rbernie
Contributing Member
Went hog hunting on Thursday afternoon, and wound up with a bit more than I expected. 
I'm using the seeing 120lb to 200lb hogs on this one ranch that I hunt (~ 1600 acres, high-fenced with non-native deer thrown in if you can find 'em), so I took my 16" AR chambered in 7.62x39. I run handloads exclusively through this rifle; Sierra 125gr ProHunter bullets over AA1680 in Remington brass.
My normal drill is to arrive about midday, check in, drive the minivan to the back plot, and spend the first afternoon scouting around looking at stuff. The following AM is when I get serious, and if the gods smile on me by lunchtime on of the second day I'm skinning out and quartering a carcass or two. All hunting is done on foot.
The land that I hunt on this ranch is pretty well scrub so most shots are visibility-limited to around 50 yards; 200 yards would be a really long shot for this piece of ground and is possible only in a few places. I have a scoutified Marlin 336 in 35 Remington with me on this trip as well as the AR, but it seems like overkill for what I'm expecting to find and I decide leave it in the van in the role of backup gun.
So this past Thursday, I get there around 2PM and by 2:30 I'm in the field. There are TONS of plowed up areas where the hogs have just been tearing the ground up rooting - more hogs here than I can recall in the past, I think. Hmmm....
Almost immediately I'm beset by a 200lb hog; I hold my fire since I'm really not ready to be done yet! This hog is really quite aggressive and it's all I can do to disengage without firing. The trees on this ranch are really scrub - nothing climbable. I wind up trotting over half a mile just to get this boar off my back; it's like he's just begging to get shot. <sigh> I've never seen the hogs here act quite this aggressively; they usually prefer to run away instead of chasing me around. I also find that looking at an angry pig at arms-length distances through a scope (Sightron SII 2.5-8x) normally used for hunting between 50 and 150 yards can be very hard to do even if dialed down to 2.5x.
I decide to scout out a ravine on the far side of the property; the scrub below the ridge line on either side is usually a good spot to find deer or hogs bedding down for the day. I'm following some lightly-worn deer trails through the brush (not moving too slowly since I want to stir things up a bit, but not blundering about either) when I hear a bunch of snorting on the other side of an outcropping of rocks. I stop, step to the side of the trail, shoulder the AR, and do my best to pretend to be a tree. Up comes a pretty big hog (bigger than I've ever seen, anyway) snuffling along toward the crest of the ridge. He stops about 10 yards away, head to the ground in Condition White, just nosing around. I'm standing here, holding this shorty AR up to my shoulder, looking at the size of this hog, and feeling like Roy Scheider's character in Jaws - "We're gonna need a bigger boat". In my case, I'm really wishing that I could disengage and come back in the AM with the Marlin....
So here I stand for what seems like FOREVER, beaming little piggie thoughts to this hog to move along and let me get on with things, when he finally figures out that something smells out of the ordinary. Uh, that would be me. He looks up and stares at me for about thirty seconds and it seems as if he's ready to move along, but after a moment's indecision he evidently decides that he's not ready to back down. He grunts at me, and takes a slow step in my direction. I take one slow step back, and he follows. I can't keep walking backward too much, since the ground is very rocky and uneven. I also am not willing to turn my back on this guy. I take one final step back and click off the safety, and he stops and stands there. He turns to his right, broadside to me, as if to go the other way and I'm thinking that I'm almost clear. Ooops - no go. He grunts loudly and starts to turn back. Daggone it. I decide that there's no way out of this but forward, so I put the crosshairs just aft of his left shoulder and pull the trigger.
We're about 7 yards apart, and the first shot drops him on his left side. It hits solidly behind the left shoulder but evidently is deflected a bit by the ribs and winds up lodged in the hide just in front of the right shoulder. He struggles to get back up, and (presuming my rounds to be insufficient for a hog of this size) I fire two more shots. I have dim memories of this part - the adrenaline dump was more massive than anything that I've ever experienced in the past and I can only recall snippets of things. The second shot is a raking shot that ends up between the rear hams. He must have turned away at this point in the fracas; the third shot hits him as he falls again on his left side, entering at the base of his neck but not exiting. It looks like the last shot took the starch out of him - he lays there on his left side with his back toward me and I stand there waiting. I'm embarrassed to admit that I actually take the time to police up my brass while I wait this out before moving in - that Remington brass is EXPENSIVE, is all I can recall thinking...
