Some of you probably saw my thread about hog hunting last week with my Blackhawk .357 mag. Today I was in the gun shop looking for some more 180gr cast core cartridges or something in a similar weight and the guy behind the counter asked what I wanted to use those for (they didn't have any btw). I told him hog hunting and he said "You can't hunt hogs with .357. You won't get enough penetration." I informed him that you can indeed hunt hogs and that I had dropped two the previous week and that the 180gr castcores had gone right through and sometimes out the other side.
Anyway...that got me thinking. What's the smallest weight of .357 that I could hunt and consistently drop hogs with (assuming decent shot placement)? I simply CANNOT find the 170 to 180gr cartridges locally (I ordered them last time). The largest that anyone has is 158gr and that's usually in hollow point. Do you think the lighter calibers would have sufficient penetration and if you use a lighter bullet what weight do you use?
At the moment ordering cartridges is kind of a problem for personal reasons and it will be through May or June so I'm curious to know if 158gr or maybe even 142gr is viable but at the same time I don't want to waste my hog hunt outings trying out ammo that I'm going to find is ineffective.
Discuss.
brad cook
Anyway...that got me thinking. What's the smallest weight of .357 that I could hunt and consistently drop hogs with (assuming decent shot placement)? I simply CANNOT find the 170 to 180gr cartridges locally (I ordered them last time). The largest that anyone has is 158gr and that's usually in hollow point. Do you think the lighter calibers would have sufficient penetration and if you use a lighter bullet what weight do you use?
At the moment ordering cartridges is kind of a problem for personal reasons and it will be through May or June so I'm curious to know if 158gr or maybe even 142gr is viable but at the same time I don't want to waste my hog hunt outings trying out ammo that I'm going to find is ineffective.
Discuss.
brad cook