Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire I never cared for single shots anyway

i shot a boar from 30ft with a 7 mag right in the shoulder with a ballistic tip. it when down squealing and kicking. i leaned the rifle against the blind to wait for it to stop kicking, and it jumped up and was gone, never found any blood or saw buzzards. had several run off shot in the shoulder with 55gr soft points out of the ar.

I believe it. I’ve seen one hit at 50 yards with an 85gr soft point- .243

Same thing. Hit the ground and got up carrying the mail. 180gr AB out of a 300 Weatherby put him down. That 85grainer didn’t penetrate the shoulder blade.

That's odd, my CB shorts drop 'em dead in their tracks.

shooting them in the shoulder?

Since you inquired, not with CB's. Broadside neck, headed for the cervical vertebrae on pigs up to around #125, otherwise I might shoot the small ones behind the ear. For the rest, between the eyes about 1" up.

I feel inclined to spew a little, bear with me. Pigs aren't hard to kill, but their anatomy is a bit different than deer and other critters. Lookie here...


My turf is a bit different than you folks out west as well. Most shots are in the 10-20 yard range.


I still hunt. Period. I have on a number of occasions shot more than one pig without taking a step. Personal record is 5 and that included a boar of about 200#, a sow of 175# and three shoats of about 40-50#. In that particular event I shot the sow first. They behave rather rudely when you make one of their kids squeal.

The largest was a bit of an education. First shot was what I thought to be a behind the ear brain shot. Ol' bastid looked up after the shot, shook his head a little and looked in my direction. Shot #2 did the trick. It was shortly after that I discovered that pigs have a two layer skull in the rear portion, ie, a chamber that holds the grey matter and one that is mostly empty as best I can tell. I shot the void and had I been about 1.5-2" lower it would have worked. Live and learn...

Shot #1

oh i know, i've killed my share, just pointing out the grizzle shield is pretty tough. nilgai also have the same type shield.

Shot #2


Rear view


The bullet


End of the road



I like single shots and red dots for what I do. Horsepower is no substitute for placement.

You shot 5 in one setting, having to shoot the boar twice, all with a single shot and CB shorts. That’s impressive.

Top five boar charges ?
I didnt see one boar charge in
that clip, just a guy in the wrong place
at the wrong time..

Billy

Not so much in my book. One of the little porkers took off to play elsewhere, guess he figured out the jig was up or something. If I was really hot there would have been 6 dead pigs on the ground. There's a lot of story behind how this all this CB short thing started that I'm not going to bother with. Simple telling is a flock of the fat bastids descended upon my lawn one day back around the winter of 2004. All I had handy at that moment was the short chambered Contender so I slipped out the door with the intention of shooting them away. Pop'n flop. SOB! Measured it out at 38 yards, shook my head and got the skinning knife out.

With the concurrence of a neighbor I set about thinning the herd and learned a few things about killin' I'd never realized. 1) penetration matters, 2) placement is 90% of the game and 3) not all ammo is the same in the world of .22 shorts. The CB bullets with their feeble velocity are stupid quiet, more so than the LR barrel with a suppressor. Because they are slow they don't deform and have a strong tendency to penetrate far more than one might expect. EX: Broadside thru the neck of a 100# porker, the CB will pass thru the neck and vertebrae and exit headed for who knows where. HV HP ammo will kill, but it shatters on the bone and does not exit. .22 LR SV tends to tumble and exit is an iffy thing in the same scenario. That said, dead is dead, but my love affair with HV performance, both RF and CF began to wane as a result.

Pigs aren't terribly bright on the best of days. Their vision is apparently a joke. I'm suspecting they hear well, and have a well developed sense of smell, but if one is downwind and reasonably quiet they are clueless about where to run when life gets weird. So often as not they stand around acting nervous and confused. Reloading a single shot rifle or shotgun need not be a slow and laborious endeavor, at least not for the break action guns. Some years back up in GA I had occasion to maneuver myself into a circumstance where some pigs could, at the sound of the first shot, leap off the cliff into a creek below, or run over me. I had a H&R .410 and despite my stubby left ring finger, 4 shells between the fingers of my left hand. Starting range was about 30 yards, shooting slugs....first one died, rolled into the creek. Missed the second on the fly, nailed #3 about 15 yards out, missed #4 and #5 splattered blood on my jeans when I shot him. Yeah, slugs work if you can hit what your aiming at.

With all that babble out of the way, I will say, without reservation, the most profoundly effective weapon for hogs that I've ever seen at play is an AH-1G with 17# 2.75" FFAR. Saw a pot bellied pig fleeing down a trail one day and one of the best acts of stunt shooting ever went down. The pig was haulin' ass. The rocket detonated pretty much under its belly. There weren't chitt left for the mess kit. Unfortunately I didn't fly Snakes much "over there", but can tell you my little bird sometimes had 6 barrels that were belt fed. No moss growing that set up either.

Dan,
What variant is the AH-1G? And what weapon system had 6 barrels? Were you a Marine pilot?

Army, air cavalry. The AH-1G was the first iteration of the Cobra gunship...6 barrel belt fed = miniguns. Served with 2/17th Cav, 1/9th Cav and 7/17th Cav, mostly in 1&2 Corps with a few months in 3 Corps. '69-'70, '71-'72, mostly flying Scouts.

I love the smell of napalm in the morning.

Thanks. I worked on AH-1W and UH-1N. Never knew the cobra had a 6 barrel mini gun. The ones I worked on had a 3 barrel 20mm, but my time was about 35 years after you. Was that 6 barrel mini a 7.62? The Hueys still run those.

Yer, yer, yer a perfessional killer. No fare, Dan.

I look for the CB longs because a freaking gun Smith told me that sometimes a CB short can get stuck in the barrel.

Darn. I gotta go back and start doing some experimental research.

I was told on tha Far that 00 B in the face of a bear for defence was like a bunch of 32 cal pistol bullets at 1100 fps just pissing Mtr Bear off.

This thread has me remembering something from 55-60 years ago. My cousin min law and D Boones relative and most best hunter and shot I ever knew, a back woodsman named Jerry Maxey took me deep into Piney Creek bottom as a big kid for deer one evening. It started raining and we sat in his 1920 or so jeep until too late to hunt.

He said he had wanted to shoot something that evening. To stop the jeep he had coasted in neutral at slow speed into a pine sapling beside the dim jeep trail in the forest. It was surprising to me the jolt we experienced as we suddenly stopped. I wondered if he was letting me learn the danger of running into solid objects even at slow speed. He was a meat and potatoes poor guy and this was not his normal moa.

As it got time to leave he stepped out and took aim at the 3-4 inch pine sapling about 8 ft high that had stopped the jeep with his FC Mod 12 with high base 6s and "kaboom". I cant remember how close he was to it and I thought he had gone crazy cause those shells back then were about 7 cents a piece for broken box buys which I normally always could only afford. I never heard of intentionally wasting such a valuable commodity on purpose or pine.

Anyway, the pine parted enough for the top part to fall over and he remarked something about how powerful our shotguns were. I wondered why he had done that. It was a bit unsettling. Was he trying to impress being safe to me? Was he hinting I had been letting my muzzle point in his direction?

Anyway, he was my hero and was the best shot I ever saw, head shooting bucks running through timber or palmetto and,pin oaks with an open sighted 94 30-30 or "limbing" hidden squirrels high in a tree with a 22 or popping them in the head with it if they "limmed out" through the forest canopy above, or popped woodies flushing up off Piney, or cutting a couple of geese necks flying low over Grandads open pasture a little too close to us.

Whatever his intent, it made me think.

Oh hell, now I needs a single shot 22CB mofo.....

Yeah, we had a few of the 20mm late in my first tour, nobody cared for them much. Some snakes had a mini and what we called a chunker in the turret. 40mm grenade launcher. Some had twin minis in the turret and a pair of pods with minis inboard on the wing stubs. Rockets outboard. About half the LOHs I flew had minis, rest had door gunners.. I preferred the latter. Extra eyes were a good thing.

Beats hell out of being an amateur...

All this talk of killing power and yet the biggest campfire rule is always shot placement. Griz iz bigger and meaner than pigs is and you don't need an ounce of shot when you shoot them good. One well placed bullet between the eyes tames even the meanest griz...

Sometimes the obvious is unsettling to folks Shrapnel, give 'em 10-15 years and they'll figure it out.

Jag, I use the short version 'cause the barrel is chambered for shorts. Have shot some of the CB longs but have not found the precision wanted. They would probably work at the ranges I swat pigs at, but.....

CB shorts checking zero after a thorough scrubbing...on the 25 yard line, elbow rest:


LR Quiet at 20 yards from a "real" gun and this is by far the best group I've ever had with them. CB longs do about the same for me in a LR chamber.


Same chamber with LR SV ammo:


My original purpose in having a short chamber was for hunting squirrel. I've had some success with that, but with a different sort of ammo....


The BB Caps are the schizzle for bustin' tree rats inside 30 yards or so. 'Dillos and other pests as well. A curiosity I've not sorted out is why the BB caps kill 'em quicker than the CB caps. I'm not thinking that hydrostatic shock is the answer....