Specialty ammo for hog hunting?

cdb1 said:

"Everything isn't always bigger in TX."

That's definitely true according to my ex-wife. I also believe in Bergmann's rule. But I'm asking about a particular person's experience. Also many of these so called huge feral hogs are gimmicks of photography or are domestic hogs that have recently gone feral. There are 400 lb feral hogs out there but they are few and far between. I've also read a bunch of mythology relating to how hard they are to kill. Place a decent .223 bullet in the right place and they go down. I don't hunt hogs with a .223, I hunt them with a 30-30 using 150 grain Corelokts and a Leupold VX-3 1.75-6x32 with German #4. Only thing I use the rifle for.

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Post a picture of Texas Wolf then.

peacebutready said:

I didn't know people hunt hog with a .223. Is there soft point lead ammo for deer/hog or just the all-copper stuff?

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Partitions and Sierras if you handload. Perfecta 55 gr will take whitetails too.

Well Dog Soldier there ain't any wolves in Texas as you well know, or Grizzlies or Meese. Got a couple of elk. Eland and Nilgai too.

cdb1 said:

I believe deer loads would be fine on a 400 pound bruiser. How many have you encountered? If so can you prove it? I'm almost 58, have been hunting all my life, have lived in Texas all my life(where there are many more hogs than any other state) and have never seen a feral hog that big.

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What part are you in? We have lots of 300+ boars in my parts. They run alone and don't get shot very often though. I've seen a 600 on a scale before though. Seems the good weather for wildlife the last 2 years really has them growing good.
2 weeks ago, I was retrieving a beer from the cooler at my grandpa's farm and heard rustling in the bursh. A monster boar came out of the brush 5 foot from me. I climb in the bed, but realized he never even saw me. Tried to shoot him but was too shook up. He was a lot bigger than the 372# unfertile gilt pig I hauled to the butcher a few weeks before.

They can be pretty tough, it just depends how you shoot them. From a stand shooting them on a feeder any standard 223 on up will do them in. But you get a trotting shot or anything not ideal all bets are off, it's not that they are that thick skinned, it's just they are fat and it plugs holes and they don't bleed out fast unless you hit them perfect. I shoot hornady sst bullets exclusively on them, when your gut shooting them while they run fast the ballistic tip helps them bleed out faster. I prefer confirmed kills.
One day I shot a 250 or so boar off a 3 wheeler. Rode up behind it and shot it in the back of the head with a .480 ruger pistol, 400grains bullet 1200fps. It dropped like a rock and I ran over it and wrecked the 3 wheeler. That sucker came back to life and about got me. I've shot some wounded ones 2-3 times in the face with a 30-30 at less than 10 yards before they died.
Of course I've chased a bunch on my 3 wheeler and broad side shots with my 460 Rowland 1911 shooting a 200gr swc are very successful. No head shots for me.
But there's always someone at the coffee shop killing them with a 22 shooting them right behind the ear.

Post a picture of Texas Wolf then.

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How about a east Texas lion?

I remember years ago when I was working at cabelas one of the guys had a shoulder bone that had a 30cal bullet stuck in it....and it had been there for a long time as the bone had already almost healed over it.

Not sure what it was from how far or anything like that but it was sure impressive.....I would have thought infection would have killed him...much less the pain the animal was in.

Gtscotty said:

I believe that the Hog Hammer ammunition line is specially engineered to feature an extra-thick profit margin to ensure world class penetration into your wallet.

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up until Midway has them on clearance for little more than cheap FMJ

fpgt72 said:

I remember years ago when I was working at cabelas one of the guys had a shoulder bone that had a 30cal bullet stuck in it....and it had been there for a long time as the bone had already almost healed over it.

Not sure what it was from how far or anything like that but it was sure impressive.....I would have thought infection would have killed him...much less the pain the animal was in.

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Youd think, but alot of the animals ive gotten around heqr have some pretty impressive injuries that have healed. I shot a pig in the papaya fields that had two bullet wounds that were pretty well healed, only reason i know is the bullets were still in there. Ive seen fighting wounds that looked like a they had to have had guts hanging out, shattered legs, torn faces and more.

An axis deer i got back in highschool had the jacket of a bullet stuck under the skin and a gimped shoulder, entry wound was just a white spot in the fur on his chest.

Animals can surprise you with how tough they actually are.

I'm not saying I've "seen it all" when it comes to killing feral pigs, but I have seen more than most, and have personally killed more than 700 feral pigs - most with firearms of every conceivable caliber from .22 LR to .357 handgun to 30-30 rifle and up to a .300 Win Mag. I had the rare opportunity to live somewhere for six years where there was literally NO END to the number of hogs I could shoot, so I took it upon myself to experiment - so to speak - with the killing effectiveness of any weapon I could get my hands on.