After about three to four minutes, he starts gasping again and trying to get up. Crap - just my luck to run into the Black Knight of piggies. I circle around, keeping about seven to ten yards between us, and get to where I can see him more clearly. He's laying in front of me with his belly and his legs to me, but he's evidently shaking off whatever stun effect the third shot did to his spine. I suddenly realize that, at this close distance, the offset of the AR's sight plane from the barrel is causing my POI to be almost two inches off my POA. I must have missed the spine in my third shot, what with the sight offset and all of the movin' and thrashin' we were doing. He's heaving around and is almost to his feet again, so when he falls back down briefly and exposes his belly to me once again, I aim about a third of the way back between his front and rear legs, pick a spot about 2" above his centerline, and put a fourth shot right straight up his gut in the general direction of his spine. He grunts once, and lays back down for good. I stand there for a while, just staring at this pig and waiting for him to leap back up again. When it becomes clear that he's done for, I hike back out to the van and go drive back to the ranch house to get some help in getting him out.
I'm not good at estimating weight, but others on the ranch put this hog at around six feet long and around 500 lbs. We decide that we can't haul him out in one piece; he's just too big and we're too far from a clear trail or path. We take what meat we can (I wind up with about 100lbs of pork just from the boned-out hams and the backstrap) and leave the rest of the carcass where it lays for the other hogs to clean up.
I have never seen such gristle on an animal in my life - the padding around his ribcage was close to one inch thick. I also would not have believed, all things considered, how well the 7.62x39 softpoints did. Yes, I fired four shots. Yes, not a single round exited. But in all fairness, all rounds penetrated to the vitals, including the first shot that punched through both sides of the rib cage and the second shot that raked through his thoracic and abdominal cavities. The bullet from the first shot was recovered under the off-hide, and came back at 110.5gr in retained weight and .675" in expanded diameter. All in all, I'm impressed with the loading (given that it is what it is). But I'll not look to repeat this experience any time soon if I can avoid it....
Lessons?
I had a couple of bad pictures taken with my cell phone's camera. I don't normally take pictures of the stuff I kill, but this one was worth noting. I also took a picture of the recovered bullet from the first shot. I'm reasonably convinced that this was a killing shot, but at the time it didn't seem prudent to take the the time to find out... Anyway - I had a good time and brought home some great meat and some interesting memories.
If I lay down, I can hide behind this thing..
This beast has a 50lb head..
A job well done...
I'm using the seeing 120lb to 200lb hogs on this one ranch that I hunt (~ 1600 acres, high-fenced with non-native deer thrown in if you can find 'em), so I took my 16" AR chambered in 7.62x39. I run handloads exclusively through this rifle; Sierra 125gr ProHunter bullets over AA1680 in Remington brass.
My normal drill is to arrive about midday, check in, drive the minivan to the back plot, and spend the first afternoon scouting around looking at stuff. The following AM is when I get serious, and if the gods smile on me by lunchtime on of the second day I'm skinning out and quartering a carcass or two. All hunting is done on foot.
The land that I hunt on this ranch is pretty well scrub so most shots are visibility-limited to around 50 yards; 200 yards would be a really long shot for this piece of ground and is possible only in a few places. I have a scoutified Marlin 336 in 35 Remington with me on this trip as well as the AR, but it seems like overkill for what I'm expecting to find and I decide leave it in the van in the role of backup gun.
So this past Thursday, I get there around 2PM and by 2:30 I'm in the field. There are TONS of plowed up areas where the hogs have just been tearing the ground up rooting - more hogs here than I can recall in the past, I think. Hmmm....
Almost immediately I'm beset by a 200lb hog; I hold my fire since I'm really not ready to be done yet! This hog is really quite aggressive and it's all I can do to disengage without firing. The trees on this ranch are really scrub - nothing climbable. I wind up trotting over half a mile just to get this boar off my back; it's like he's just begging to get shot. <sigh> I've never seen the hogs here act quite this aggressively; they usually prefer to run away instead of chasing me around. I also find that looking at an angry pig at arms-length distances through a scope (Sightron SII 2.5-8x) normally used for hunting between 50 and 150 yards can be very hard to do even if dialed down to 2.5x.
I decide to scout out a ravine on the far side of the property; the scrub below the ridge line on either side is usually a good spot to find deer or hogs bedding down for the day. I'm following some lightly-worn deer trails through the brush (not moving too slowly since I want to stir things up a bit, but not blundering about either) when I hear a bunch of snorting on the other side of an outcropping of rocks. I stop, step to the side of the trail, shoulder the AR, and do my best to pretend to be a tree. Up comes a pretty big hog (bigger than I've ever seen, anyway) snuffling along toward the crest of the ridge. He stops about 10 yards away, head to the ground in Condition White, just nosing around. I'm standing here, holding this shorty AR up to my shoulder, looking at the size of this hog, and feeling like Roy Scheider's character in Jaws - "We're gonna need a bigger boat". In my case, I'm really wishing that I could disengage and come back in the AM with the Marlin....
