Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Question for the pig hunters

Where I grew up here in LA, there were no stock laws and people had woods hogs everywhere and were really quite annoying. They would mess up a good deer hunt. When they passed the stock laws and outlawed people running their woods hogs in the wild, they became free fame. I only killed a couple of them and the ones I did kill, they didn't move when shot with my 120 gr. CL's out of my 25/06. So here is my question...is it really necessary to have ammunition specifically for a hog? Why doesn't one's normal deer hunting fodder suffice? It's not like they have metal armor on, or do they? The reason I ask is, when looking through some of the online vendors for ammunition for some of my rifles, pretty much every chambering I looked at had Wild Boar ammo! I can't help it...I find that funny. If they die on the spot shot with the little 120 gr. CL, I just can't see anyone needing special ammo. What say ye?

It is all a marketing game, when I first hunted them out here it was with plain Jane core lokt bullets. They died just as quick back then as they do with Remington's Hog Hammer today.

No doubt they're a tougher breed than a whitetail. In a 22 cal I'd prefer a bonded or mono bullet.

It is ALL MARKETING to the less informed. You can kill a hog with ANYTHING if you hit him in the right spot. I shoot them with .22LR with dogs and with a .223 ball ammo at less than 50 yards in an AR15. Longer distance (up to 250 yards), I use the .223 with 64 gr soft points. Obviously anything larger will most certainly kill them dead with the correct hit.

Perforated dozens and dozens and dozens with everything from a .395 to a .600 patched round ball. And every calibre in between. The majority succumbing to the .490 PRB.

No issues at all.

Fresh pork.

You only need the really tough bullets if you run across a big hog. Problem is you never know when that is going to happen.

Pigs aren’t that tough, I killed hundreds of the bastids, 22 long rifle to 50 caliber muzzle loader. If you are using a .223, I would go with a Barnes or a Bear Claw.

I've shot up to 300ish pounders with a suppressed 22... ear canal and all is good. thats subs HP bullets on top of it, say it ain't so.

Pigs and deer are both easy to kill. If you can control the shot and distance there would be no need for anything other than a 22 lr or such, at 100 and under.

IF you find a BIG pig, that has shields, thats the time to take the head shot, or have a good bullet. That said I've amazingly ran some ballistic tips through big enough boars that amazed me but we don't drive bts very fast so they won't blow up but act like a good bullet should.

Other than that I can't be of any help

Pigs are no tougher than anything else. Some people shoot them to far back. You have to keep it really tight behind the shoulder on broadside shots. Also the big Boars with shields just don't bleed much on a broadside shot. They don't go far just dont always leave a good blood trail.

Ive shot the vast majority of my pigs with a .223 or .223AI with a variety of bullets...all of which have worked...

Corelokts and Interlocks have worked great on dozens of hogs. The old Nosler soild base (pre BT) worked fine, too. We get some long, running shots and I usually used a.300 Win as it was the only centerfire I had at the time. I did find Rem HSP 240 gr .44 mags did not penetrate the gristle plate on big boars, though the Rem SP version did. The HSP would mushroom perfectly but not punch through from a handgun.

A lot of people gut shoot them. I don’t, but I don’t eat very many either. They are good practice!

Amazing how many y'all kill out there, and then you trap a bunch besides.

I think you all are trapping yours, bringing them up to Burnet, dumping them out on our lease.

There is a large spring fed creek running through the middle of that place. I think that’s why we have so many. We killed 287 last year, between the ten of us. No one traps but me, so I’m really just peeing in the wind. It is a lot of fun, something to do while we are up there anyway. I’m working on another trap pen to take up there in a couple weeks. I have a feeder hanging in a live oak feeding once a day waiting on the trap. I need to build the gate.

I and friends have shot some big ones with 22 rim fires but one big one took on a rodeo shoot with multiple hits required. Anything that works on deer is usually fine but when I know there are really big ones around it is nice to have more bullet penetration if needed. We saw one that we mistook for one of the cows it was among. The tracks looked like a cows too. One like that pushing 400 lbs and with two inches of gristle shield and then an unknown amount of mud over that makes a Mono or other premium bullet reassuring.

We never got that one but it was enough justification to get the 375s out just in case they were needed but mostly for fun.

Thanks guys for your answers...that's what I was thinking, that plain ol' bullets that have gotten it done for years can still get it done in most cases. We have a few on our lease, but in the 7 or 8 years I have been on it, I haven't seen any! I find where they have rooted up around one of my stands, but that's it. If I see one, I WILL shoot it, I just can't get excited about them as a game animal, I guess because I grew up seeing them as a nuisance...and I can't get past that.

Dang Hanco...y'all are working on'em! I'm glad we are not overrun with them like you must be. Thanks guys, I'll just shoot'em with whatever I'm carrying at the time. Anywhere from a 6mm Rem to a 30/06.