In those years and through all those hundreds of pigs, I learned a few things.

1) a well placed .22 LR round will drop a 200+ lb. hog in it's tracks
2) a poorly placed 30-06 round will leave a 100 lb. sow running for hundreds of yards
3) shot placement (see above) trumps all else
4) 9mm handguns are not enough to stop a running pig but .40 cal and up will.
5) 6.5x55 Swedes have a well deserved reputation for just "killing" scht
6) .223 is not enough for pigs, for me. If I'm on foot in the brush, I want more gun.
7) FMJ's sail through a pig and they just keep on running
8) In 700 feral Texas pigs, I've yet to shoot one that topped 300 lbs. on a scale, despite all the claims of "huge" feral pigs.

And last but not least, in all those pigs - easily half of which were killed with me standing on the ground - only THREE ever "charged me." All three were wounded and two of the three were backed into a corner in the brush. The other one - I'm convinced - just wanted to escape on the same narrow trail I was standing on. IOW - all the hysteria about feral pigs being "dangerous" is utter nonsense to me until proven otherwise.

So far this year, I've killed two boars that both were easily over 225#. One with a 52# recurve bow that completely penetrated the shield, the heart and the sternum, and the other with a perfect head shot from my 7.62x39 that dropped it where it stood. I am sure many folks would have told me I was under bowed and under gunned in both situations.

A guy here with a plague of pigs on the family farm says the .30-30 is optimum, killing as well as if not better than Monster Magnums.

Another fellow, whose experience goes back to when boars were hunted as game instead of varmints, was given some Extreme Shock 9mm by his guide. He said it killed quite well, in spite of all the ridicule that company's wild advertising gets.

Jim Watson said:

A guy here with a plague of pigs on the family farm says the .30-30 is optimum, killing as well as if not better than Monster Magnums.

Another fellow, whose experience goes back to when boars were hunted as game instead of varmints, was given some Extreme Shock 9mm by his guide. He said it killed quite well, in spite of all the ridicule that company's wild advertising gets.

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I cannot disagree, and of those hundreds of hogs I killed, nearly half were with my trusty 30-30.

SamT1 said:

What part are you in?

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Every time I post it says where I live. Where are you located? I hunt my land, outside of Brady and between Hunt and Leakey. My 700 acres has no hogs but the other two places are over run.

"...noticed specialty ammo for hog hunting..." Any activity that gets remotely popular makes the marketing types start to sweat and breath heavily. In the old days of pin shooting, there were all kinds of daft bullets designed to make pin removal easier. Best one was the JSP-HP(like a Sierra JHC) with saw teeth on the rim of the point. Supposed to catch the thick plastic in the pin and dig in. Just as stupid as a cast HP.
Anyway, Hornady calls it "Full Boar". Ammo loaded with a copper alloy GMX. An HP with an plastic insert. Federal uses the same kind of bullet but cal lit a Trophy Copper in their Vital-Shok line. Winchester calls 'em E-Tips.
"...Zombie ammo..." Speaking of marketing. snicker.

Newtosavage said:

I cannot disagree, and of those hundreds of hogs I killed, nearly half were with my trusty 30-30.

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I use my 6.5x55 for most hunting and agree it kills much bigger than it says it should on paper. As stated before though I use a 30-30 on hogs. For my use it is perfect. I've also killed hogs with a .223 when I was predator calling and it worked ok. Like you I prefer something bigger.

My son has some Barnes X bullets loaded up for his AR-15 should the need arise.

Cheaper to buy a box of bullets and load your own.

Other members of the family prefer a 30-30 or an -06.

They'll all get the job done.

peacebutready said:

didn't know people hunt hog with a .223. Is there soft point lead ammo for deer/hog or just the all-copper stuff?

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I've probably killed at least a few tons of hogs with a 223, using fmj ammo. Put it directly through the front shoulder and they go down pretty quick...if not on the spot. The size of the hog really doesn't seem to matter.

cdb1 said:

I use my 6.5x55 for most hunting and agree it kills much bigger than it says it should on paper. As stated before though I use a 30-30 on hogs. For my use it is perfect. I've also killed hogs with a .223 when I was predator calling and it worked ok. Like you I prefer something bigger.

