3 Sows Down and First SiOnyx Aurora Action Cam Video

[Double Naught Spy]

I returned last night to my property that has a large petroleum well pad and waited for hogs to show up. I arrived early and did a brief pedestrian survey of to locate new sign and found where the hogs had been rubbing on a telephone/power pole and then some normal rooting spots and random droppings. The tracks under the rubbing on the pole included both hog and cattle and were a few days old, but it seemed like a good spot to set up and watch for hogs. Turns out, it was a terrific spot.

While waiting on hogs, I had been using both my thermal scanner and new SiOnyx Aurora IR Night Vision camera as handhelds passing the time. So when I spied the hogs trotting in with my thermal, I hastily attached the SiOnyx Aurora to my rifle and started my brief stalk, emphasis on "hastily." Well, this is a field test, after all...

First hog, DRT. Second hog was spined and dropped with a shot through the neck that was mortal, but she later got a follow-up shot because she was moving too much. Hog 3 was clipped on the run and then finally barrel rolled with a shot that passed through the brow of the skull as she ran.

[jaybee1669]

The SiOnyx camera is pretty cool. It's amazing how clearly it picks up the star field.

[sundowner]

Great looking videos , thanks .

[Texas]

Thank you for the video, that Sionx is intruiging.

[BjornF16]

That's very nice imagery from the SiOnyx (although I don't know why they advertise it as "IR").

Do they have a helmet mounted solution for that?

[Double Naught Spy]

Bjorn, they do! If you have Facebook, check out their facebook page and it has it shown there. If not, let me know and I will see if I can ferret out the details.

Edit update...

Here is a vid...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hL8GaX0wOM

[Drift]

SiOnyx Auroa. Cool!. It stays it can be attached to a rifle scope. And its cheap!
Sir, when you get the time would you please compare and contrast it to a a PVS14 as that is the standard for low light intensification.

[Double Naught Spy]

Drift, I actually don't own a PVS-14, mostly because I don't wear helmet mounted optics and that is because of a neck injury not allowing me to wear helmets (TMI?). However!!! However, other people have done this in various forms.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MdCpkVnPVg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPIAsl_8Gs8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0OIwVLHVcI

[BjornF16]

Bjorn, they do! If you have Facebook, check out their facebook page and it has it shown there. If not, let me know and I will see if I can ferret out the details.

Edit update...

Here is a vid...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hL8GaX0wOM

BAD-ASS!

I gotta have that!

(I paid like 3-4x for my current NVD and it doesn't even do color, and doesn't have near the resolution or clarity :-[

Please report how it does in low illumination conditions (less than 2.2 mlux; 1/4 moon or less)

[Double Naught Spy]

Bjorn, you did pay more, but the NVD likely does better in darker conditions. I figure you need about half moon or better lighting for the SiOnyx to be effective. A little brighter and the image is better, if not superior, less and it is worse.

[jbob49]

That's some fine shooting...

[jaybee1669]

it's too bad hunters for the hungry can't take wild hogs. You could be feeding a lot of families out there.

[Double Naught Spy]

it's too bad hunters for the hungry can't take wild hogs. You could be feeding a lot of families out there.

This is going to sound bad on my part, but I get this a lot. What you have to understand is that free meat is not free. There are the logistics involved in initial field dressing, refrigeration, transportation, and then donation location. Providing food in such circumstances turns out to be quite the burden. Few people realize this. They hear the stories about how some hunter donated his deer to hunters for the hungry, maybe even paid the processing fees (which they encourage) at the processor. It is a nice Cinderella story that makes everybody feel good. I killed 350 hogs last year and 222 the year before that. All of a sudden, you are talking about significant investments in time and expense beyond what I am already donating in helping out landowners in helping protect their properties. That extra time and expense would decrease what I could do for my landowners, which is my primary focus.

Also keep in mind that after shooting a hog or hogs from a sounder that are to be donated, I immediately stop being a hunter and have to become a processor/packer/handler and/or delivery person. I can't, in good conscious, kill hogs and let them sit for hours while I continue to hunt properties to kill hogs. That would potentially result in undue spoilage that is a safety/health hazard for those who may consume the meat. So for most of the months a year in Texas, if I was donating hogs, I would be locked in, time-wise, to the donation portion of the operation for 2-4 hours depending on the number of hogs, processing, purchasing ice at the all night store, transportation to the recipient, and return travel time. Of course, I could save the delivery time aspect until the end of the night such that I could continue to load up with hogs the 4-6 ice chests that I would need to carry around throughout the night to be able to make a bulk singular delivery, right?

I have donated several hogs to friends and neighbors, which is legal to do, but here is what I have learned over the past few years. Most don't truly appreciate it it, not to the point that they want to be bothered with being awakened at 3:00 am and having a gutted hog dropped off that they then need to finish out. I have even had folks ask me to go ahead and cut off the good portions of the hog for them, bag it, and leave it in an ice chest on their front porch and they would put it in the freezer in the morning and I would get the ice chest back the next time I came out. One guy asked me to go ahead and label the cuts of meat. Isn't that a kick in the crotch?

I have offered to call people who said they could really use the meat and let them come out and take what portions that they want from the hogs themselves and I would dispose of the carcass. I don't mind taking the back strap out (considered good eating) for folks who want to come by and collect them. That is apparently too much trouble for nearly all of them. Or, they ask me to call them when I get a hog, but "right now" never seems to be convenient for them. So my thought is that if they aren't willing to put forth the effort, I am not either. It doesn't seem like they are actually in need so much as they want something for free and without and hassle.

I realize this makes me sound like a curmudgeon, not willing to go out of my way to help people in need and that just isn't the case. The bottom line reality here is that what folks consider free meat is far from free. It is only free in the sense that nobody is actually purchasing it, but that is not to say that there are a lot of expenses involved with donating it, all of which would fall to me. I do occasionally help somebody out with some meat, but it is a drop in the bucket compared the number of hogs killed.

I will gladly share my dead hogs with friends and family, but I am not a charity organization.

[tomc]

^^^^^ I totally understand and agree.

[Klem]

'Waxing Gibbous'...(I had to look that one up). LOL.

Always informative and entertaining.