I completely agree about the specialized pig cartridges being a marketing tool since, as everyone has noted, they can be killed with just about anything. Eons ago, the very first pig that I killed was with a load of no. 7.5 lead out of a twenty gauge. I jumped him while bird hunting and shot him just behind the ear at about fifteen feet. The only caveat about factory loads marketed as "pig loads" is that these loads are probably more popular in places like California than in Texas or Florida for the simple reason that all of these loads seem to use bullets of mono construction, and in lead-banned areas they fit the bill.

We killed one about like that once years ago. Walked up on it, and my buddy chit himself.. I carried a 22 pistol all the time. I'd have shot him with that but my buddywanted to kill him. He was afraid. He had a 77/44 with 240 soft points. We were only about 30 yards out, so I says shoot him in the ear. Damn fool ate that pig too... no need for the big guns but they can be fun.

We'll be shooting deer this fall with a 10mm glock and a 458 Win mag just because.

If that was directed to us, we don't have pigs at home, and we kill one maybe once every 5 years at Round Mountain so you can't blame em on us. LOL

You brought them all to Burnet, that’s why you only kill one every 5 years!😁

I’ve seen as many as forty in a Sounder. I don’t see how they survive. That place is mostly rocky ground.

LOL, I've never seen a pig at Round Mountain ever. OTOH when we hunted CR308 south of Llano we had a fair number. Never 40 at a time though. Sometimes 5-10 or so. Llano we probably could have trapped em but we bowhunted only on that place for years, other than using guns now and then to send a message to the pigs. Most I've ever shot at once was 6 with a shotgun.

Hanco, don't your pigs get trap shy after a while? I was talking to the guy in Florida who trapped them out of the Disney wildlife preserve and he said that at one time they were getting about 300 a year. Now they don't even bait the traps because the pigs won't go into them anymore. True or is the guy just too lazy to do the work?

They are going to the feeder all the time. We set gates when he go up to put corn in the feeders, about every three months, but during deer season every other weekend. They don’t seem to get shy. I’ve caught some several times, because they can jump out. If it is really dry, they are hungry, they come in feeder pen.

I know in Llano and down the road from me here about 15 miles they can take a LONG time to come back after being trapped. But thats not in a hanco trap.. ours have all been small traps...

I'd think they'd come back to pen traps quite often IMHO

The commercial pig trappers around central TX use big traps; some as big as 1000 ft2. They are made of bull panels and t-posts. The point is to catch a whole sounder and ship them all off to slaughter. The buggers learn quickly and small traps that only catch a few or onzes educate, not eradicate.

I have this pen in east Texas. It’s about 20 feet in diameter. I some times catch the whole sounder. A lot of times a male pig will take over a trap. He won’t let any others eat. Seems like we catch a lot of male pigs.

Shot placement is key.

Hogs, unlike WT's, generally run when chest shot. I once chest shot a good sized hog with a .257 Wby, knocked him flat. After a bit, he let out a loud roar, jumped up and ran off into the woods. I know he eventually died, but what a deal. That's a lot of power and wallop for a runner.

A good bud who's killed a bunch, says a high shoulder, neck or head shot is the way to go. He comes up the front leg, 2/3rds up the body and hits that spot, which gets the spine. Works for him. I've chest shot hogs with Cutting Edge Raptors, DRT. The petals tear up the spine, which guarantees a DRT hog. Just a powerful expanding bullet, not always producing the DRT trick. Need to wipe out the CNS. Hogs are easy to kill, can be hard to kill.

It's not the head stamp, not even the bullet. It's placement. How many times have we heard that...

DF

I try to shoulder shoot them. It’s best to blow them down, break some bones. A 62 Barnes out of an AR will work a 200 lb pig over.

That’s my go to bullet as well, when killing hogs here at the Ranch with one of my AR-15’s. It has worked very well for me.

I don't know how many I have killed but I have used most calibers and a lot of cartridges between the .223 Remington with the 55gn soft point up to the .460 Weatherby handloaded with 500gn Hornady's with the bottom line being, they all worked. Most are shot at lever action distances or closer, so as long as any bullet and load that will suffice on deer his used, you will be fine. Any other choices are fetish only.
John

Pigs have a reputation of being tough, but they aren’t, I’ve killed a couple dozen with a bow.

Core-Lokt is a cheap bullet but a very good one in my experience. That is if your rifle will shoot them accurately. I was shooting 165 Core-Lokts at hogs out of a .30-06 with very good results before I learned to reload. I found other bullets to be more accurate in my rifles and started loading them. I've shot a lot of hogs with a .223 AR while night hunting, using that choice for the rapid acquisition of multiple targets as is common at night. The low recoil and fast reloading help a lot, but they don't usually go down as fast or bleed much. I've used Hornady SST, Hornady 178 BTHP Match, 150 Flat based Hornady IL with good results and 155 Scenar with somewhat unsatisfactory results. When I use a .270 I've loaded with 130 SST and 150 Win. Power Points and they work fine. I've settled on a Speer 180 RN (.30-06) for the killing power and the blood spilling exit wound that you can count on with even big tough pigs. The Scenar was a disappointment in that it usually didn't expand and big hogs seemed prone to go hiking off long distances after being shot. I saw a deer shot with a Scenar a few years ago with a magnum rifle (either .257 or 240 Wby.) and the bullet demolished the front of that deer. I suppose velocity is the reason. My .30-06 velocity at 200+ yards is probably comparatively pretty tame. As Dirt Farmer said it is placement of the shot and I shoot for the middle of the ribs at night not wanting to miss so I use a big round nose bullet that will give me a little leeway on placement.

I bought a .458 win mag of off somebody who had bought it for hogs....he must have known something I didn't...

-jake

I liked the 30-06 with the old Red Box Federal (that came out in late 70's) with the Sierra 165 SBT on deer/hogs ( about 50 miles SE of Hanco (:)) as a young man. It held up fine and really chilled their doo-doo with even a shoulder shot. But honestly, so did the 150gr 30-30 Corlokt we used. I always 'tried" to shoot them behind the ear, upper neck with anything. The little Mod 9422 magnum was my BILs favorite hog gun. I piled up three hogs with it ( fmjs) in less time than it takes to tell it. None weighed over 150 pounds though. He did have to do "The Rifleman" on a peed off huge sow one time though!

I really enjoy catching pigs( shooting cshit out of them), but it seems we will never catch or kill them all.

Hanco-this is what I was thinking, thus wondering why the big explosion of "Big Boar" bullets.

Hastings-I agree. I suspect that there have been more killed with CL's and Winchester PP's than all the rest of the bullets (maybe not...but it sounds good...lol).

lol...that's funny! Thanks for the chuckle!

A 458 might kill a pig!

The notion of bringing my 338 mag out of retirement to whomp a hog bubbles up now and then.

the 458 will kill pigs I have killed some bullet testing with my 450 Howell, the 500 gr. soft nose with 73 gr of 3031 works real well. Rio 7

I think the big bores and pigs is what brought about the word "overkill"!

Need a 700 nitro express

Same idea as the zombie ammo you see everywhere

Creedmoor with 120 Barnes will almost take a pigs head off.

lol...yeah, I'm stockpiling a bunch of them in case we are ever overrun here in Central LA with the boogers.

You can’t have too much ammo. Maybe Zombie is code for something else?😎😎😎😎😎

Put this pen up yesterday, was surprised to catch three this morning

hanco,

That looks like the NICE hog trap that our contracted trapper uses at our family farm. = She catches them, transports the hogs to OK, feeds them corn, sends them to the packing house & sends us "our cut" every 90 days. - When Mother was still alive, she called it: My Christmas Fund.

My choice for pigs is one of my Model 760 pumps, either in .300SAV or (more often, as it's behind the PU seat) a .30.06. = I use 180 grain JSP for everything in caliber .30.

ADDENDA: The biggest boar ever taken on our farm was by my (then 15YO) nephew, using his great-grandfather's single-barrel 12-gauge & 00 Buckshot, at about 40M. = GYD.

yours, tex

Did a pig and a few javelina with the 458. Worked fine. But I still say folks generally go over gunned for pigs due to paranoia of written word. They and deer are not hard to kill.

I don't think I've EVER shot a trapped pig with anything more than a 22lr at the most and have shot a LOT with a ruger MK2 bull barrel and cci mini mag hps...out to around 50 yards or so with irons, lung shots don't last long... of course I don't shoot the lungs on much more than 100-125 pound pigs.

Just think if you'd have centered the brain pan in and out, could have been pretty impressive not much of top of head I suspect. Wonder what that would do at about C1/C2. broadside. Might do a bit of damage.

Same here, was well over 50 marks on a knife before I decided keeping count was stupid. Along with about 5-6 others for years on a bow lease that probably had about the same number. Except my wife who didn't like shooting them for some reason. LOL rest of us would almost have rather seen a pig than a deer.

That's old school right there! My daddy shot a 760 30/06 with 180 gr. for deer all the years he deer hunted. He wouldn't have dreamed of shooting a 165 gr. and God forbid if he had ever bought a 150 gr. round...lol. I now have the 1st 760 he bought in the 60's. It's beat up pretty good but a million dollars wouldn't take it off my hands.

Eddie

Ruger77Shooter,

Inasmuch as I'm now 71YO, I fit the description of "old school".
Further, using only 180 grain JSP means that I don't have to keep re-sighting in my favorite rifles. - Imo, either a .300SAV or .30-06 with 180 grain JHP is adequate for any game in the Americas, with the possible exception of the largest bears, out to 250-300M.

yours, tex

I use an AR most of the time. Thirty round magazines are nice.

^^^THIS^^^

300 Blackout 110gr Barnes TTSX

Poor damn pigs! They are misunderstood!

Pigs have little imagination and are all named "The Road". Pig hunters are all named Jack.

I have s grandson named Jack. He will be shooting pigs before long!

Killed 11 last Friday. Nine were females.