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I use a 6.5x55 with 156 gr. bullet.

cdb1 said:

I believe deer loads would be fine on a 400 pound bruiser. How many have you encountered? If so can you prove it? I'm almost 58, have been hunting all my life, have lived in Texas all my life(where there are many more hogs than any other state) and have never seen a feral hog that big.

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I saw one that big at a hunting camp, the hunter hit it twice in the head with a .308 and it didn't immediately go down, it was still coming after him. I saw the head, it was massive.

peacebutready said:

Interesting points. Does the 9mm not penetrate enough or is it just not powerful enough?

The FMJs don't tumble when they hit hogs?

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Not sure exactly the reasons, but those are my observations. I don't think 9mm is powerful enough. And yes, I was using the "good stuff" before anyone asks. I would routinely have to shoot 100-150 lb. pigs 4, 5 or 6 times before they would go down, with a 9mm. With a 40, I rarely had to shoot more than twice and with a 45, rarely more than once. .357 and .44 were bang-flop. These are at handgun distances, mind you. Not 100 yard shots.

The FMJ .223's would put a nice hole through both sides of the pig and it would keep on strokin'. Shot many a pig 3 or 4 times with a .223 FMJ and more than once with FMJ in other calibers, then decided that was not only a waste of time and ammo, but it was causing the animals too much suffering. More recently, I had to shoot a 80 lb. sow at least 5 times with Hornady GMX in .223. That's when I said enough is enough, and I got a bigger gun.

FWIW, our facility would donate 20 TONS of feral pig / year (field dressed, on scales) to a local soup kitchen before the health dept. stepped in and told them they could no longer accept them. Pity.

jmorris said:

How about a east Texas lion?

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I salute your courage, hunting ability and sense of irony. Is your lion a county fair record?

So where are you located SamT1?

While I believe feral hogs are tough as stated before I don't believe in the mystical hard to kill toughness that some attribute to them. Just as there is the occasional deer that will absorb a lot of lead and keep going, so too will some hogs. What I do attribute to them is a very high level of intelligence that can make them especially dangerous if they feel threatened.

My grandfather raised commercial cattle but I did not grow up around swine. First job out of college I was the yard foreman at the sale barn in Abilene Texas. At the time it was the second largest in the state behind San Angelo. We ran a lot of cattle through there. Tuesday morning was hog day. They were so much more difficult to handle than cattle and if one ever started turning on you you couldn't stop it, just had to get out of the way. The worst ones were of a type that the other guys called river hogs. I've not heard that nomenclature before or since. It was said they were a first generation feral/domestic cross. They were smaller than domestics, much quicker and mean. No one liked working with them, especially me.

One packing company would buy all of the old boars brought in, since they were hauled in one trailer we had to cut the tusks out so they wouldn't fight and kill each other during the trip. We used a wire noose with a wood handle like you see on a hay hook. The noose was put on the tip of the snout and pulled hard until the boar opened his mouth. Bolt cutters were used to cut the tusks off even with the gums. If you got the noose too low on the snout it didn't cause enough pain for the boar to open his mouth, You had to get just the tip of the snout. It was messy, dangerous work. It was fun the first couple of times but after that I dreaded it. One thing I forgot to add was when the farmers pulled up to unload the hogs to sell, we would nail the boar's testicles with a hotshot for a minute or so before they were unloaded. Definitely made them more docile.

My apology if this missive is boring. I thought someone might enjoy it.

Newtosavage said:

FWIW, our facility would donate 20 TONS of feral pig / year (field dressed, on scales) to a local soup kitchen before the health dept. stepped in and told them they could no longer accept them. Pity.

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This has happened up here as well.....our big airport can get over run with deer....same with a few local parks....the airport for safety the parks because a full grown deer at 40lbs is not a good thing. So they would let bow hunters in the park to thin them out and Police and other "pro" hunters....(how they figure on who is a pro I have no idea) to work the airport. The meat went to the local KC shelter.....well as you can figure the media had a field day....and got the program shut down....it was only after a Delta flight hit a deer (who would have thunk a deer would rip the nose gear off a big jet) that the programs started again.....but the animals are destroyed.

Politics get in the way of anything good....even stopping animal suffering......IIRC PETA was all over town with stuff.....I bet this was early 80's or so......and that is when I learned you just can't talk to those people.

Do you think that deer is worth human life and millions of $$$......it is worth more then human life to those people.

Hog ammo, zombie ammo....really?? I shoot hogs 7 days a week, I run cattle on 3 large pastures, all are infested with hogs, I shoot them with anything from .17hmrs to .308s. I have dropped some large ones with lung shots with the 20grain .17hmr. In my case I don't care if they drop right there, just as happy when they run off and die.