So here I stand for what seems like FOREVER, beaming little piggie thoughts to this hog to move along and let me get on with things, when he finally figures out that something smells out of the ordinary. Uh, that would be me. He looks up and stares at me for about thirty seconds and it seems as if he's ready to move along, but after a moment's indecision he evidently decides that he's not ready to back down. He grunts at me, and takes a slow step in my direction. I take one slow step back, and he follows. I can't keep walking backward too much, since the ground is very rocky and uneven. I also am not willing to turn my back on this guy. I take one final step back and click off the safety, and he stops and stands there. He turns to his right, broadside to me, as if to go the other way and I'm thinking that I'm almost clear. Ooops - no go. He grunts loudly and starts to turn back. Daggone it. I decide that there's no way out of this but forward, so I put the crosshairs just aft of his left shoulder and pull the trigger.
We're about 7 yards apart, and the first shot drops him on his left side. It hits solidly behind the left shoulder but evidently is deflected a bit by the ribs and winds up lodged in the hide just in front of the right shoulder. He struggles to get back up, and (presuming my rounds to be insufficient for a hog of this size) I fire two more shots. I have dim memories of this part - the adrenaline dump was more massive than anything that I've ever experienced in the past and I can only recall snippets of things. The second shot is a raking shot that ends up between the rear hams. He must have turned away at this point in the fracas; the third shot hits him as he falls again on his left side, entering at the base of his neck but not exiting. It looks like the last shot took the starch out of him - he lays there on his left side with his back toward me and I stand there waiting. I'm embarrassed to admit that I actually take the time to police up my brass while I wait this out before moving in - that Remington brass is EXPENSIVE, is all I can recall thinking...
After about three to four minutes, he starts gasping again and trying to get up. Crap - just my luck to run into the Black Knight of piggies. I circle around, keeping about seven to ten yards between us, and get to where I can see him more clearly. He's laying in front of me with his belly and his legs to me, but he's evidently shaking off whatever stun effect the third shot did to his spine. I suddenly realize that, at this close distance, the offset of the AR's sight plane from the barrel is causing my POI to be almost two inches off my POA. I must have missed the spine in my third shot, what with the sight offset and all of the movin' and thrashin' we were doing. He's heaving around and is almost to his feet again, so when he falls back down briefly and exposes his belly to me once again, I aim about a third of the way back between his front and rear legs, pick a spot about 2" above his centerline, and put a fourth shot right straight up his gut in the general direction of his spine. He grunts once, and lays back down for good. I stand there for a while, just staring at this pig and waiting for him to leap back up again. When it becomes clear that he's done for, I hike back out to the van and go drive back to the ranch house to get some help in getting him out.
I'm not good at estimating weight, but others on the ranch put this hog at around six feet long and around 500 lbs. We decide that we can't haul him out in one piece; he's just too big and we're too far from a clear trail or path. We take what meat we can (I wind up with about 100lbs of pork just from the boned-out hams and the backstrap) and leave the rest of the carcass where it lays for the other hogs to clean up.
I have never seen such gristle on an animal in my life - the padding around his ribcage was close to one inch thick. I also would not have believed, all things considered, how well the 7.62x39 softpoints did. Yes, I fired four shots. Yes, not a single round exited. But in all fairness, all rounds penetrated to the vitals, including the first shot that punched through both sides of the rib cage and the second shot that raked through his thoracic and abdominal cavities. The bullet from the first shot was recovered under the off-hide, and came back at 110.5gr in retained weight and .675" in expanded diameter. All in all, I'm impressed with the loading (given that it is what it is). But I'll not look to repeat this experience any time soon if I can avoid it....
Lessons?
- Bring enough gun
- 2.5x is still too much magnification for arms-length dueling with angry piggies
- Bring enough gun
- Having backup shots can be helpful
- Bring enough gun
I had a couple of bad pictures taken with my cell phone's camera. I don't normally take pictures of the stuff I kill, but this one was worth noting. I also took a picture of the recovered bullet from the first shot. I'm reasonably convinced that this was a killing shot, but at the time it didn't seem prudent to take the the time to find out... Anyway - I had a good time and brought home some great meat and some interesting memories.
If I lay down, I can hide behind this thing..
This beast has a 50lb head..
A job well done...
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If that dont work, my sidekick Bill Ruger can have a talk with'em:banghead:
