1st pig I killed some years ago was a lesson in bullet placement.
I was sitting a ground box blind at the T in the jeep track & backed up to a fence line, facing our lease, with a thick heavy shin oak thicket behind me. Heard some crunching behind & left of me and out popped the lil porker about 50-60 yards away and headed towards the dozer cut to my left. Eased the 257Rbts M70 out the window, and he stopped for a second catching my motion, put the crosshairs just below his right ear & at the safety's click noise going into battery he wheeled and scooted as I pulled the trigger. The bullet caught him on the point of his right shoulder and rolled him over.
He scrambled up and 3 legged hauled butt into the brush line by the dozer track inside our lease and out of sight to my open mouthed amazement, faster than I can type this.
Reloaded, sat back and studied on what I had not just accomplished , my 1st hog kill...when lo & behold he popped out again from the same original place, going the same route as before dragging the right front leg...and I popped him again a little further back in the usual WTail KZ of the crease, rolled him over again, waited a few minutes to see if he was staying down, and started getting put of the blind...when he got up and crawled down a game trail into the 30' high wall of finger thick briar in front of him.
I waited by my watch a full 15 minutes past when I could no longer hear him thrashing around in the wall of briar...and got down on my hands and knees or belly to crawl down the same game trail & quickly shed as much clothing and back pack that was hanging up on the briar as I could.
Found him about 100 feet deep in the briar, put another couple bullets in him to the center and left of the cowlick on his chest at about 50-60 feet when he stood up to challenge me and he laid back down still clicking his cutters.
Waited another 7-8 minutes and moved forward again, and he stood up, when I got closer, still wanting to fight and I hit him just under his right eye sighting down the side of the barrel and finally AC'd the back side of his skull with my last bullet.
He'd almost made it back out of the wall of briar to the dozer track. If he hadn't I'd left him lay as I was wore out from fighting the briar...and still took me a half hour to drag him about 20' to where I could stand up.
After that experience with the lil 125/130lb porker in 1982, I changed 2 things about shooting hogs whenever possible ...I switched from the hyper accurate now discontinued WW 100gr Silvertip 257 Rbt's ammo into harder and faster 130 or 150 grain 270's, and stopped using the classic WT shoulder crease shot Period. If I can't hit a shoulder and break a hog down, I only take base of the skull from behind or q'tred away to behind the eye shots centered on & just below the ear hole from any angle on a side shot. Those bullet placement locations are always bang flop shots.
Had a 150/160lb'er take a RP CL 165gr '06 bullet at 50-60 feet in a driving rain storm right before full dark, impact was just behind the last rib on the left side when we spooked each other meeting on a game trail, and he wheeled to gewt away. Took out lots of vitals and his right shoulder from inside & recovered the bullet just under the skin on the outside of his right shoulder...and still needed a final Kill Shot. Just 'cause a hog's down don't mean he's a DRT and safe to walk up on.
FWIW I'll never crawl into another briar patch on a hog's natural ground again...some kinda scary Schit for sure listening to him grind his cutters at you and you can't even stand up for the all the briar pulling at you...much less try and move away from him...is the stuff of late nite sweaty wakeups.
Elmer Keith said..." Use Enough Gun " as I recall.
Ron
