Hog 101

I've been using a buck 110 for hogs here in Texas, as to carrying a handgun a .357 mag with 158 gr is my minimum or if your an auto guy a good 40 s&w will do the trick if need be. Some people say a handgun is added weight which is true but I've been in situations as well heard a few of other people's stories about that rifle or Shotgun not doing any good leaning against a truck or tree when Wilbur decides to become a Seattle Sea hawk lineman.

AStone,
The pistol I'm using is a Springfield Armory XD45 in .45 ACP. The PDX1 ammo is basically a newer version of the Winchester Ranger "T" ammo which was a newer version (thought not really any different) of the old Black "T"alon ammo.

Ballistic tip ammunition is infused with depleted Uranium, Plutonium, Mercury, and C4 high explosives. Ok maybe not. Not sure any animal would be edible for several reasons after getting shot with that. Really all it is is a polymer insert into a hollowed out bullet. Not quite a hollow point though. BT's seem to be drilled deeper. All the polymer tip does is increase the rate of expansion of the projectile. It causes rapid expansion but significantly reduces penetration because of how quickly the tip is pushed into the cavity of the bullet. Typically the bullets fragment almost instantly. They are fantastic on most coyotes. Bobcats tend to be a little thin skinned and ballistic tip ammo have been known to blow out the entire side out of a cat. I once used a 165gr Winchest Supreme Ballistic Silver Tip out of my 30-06 on a whitetail. Never again. It died. Almost instantly. But it's was nasty. I'll just leave that there. .223/5.56 with BT's isn't something I would use on a hog. They are just too thick skinned.

LeverEvolution is a polymer tipped bullet. But as I understand (I could be wrong) was to give lever guns an increased advantage by allowing them to shoot a "spitzer style" bullet without having a detonation of the rounds inside the feeding tube upon subsequent recoil from the discharging round in the chamber. The tip is softer than other BT ammo so it doesn't have the ability to set the primer of the round in front of it off. I've never recovered a round from an animal to see if it actually fragmented. But I have a couple pics of a doe I shot last year with my 444 LeverEvolution that I am literally sticking my arm through the entrance and exit wound. And a few of a buck that I could do the same thing with my 45-70. I'd be happy to post the pics if the mods say it's ok. It's a wicked round.

Sorry about the dark picture. It was obviously night time when I got her skinned out. Here's the entrance wound of the buck.

BigBore44 has some good info.

Where I live (FL) the hogs like wet/muddy areas with oak trees. The hogs are most active when the acorns fall. Generally their tracks will be all over and very easy to spot when they're rooting (tusk-rubbed trees and it will look like a drunken tiller ran through the area).

Unlike deer trails that are narrow but man-height, hog trails are knee-height. Rangers say only the crazy go crawling down a hog trail through palmetto bushes & saw grass with visibility under 10ft. I guess I must be crazy. Bring enough gun if you go after them like that, I use a semiauto 16" carbine using 308Win 180gr.

Regarding handguns: some 9mm, 40, 45acp are known to not reliably penetrate the shield. You really need to use the right bullet. I recommend something like buffalo bore 45acp 255gr hardcast (~500ft.lb.) as a minimum. 357mag with a wide meplat should be fine. If you're going to crawl down a hog trail with nothing but a couple feet of visibility I suggest a 44mag. If the hogs are penned up or you can really pick your shot about any cartridge will do with careful bullet placement at the base of the ear.

AStone said:

On Oct 15, I wrote:

Well, after a lot of reading, I'm changing my mind. I think now that my .30-30's got the 30 realm covered just fine. No advantage for me with the 300 Blk, either now or -- especially -- in the future.

So, I'm dropping back to a focus on another rifle in .223/5.56 that can be one of two hog rifles (and deer rifles; .223 is legal for deer in both my states, which have dense underbrush where I'll be hunting --> shots 75 yds or so).

I've started another thread about potential rifles and ballistics over here so we can focus on hog hunting in this one.

Dang, this is fun. I love learning about guns and hunting.

Click to expand...

Good call. I have taken more hogs with my .30-30's than all my other rifles combined, and I have read that the 300 blackout is falling short in real-life. A ranch not far from our place recently banned the round due to run-offs. They may look similar on paper, but in real life the .30-30 hits harder.

AStone said:

This is good news, and not surprising.

150, 160, 170 ... does it matter?

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I use Remy corlokt 170 gr exclusively. I have 3 .30-30's, and all of them like this round the best. I cannot recall a single runoff with a decent hit.

Told you. The skin won't always split like that. But the ribs and/or shoulders of every deer I have shot with that round in 444 or 45-70 have exploded. And I have never failed to get a pass through from any angle I have ever taken the shot from.

