excellent woods cartridges. As we loaded the coolers to take to the processor, we joked that we would be eating hog for quite a while.