Feral hogs are so very wary, most of the time, so it should not, normally, be necessary to “discourage” them. Now and then, however, a hog might try to eat someone, as happened in an adjacent county, to our east, here in SE Texas. A home health care nurse was killed, in a rural driveway, when she arrived at her clients’ home. Extremely rare, but possible. Actually, loose dogs kill several people, each year, around here, so, are the greater threat.
https://abc13.com/christine-rollins...d-dead-animal-attack-death-wild-hogs/5716849/
Feral hogs get BIG, around here. Acorns from the numerous Live Oaks serve up quite a feast for them. I reckon that if the Live Oaks have a bad year, due to drought, or such, a feral hog might be to try to eat me, if I fall, or become otherwise immobilized.
Alaskan guide Phil Shoemaker made deep-penetrator 9mm work, against a charging grizzly, so, it should work, for us, against feral hogs, if we are up to the task of being fast and accurate.
https://www.americanhunter.org/cont...ishermen-from-raging-grizzly-with-9mm-pistol/
I still use .357 Mag, in revolvers, but arthritis is starting to make itself felt, and my Glock G17 pistols are, thankfully, nicely “orthopedic.” (Not meaning to imply that Glocks are better than your Ruger. It is simply that Glocks were one of the authorized duty pistol choices, when autos became the norm, when I worked for Houston PD. The revolver, visible in my avatar image, is a Ruger GP100, still a favorite. It was my duty handgun for a while, in the Nineties. Ruger makes good guns.)