AK is right about the 30-30. It will kill pigs just fine. Pigs aren't almost unstoppable. They don't have Kevlar shields. If a 30-30 with a well placed, good bullet (like Cor-Lokt) ~170gr won't kill that pig, I don't want that pig.

Ocala Forest huh? That's a neat place and I'm sure you'll all have a lot of fun. Just make sure you keep an eye out for flying Rhesus Feces (wordplay on Reese's Pieces).

From the Jungle to the St. Johns:
http://staugustine.com/stories/112406/news_4109726.shtml

Rhesus Macaque:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhesus_macaque

I love that place and the stories folks have once they've been there.

You know, I'm just not sure how I would react to being hit with feces thrown from a monkey. Might have to set out a bunch of fruit soaked with a couple bottles of eye drops. If it has the same affect on monkeys as it does on humans.....

AStone,
You probably know this. But I'd rather make the comment and have it well received than someone else jumping in the thread just to add their 2¢ on a ethics or moral lecture. Be careful about shooting into trees "near" what I'm going to assume is probably a protected species. Honestly I had no idea we had monkeys in the continental U.S. But I'm just an Okie. Albeit a fairly well educated one. If a Warden saw you shooting "near" a protected species, you could be in deep Rhesus Feces.

Now, from my standpoint, any animal smart enough (or dumb enough) to throw their poop at me, should be smart enough to know that I would return fire. Ok that didn't exactly manifest itself the way I intended. I just had a visual of a hunter standing in the swamp with their drawers around their ankles, and monkey having some strange fecal junior high food fight. And should a Warden ever walk up on that, I pray he's wearing a body camera and that video makes it to YouTube.

Same reason I made the comment about you shooting "near" monkeys.

I think one thing you need to also do is practice "run and gun" aka shooting under duress. Last thing you want to do is chase after some hogs only to be breathing so hard you put a mediocre shot on one and have to track a wounded hog. I did that once. I can't say I was scared. But I was definitely very in tune with those primal senses we still have. Flashlight in one hand. 45 in the other. I was in shorts in waist high weeds and thorn vines. I couldn't see 15' in front of me. Honestly I couldn't see the ground 10' in front of me. It was around 22:00 and no moon. When my light moved, I lost all vision everywhere else. What made it worse is that land is FULL of armodillos. I'm pretty sure I reached "sailor" quota for four letter words after the first armodillo. There were 5 that night that made an appearance if my memory serves me correctly.

Honestly, the first one decided it was going to bound at about 6-7' from me. That old saying of white man can't jump? Yeah it's total BS. Said in the previous post I wasn't scared. I wasn't....until that thing bounded by me. I never fired. And it's probably a good thing because I had a better chance of hitting my leg than I did that armodillo. I just know it was some kind of strange jump/twist/cuss move. I honestly would love to tell you I was stone cold calm and I mearly stepped aside and let the thing pass. Didn't go down that way. But when I landed, it had plenty of room. If it HAD been a hog, I would have cleared it by a mile. But, I did get better after the first two dillos. And I did find the hog. Only went in about 50 yards. But it didn't bleed much so tracking took a little while. And in my defense, I was very new to hog hunting at the time. I don't jump anymore. But I still get the "oh crap here it comes!!" feeling. It's pretty intense.

My choice in sidearms for tracking hogs is my XD45. It's a very natural pointing weapon for me. I also have 2 13+1 mags. One is full of 230gr PDX1's and the other is full of 185gr Rem Golden Sabre. PDX1's for the bigger hogs (>150 lbs) and the Golden Sabres for the smaller hogs. I was out at that property last week to go see what I could kick up with my bow. It's 1.5 miles to the first gate from the truck. The whole trip on foot is 5.3 miles. I counted 19 armodillos in the first 1.5 miles. Those were just the ones on the "trail". Like I said, it's full of them.

Whatever gun you choose to track with, make sure you have complete faith in it, and the ammo you feed through it. And ALWAYS carry a good flashlight if there is ANY chance you'll be out past dark. And a back up set of batteries. No joke. That really could save your life. Having a light really helps calm the nerves. But your batteries crap out on you, things go from "ok" to "oh $h;+" real quick.

You mentioned optics earlier. Like the Leupold. I think a scope for that gun is a fine idea. A low or fixed power scope. I would also recommend a ghost ring sight if you don't want optics. They are really an asset in close quarters and out to 100 yards. Also might think about a red-dot.

I have a red dot on my 1894 44mag. A 3x9 Nikon on my 1895 45-70, and a period correct 3x9 on my 444S. And I think I need to change scopes on my 444. I've been scoped 3 times by that stupid thing. I need more eye relief.