Hello all! Just wanted to share my first kill with my 45/70 Handi. A little background on the rifle, it started its life as a .243, but i sold that barrel and in 2009 when I got selected for Chief Petty Officer in the Navy, I decided that I would do a little somethin for myself so I sent the action in for a 45/70 barrel. I am so glad that i did! My load is a 300 grain barnes TSX flat base over R7, and is smoking along at 2100fps (had to add a limbsaver)from a 22 inch barrel. I also did a trigger job on it and fot it down to around 2.5 pounds.(sweet!)So a couple of weeks ago, I went on my annual 7 day deer/pig hunt here in cali. Amazingly enough, I shot a buck on the very first day at 432yds with my 7mm08 stevens, I usually like em way closer than that but conditions were right, so i took the shot. On the morning of day two, I took another buck at 200 yds. In cali, we only get two deer tags, so i only had a pig tag left. I told my huntin buddies that the only way that this trip could get any better was if i filled my pig tag, and they were like good luck cuz we haven't seen pigs that much since deer season opened. The next morning i decided to take out my 45/70 and see if i finally get some blood on it. About an hour had passed and I spotted two pigs moving from a thicket about 400 yds away so i made a move to cut em off. I eventually got to the top of a hill to look over where they should be and before i could look over, i heard somethin to my left and there the pigs were about 30 yds away! I notice right away that they were small about 40 lbs(good eatin actually) but i didn't think that they were big enough to test my 45/70 out on. So i stayed still while the moved towards a larger thicket and I continued on to another knoll about 300 yds away. At the top I was able to see a large thicket to my left with a opening of about 60yds and then there was another hill which would block my view if something came out of the thicket and made it past the clearing. I decided to setup on the hill and pulled out my range finder to range the open area past the thicket and as I literally had the range finder up to my eye, a pig came walking out rather briskly. I quickly accessed that there were no piglets with it and assumed that it was a boar. I dropped prone aimed at the front of the shoulder at squeezed off the shot! Of course i was knocked off the sight picture from the recoil and by the time i recovered from that, all I saw was the pig kick up dirt and attempt to run and fall out of sight behind some bushes. The pig squealed twice and then there was dead silence. The range was 148yds and my rifle is sighted in at 3in high at 100yds so I held dead on...at that point I was pretty confident that i hit it, but what I wasn't confident about was going in the brush after a pig with a single shot. I figured if it wasnt dead and charged me and i missed with my second shot, i would have to pull out my knife and go to work. You can imagine all the crazy thoughts goin thru my mind as I was makin my way towards the brush where the pig went, boy was I happy when I saw it lying there motionless! It turned out to be about a 120 lb sow, the bullet entered behind the shoulder and exited the thru the offside shoulder leaving a fist sized hole. When I field dressed the sow, I discovered that the the bullet had hit directly in the heart and pretty much blown it to pieces...she was dead before she hit the ground. Now you can imagine my hunting crew's surprise when I called them over the radio and told them that I had gotten a pig! Three animals in three days, I have named this 2011 season as the "Hat Trick Season." I feel extremely blessed to have a season like this especially since I will be deploying to Afghanistan early 2012. Sorry for sucha long post. Thanks for reading. Take care & God Bless!
R/
HMC(FMF) Chris Turner, USN
3D Marine Aircraft Wing
