Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game 2015 Pig Hunt-With Pictures

So, we moved on. The guide and I discussed meat pigs and he mentioned that there was a fat older sow in the bunch we spooked. “Normally, we don’t shoot the girls, but the drought was hard on the Boars. So the landowner OK’d shooting older sows that were not pregnant or nursing.” This was fine by me, I already had a trophy hog mounted, and the sows are good eating.
We started hiking North, using the terrain to keep us out of sight of the pigs. We found the herd working its way through some safflower that was recently planted. We saw a couple of large pigs, and looked a good shooter. We found Three-Legs, in the middle of herd, munching away. The pigs slowly moved down into hollow. I stalked forward until the pigs were in sight again. We were close now, I could hear then grunting, biting off mouthfuls, and generally acting like pigs. A minute passed, then a small sow grazed to within 20 yards from us. We froze. She looked up. Stared at us, and broke!
We watched as the herd moved up the valley. A sow with some very small piglets was entering the field, a good half mile ahead of them. The two groups met on the edge of the field, where the ground transitions from field to hills. They sniffed around, and returned to grazing. Once again, we moved toward the pigs.
There was no swale or depression for the pigs to move into. Fortunately, they were working some recently plowed ground and were easy to spot. The guide picked out the sow he was looking for. I dropped to prone and the guide set his backpack down to rest the rifle. I drew a bead on the left shoulder of the sow and fired. “Hit!” says the guide. The pig goes down, and gets back up. I run the action, take a bead and fire. “Hit!” The pig moves toward a space between the hills and stops facing dead away from us. The guide calls out the Range, “253 yards.” I draw a bead on the Right ham. “Hit!” The pig stumbles out of sight.
I reload and we begin walking to the where the pig disappeared. She did not go far. We found this pig standing on flat ground, wobbling. We went up the side of the hill and moved in closer. From an improved shooting position, looking over the “crown” or rounded part of the hill, I attempted a head shot to finish the animal. The animal was partially obstructed by a bush. The wobbling head moved in and out of my crosshairs. I fired and missed. I tried a heart shot and connected, but too low. This shot induced the pig to move and face me. A neck shot presented itself. HIT! It was over and I had a brand new scope cut from the last shot.
When we gutted the animal, I was waiting for the smell of a gut shot animal. When the bely was opened, it was full of blood. But all of the vital organs were untouched, save one small bone fragment in the lung. Back at the skinning shed, we found two solid hits in the left shoulder (pulverized is a better term). We also found bloodshot right shank, but no entry wound on the right flank. The right rear leg was shattered through the knee joint (the joint at the bottom of the ham). Based upon the autopsy, this is what we reasoned to have happened.
First shot—hit square in the Left shoulder, but low. Instead of penetrating the chest/sternum/heart area, the bullet deflected down and into the right leg. This is where the small fragment in the lung came from. The pig was at 160 yards.
Second shot, hit square in left shoulder, but lower-this almost severed the leg. The pig was at 180 yards. Third shot, square in the ham, broke the right rear leg, and severed the femoral artery. This is where all that blood in the belly came from. This was at 253 yards. Fourth, was a miss. Fifth, grazing shot at the chest. Sixth shot, clean though the spine.
Conclusion, Pigs are tough. The 375 leaves big holes and nasty wound channels. Bullets do funny things when they hit bone.

Last photo-Note the Ham and Spine hits are visible.



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