Love the "silencer" on the rifle! LOL

Well, you wouldn't want to scare the poor little piggys before you blow them to bits would you?;) The only thing giving them a fighting chance is the noise of the helicopter - maybe that's why he turned the engine off :)

Oh to be such brave hunters............

Well. It is Texas.

They've got the silent option covered as well. It's called tannerite. A few pounds of tannerite in a tin can, some corn, and a well aimed Grendel 6.5 and the piggies don't hear a thing. They just exist one second chowing down on some corn, and totally don't exist the next.

To all bleeding hearts...feral pigs are a pest in many Southern states,Texas included.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/scien...exas-73769069/

Come on, you know you could have finished a sandwich during that auto if it had been in a 206 ;)

While I understand your visceral reaction to a pet peeve, If you look carefully you will see that neither device blocks the pilot's view of any instrumentation. The angle from the camera mounted on the left front passenger's head is in no way indicative of the pilot's ability to see any part of the panel or controls.

Don't be silly, of course it does. Your posts are normally a lot more even handed, not sure what's set you off on this one. I'm just trying to be kind. We all aspire to a higher standard, but I'm not going to start making skygod/sky king/super-pilot posts about how I could have flown it better, whether or not I think that I really could have flown it better. You have many times my experience, and at 11,000 hours probably many times the experience of most pilots, I'm sure you could have flown it better.

In this day and age it's probably easier to simply ban cameras from the cockpit, since aircraft of all types will always be crashing or flown ham handed. On the other hand, Robinson just made a cockpit camera system a $2500 factory option, so standby for plenty more Youtube and Facebook gold :rolleyes:

gB--would you have a link to that report, please?

Correct. There's no reason to do that check normally. If there's a bad P lead that can be detected during the normal mag checks.

No link. Personal communication with the owner.

As for guns/pigs/'merica...

No rubber boots in 44's, I'm afraid. Totally with you on this one! Brass catchers are required in my book! Neither pax seemed be so equipped :(

Suppressed rifles are much more pleasant to shoot. Even when shooting from helicopters. Don't knock it if you haven't tried it.

As for those of you who might be rooting for the piggies (and that's a pun if you know anything about pigs/hogs :}), they might call it hunting, but it's really eradication. They are a dangerous and destructive infestation that remains, at best, barely under control.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/scien...exas-73769069/

And for the UK rotorhead breathren, you are also beset by the same problem, but you use much nicer words and are only slightly more subtle about it compared to us more overtly bloodthirsty 'mericans.

https://www.theguardian.com/environm...d-boar-britain

It's amazing how small mistakes in judgement can lead to infestations like both of those. My neighbor's 4 pigs got loose at the 200lb stage a few years ago and started to turn my fields in moonscapes. I was able to corral them into a paddock for him, no easy task even for domestic pigs. He himself said "Why didn't you just shoot them?"

Thanks for the quick reply!

Interesting. If true, we can add poor weapons skills on the part of the pilot and crew to the litany, because no part of the rifle should have ever crossed over into that part of the cabin, even when loading pax, and especially after the engine was started! That's quite frightening!

"They are a dangerous and destructive infestation"

What have the naughty piggys been doing.....snuffling for root vegetables with malice? Scoffing truffles with intent? Or maybe deliberatley rolling in mud without a though for the environment!

Why would you allow idiots with loaded weapons to get onboard in the first place.......? and in the front seat...? do you have to have an `endorsement` to live-fire from a helo.....?

Pastures, farms, gardens: take your pick, little piggies. And those are just the most obvious problems, there are many others. If you live in a world where you are insulated from the direct effects perhaps you simple can't understand. But it's easy to understand when you lose tens of thousands of dollars in crops overnight. Or the feedlot for your cattle is wrecked. Or even your prized petunias are gone. Then there are the diseases that spread to other livestock, the fact that they drive out all other species of game and non-game animals, etc., etc. But things like that are hard for city-dwelling vegans to grasp, I guess :ugh:


https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....38a3b59316.jpg
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....fe6a0e9f7f.jpg
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....150582779b.jpg

Once you get them on your farm as we did (yes, in the UK) you change your tune very quickly. A herd can destroy acres in a single night. You use whatever you can to eradicate the unwelcome pests, or go bust. Rifles with thermal sights are best so you can work after dark. Night vision can work but if you use an illuminator they can see some of them (depends on the wavelength of your IR torch). And suppressors (no such thing as a silencer unless you are in a movie) save your hearing - not interested in the Boar.

You are forgetting that this is in America and, even more importantly, Texas :)

Actually, hunting from aircraft and vehicles is generally illegal nearly everywhere in the US. However, it has proven to be such an efficient method of eradicating the hogs that Texas, and so far only Texas, has explicitly made it legal (for hogs only).

There are also many places in the US where you can fire weapons from helicopters at regular targets on a large firing range and they do big business.

While this all might seem to be insanely dangerous to folks who have not grown up steeped in gun culture, i.e. pretty much everywhere except the US these days, it's really not all that difficult to do with a level of safety high enough to make any untoward event as rare as, say, an aircraft accident. And, like any other intrinsically dangerous activity, such as SCUBA, skydiving, motorcycling, skiing (dare I mention flying helicopters?) it takes proper training, discipline and oversight. People have figured these things out because obviously it can and is being done safely.

Of course there is an emotional aspect to all this that tends to color people's perceptions. If poor Joe got smashed on his motorcycle, maybe took another vehicle or two and their occupants along for the ride, or broke his leg on a ski slope, maybe colliding with and injuring others, people would be sympathetic. If Joe shot himself in the foot in Nevada shooting stuff from helicopters, or put a round through a skid tube, it would be the end of life as we know it, right? Because aviation is special and guns are bad...

Yep - Texas has it right about everything......yawn - even getting rid of mandatory mask wearing in the middle of a pandemic.:ugh:

Plenty of us are used to gun culture - it is ingrained from day 1 in the military and shooting all manner of weapons from helicopters is best left to professionals.

I get the need to control the hog population and understand the efficiency of using helicopters - but what is the justification for the use of assault rifles when a number of other options might work too. Or can't they shoot straight in Texas?:)

Crab - you're not trying to redirect attention from the fact that this "non-military" person with a self-loading rifle (may or may not be an "assault rifle, many that look like this are not capable of automatic fire) might be doing his job better than the pilot who departed with both mags switched off?

I'm sure you would not do that

No JohnR81 - the dipstick with the pilot's licence out dips the dipsticks with the poor gun control:)

Non-full auto assault rifles? In Texas I think you'd be laughed off the range:)

DB, I don't think the brave little hunters would take kindly to being on the receiving end:) That's why they aren't serving their country.

They could only own fully automatic rifles if they were made before 1986, but they are much more expensive than new semi-automatic rifles because there's a limited supply