Lessons Learned from Hunting for Hogs behind Enemy Lines in California with a Bow and Noveske Barreled Q Fix

Walter recently wrapped up a siege-style road trip hunting trip in California, from the Hills of Pismo up to Red Bluff, looking for wild boar with a wheel bow and the upcoming 1/7 twist 308 barrel from Noveske for the Q fix. This isn't your Texas-style feeder or thermal hunt but a spot-and-stalk hunt much more akin to a mule deer or western backcountry hunt, with boar being mostly nocturnal but coming out of the thick draws and riverbeds to feed out on the hillsides and ridges this time of year. Walter, Donny, and fellow bowler Mike Idell put in the miles looking for pigs in their adopted habitat that routinely produces wild boar with direct Russian lineage in excess of 450 pounds.

For the trip, Walter loaded up a Hotload with 190 CX bullets and a few tablespoons of Varget and got them going 2460 FPS out of the 16-inch barrel, slapped on a Nightforce NX8 2.5-20, and zeroed the setup at 40 yards. 40 yards!? What the fuck is that? Well, at 2460 FPS and with a BC of .575 (G1) and a height over bore of 3.01, Walter can aim and hit a 5-inch target, roughly the size of a boar's vitals, out to 250 yards. Any further than that, Walter had the time to dial. Boars are never standing still and always moving, with most encounters being very fast and a flexible zero like this, gave Walter, Donny, and Mike the most flexible options for hunting.

The results were very impressive, with the rifle taking animals at as close as 40 yards and as far as 265 yards. The 190cx Bullet, aided by the 30% faster twist rate, gave the moderate velocity of the 16-inch barrel expansion that you'd typically see out of a 300 Win Mag or 300 PRC.

Mike Idell of General Sporting Club, cutting into the guard of the boar he shot with the Noveske Fix.

"But Walter, my 300 PRC has 50% more energy on target than your short, fast twist 308." Well, this leads Walter to his next point and the reason for including a wheel bow in today's discussion.

Walter's bow, a Hoyt Alpha 33, flings a 496-grain arrow at 275 FPS, resulting in a meager 83.27 FT/LBs of energy.Despite having roughly 3% of the total energy as the 190CX Hotload, Walter's arrow managed to stop a 250-pound sow in its tracks, running less than 40 yards and expiring in less than 10 seconds.

Walter's point is this dude: animals are killed through blood loss and stopping oxygen's flow to the brain, not by vaporizing milk jugs, cinder blocks, or by delivering a set number of foot-pounds on target. Shot placement and shooting a bullet that cuts tissue well at a given velocity is the ticket and led Walter to ask Noveske if they would be interested in making some barrels for the Q fix with faster twist rates in calibers that give bowlers the most options for hunting.

One of Walter's largest gripes with the gun industry is the concept that twist rate is a function of chambering, not velocity. A 16-inch .308 lightweight adventure rifle, shooting heavy for caliber bullets, has no business having the same twist rate as a 24-inch competition rifle. The only reason companies do this is because they are too lazy to order different twist rates for different barrel lengths. Accuracy and expansion are a function of velocity and RPM, so by reducing barrel length and thus velocity, a bowler must up the twist rate to achieve the necessary RPM for bullet stabilization and expansion in a given velocity window. This is the heart of the problem Walter, Donny, and the folks at Noveske are hoping to solve with our collaboration barrels. More to come on this soon; Walter's rambling again, back to the lessons learned from the hunt.

Trips like this one behind enemy lines, where Walter and the boys put in over a hundred miles on foot with a pack and binos, reinforced the beauty of the Q Fix. It is lightweight, compact, intuitive to shoot, and with the 1/7 308 barrels, accurate and gives whatever bullet a bowler ends up throwing down an added window of expansion. Wild Boars, especially mature boars are incredibly tough and hard to kill. Their vitals are small, much lower than other big game, and protected by a cartilage shield that stops pistol bullets, even .44 mag in its tracks. Now Walter and Donny have a lot of meat processing to do and will be turning the meat in the freezer into chorizo to make tacos for league night at the lanes.