Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats Looking for caliber recommendation...dedicated hog rifle

Have a 260 Rem model 700 youth rifle that doesn't get shot anymore. Wanting to rebarrel and make a dedicated hog rifle out of it. Will be suppressed. Wanting to run subsonic. What caliber would you go with? .308? .350 legend?

8.6 Blackout

.473 bolt face. Don't think that will work with the blackout

300 Blackout or 8.6 Blackout if set on subsonic. Personally I’d leave it a 260 and spend the money on a thermal. Or build an AR pistol in 6 ARC/6.5 Grendel/300BO.

Bolt face won't accommodate the blackout. Also noticed it won't accept the legend either. .473 bolt face on this one

358 Win, just change out the barrel to a 1-14 twist, length, keep it above 16.25" to save filing as a SPR. The 260 setup works with he 358 Wn fine. It is a pure hammer on hogs. I prefer AR platform for hogs, but each to his own. I am stocking a Mauser 358 Win conversion and finishing another 35 Whelen 700 barrel now.

8.6 Blackout is made from 6.5 Creed cases.

8.6 Blackout is a 473 case. It is NOT the same as the 300 BO.

Don't think I would go to, to much expense for a hog gun, a .223 in a bolt gun or AR-15 will kill the hell out of Pigs, pigs are easy to kill you don't need anything special to kill pigs. Rio7

Probably cheaper in the long run to buy a new gun - say a Ruger American, et al.

From what I understand, the 450 Bushmaster with put hogs a d*ck in the dirt . . . .

Within those parameters, 8.6 blackout.

At those speeds, maintaining penetration while also getting some expansion or fragmentation on the varying body weights you encounter hog hunting is difficult. 8.6 is probably going to have the best bullet selection for those purposes and velocities at this time.

Getting consistent performance from bullets given the size variability you have with hogs is tough. Deer or elk hunting gives you a consistent body profile to match a bullet too generally. Shooting hogs may mean a sub 50 pound pig that needs a more fragile bullet or a boar with a shield that weighs north of 200. Getting a bullet that performs in both situations is tough. Even tougher with subsonic velocities.

Have only ever killed three hog's. One this past spring with my 6.5x55 and a 140gr Speer HC and the other two while stationed in Germany helping out a butcher with hogs belonging to the people we rented from. There the first time I used an ax and hit it in the forehead with the blunt side. second I shot in the fore head with a handgun firing a metal rod moved by a 22 blank cartridge. My experience, limited though it may be tells me deciding on a cartridge to shoot pigs with should be really simple! Have though about it some and if I go again I'm thinking I just might use my 22 mag for a head shot! If it had to be a cf cartridge might be a tuff call and end up being something really easy to shoot! Doesn't take anywhere near a 30-06 to kill a hog!

Bigger the caliber the bigger the target area, we guide hog hunts, we see it all the time, you have a larger area for shot placement when you have more whack. we shoot at 50 yards from the feeder, i have a 308 surpessed and subsonic a cheap plastic ruger set up, sounds like a clunky truck to operate but is really really accurate for head shots. If i was going subsonic, i would go 308 lots of ammo no thinking involved, really accurate for head shots. If full range i like a 35 caliber gun, 358 norma or 35 wsm, i stuff the cross hairs in the fornt shoulder and let it eat, if there is aseond pig behind it that one is dead too.

My dedicated Pig Gun:
Sig Cross 308, 16”
Pulsar Talion XQ38
Ball Turret blind window mount


16” barrel has worked very well. My feeder is at 100 yards. The 308 puts ‘em down with assurance.

These topics can be very frustrating to me too read. I have killed hundreds of pigs in my life. It would be unsurprising to me to learn the number I’ve killed is over a thousand. I haven’t ever really kept count enough to know the true number beyond keeping up with “I killed this many tonight” or “this many so far this week”. I have made a study of what bullets work on pigs. I’ll often carry a knife to perform quick studies on how a bullet performed on a pig by opening them up. I often will buy a rifle in a new cartridge to test how a different set of bullets will perform. However, whenever the topic comes up, there are inevitably a number of people who will espouse opinions based on how they will “kill” hogs by shooting them in the stomach under a corn feeder so they run off and “die in the brush” never having actually confirmed a hit, much less a kill. They will use that “experience” to claim something such as “a fmj 223 kills hogs easily”.

To sum it up, basically the problem with broadly asking for an opinion on “what should I shoot pigs with?” Is most people that will answer have fairly limited experience they are far too eager to extrapolate from. Then to take it further, they don’t typically worry about ensuring the bullet they used actually performed the way they think it did because it isn’t a deer and they aren’t worried about actually recovering the animal.

So define what you want the bullet to do. If you just want a rifle to put a bullet into a hog, then yes any caliber will work. If you want to know the hog will “probably” die “eventually” then again most will work. If you want a bullet that will perform on small hogs, that’s a different selection. A small hog needs an easily frangible bullet or one that expands quickly. They don’t offer much resistance to obtain proper bullet deformation and they aren’t very wide so it doesn’t require much penetration. If you want to kill big hogs then you want something with more controlled expansion for deeper penetration into the vitals. Most bullets good for small pigs won’t penetrate deeply enough for instant kills on larger bodied animals. By the same token, a bullet optimized for penetration won’t do violent enough wounding on smaller animals for fast killing.

A bullet capable of fast killing of both large and small animals needs to be capable of deep penetration and fast expansion. That is more difficult to find and is VERY velocity dependent. There is nothing particularly difficult to kill about hogs other than the fact their body weights vary dramatically in the animals you encounter and unlike most game species, you are not shooting only mature animals.

They CAN be dangerous if you let yourself get close to one and are attempting to use a bullet that is unsuited for the size animal you are shooting. Again, they can be killed with anything. I have killed them with a wide range of things. I have used pocket knives, hammers, even the steeple pulling hook on a pair of fencing pliers once. I have killed them with a wide variety of bullets. I have also had them charge me and die at my feet because the bullet I was using was not well suited to the task.

I would go with the 6.5 creedmoor and use a fast twist barrel to stabilize the slower bullet. I would then use the bullets designed for the Grendel as they open up at lower velocity. Just my speculation.

8 twist 308 with 220 eld's. 9.5 grains to Trail Boss.

260 Rem with a youth stock only needs a stock. Nothing will be any better or worse than that 260! Didn't get mine back in time last year to use on hog's so simply used my 6.5x55 and it did a great job!

.223 55 gr SP home made AR-15 from 60 to 125 yards 1 round per customer.

Same as above killing Pigs is not Rocket science


Same .223 same bullet same .AR-15

Rio7

Subsonic only? I’d probably trip the M7 and buy a RAR 450BM for the SubX ammo.

I’ve shot several with suppressed rifles and supersonic ammo, minutes apart. If going that route, it’s hard to argue against the boring old .308win.