Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters PIG GUN

Have shot them with everything from a 22LR to a 458WinMag. They all died with correct shot placement. Lost one after I shot it with a 9mm, lost the blood trail in a rainstorm, poor shot placement on my part.

The first pig shoot I went to the other hunters told me that it would take a 338 Win Mag or better due to the hard plate on their side.

I took a 30-06 with 180 grain Nosler Partition - shot a large pig just in front of the shoulder and high. The pig didn't take a step. I've since learned that it didn't take that much of a cartridge/load.

I think the so called "plate" on their shoulder is grossly overestimated. Yeah, you might not shove a knife through it, but like Bugger, I found a .30-06, even with a lightly loaded 150 grainer, goes right through!

I whacked one once with my 338-06, 225 Accubond, 2700+fps. Too much gun in my opinion for the porkers. Blew a baseball size hole on the off side. Still, the pig was deader than last year's romance.

Killed a lot of "woods hogs" as a kid around East Texas with a .22 LR - also used 20 gauge shotgun slugs. Later used .30-06, once a .300 W. Mag. A Savage 99 .300 Savage also did a great job for hogs. My "favorite" woods pig caliber is probably .44 mag. Shot a bunch with a T/C with a 14" barrel and a suppressor using subsonic loads pushing 300 - 330 gr hardcast bullets. My wife's Ruger semi-auto .44 mag is also very good.

Mike Holmes

Anyone using the 6x45 or the "new" 6 ARC on an AR platform for this?

Pig rifle...






GR

One of my favorites

My current "favorite" is a .260 Rem MRC X2, suppressed. It actually holds one in the chamber and 5 down. I do a lot of spot and stalk and prefer either a bolt gun or a Marlin 1894 .44 mag lever.

Biggest pig I ever killed was with a 222mag shooting 55gr PowerLokt HPs. Granted I shot it twice but I’m not sure the second was warranted. I have no idea what it weighed but it was big.

The 7TCU pushing 110s to 2625 or 120s to 2575 out of my 20” 700 kills the heck out of them with minimal blast and recoil. At these speeds the softer bullets work great. I’ve had good luck with Speer TNTs, Sierra ProHunters, and Nosler Ballistic Tips. If it would fit in an AR mag it might be perfection.

I don’t think the 223 shooting decent bullets out of an AR can be beat for the combo of speed, shootability, and killing power. 77TMKs will reach the vitals on pretty dang big pigs from just about any angle. They don’t do so well with broken wheels which makes it much easier to get a follow up in too, I’ve no qualms shooting a runner right up the ass to slow him down. After all they aren’t deer and are regarded at about the same level of existence as cockroaches around here. Don’t discount the lowly 55gr Hornady spire point, they penetrate and kill very well for a plain old cheap bullet.

Strangely the only one I can say the “shield” gave me trouble on was a big boar I shot with a 30/06. He went down and got up and took off. My cousins caught him with their dogs and knifed him a while later. He had a 30 caliber bullet expanded all the way to the base resting against his shoulder blade and seemed to be doing fine until they stuck him. I think he weighed 280 something.

Really, really hard to beat an AR15 with a suppressor. Regular old 55gr SP kill pigs just fine, all the way up to the big ones. With a suppressed semi auto, its not hard to kill a dozen or so in one sitting.

Why in the crap would you trail one?

338 Win mag will do the trick also.

TC Encore in 405 win.

Y'all using the big, slow guns are missing out...shooting pigs is flat fun, and stacking them is most of it.

LOL. I started to trail a big one once. All alone on the lease, right at dusk. Took about three steps into the mesquite thicket, then thought to myself "WTF are you doing?" The reason I started to trail him: to make sure he was dead. The reason I stopped myself: to make sure I didn't get dead.

Hell...best case scenario is they run off and ide somewhere else...at least that way I don't have to drag them off the field.

‘‘Twas in my younger days, many years ago. Now, I shoot ‘em and leave them where they lay, or let them run off.

Have killed a few pigs here and there in the past 30+ years, mostly feral pigs in at least three states of the U.S.A., plus central Europe and warthogs in Africa (where in some places they're considered as much of a pest as our feral pigs). Have done so with over a dozen cartridges from the .223 Remington on up, and more than one load in some of those rounds.

This one was taken in Texas with a head-shot from one of Bill Wilson's excellent AR-15's in 6.8 SPC around a decade ago, and half an hour later took a coyote at around 200 yards. Bill is a pig-hunting fool, and in fact bought this Texas ranch primarily for pig hunting, though it also has some fine whitetails. Dunno how many pigs he (and his guests) kill each year, but it's quite a few, and at the time he thought the 6.8 with various Barnes TSXs was tops. More recently he developed the .300 HAM'R, which basically duplicates .30-30 ballistics in an AR-15, and feels it's a little better on big boars. Have shot one of his .300 HAM'Rs some, but not on pigs. (One thing I learned from Bill during our hunt was that while head-shots work great on pigs, shooting them in the middle of the neck just in front of the shoulders is equally effective, but allows considerably more room for a little aiming area.)

Have shot pigs from up close running to pretty long range, especially in coastal Texas where the sand-dune country can be very wide-open. That was with a 7mm SAUM, which crumpled them well. Also have killed them with traditional European boar cartridges (especially 9.3s) and in Africa with the .375 H&H, because was hunting other stuff considerably larger. It's all great, and so far haven't found a round that doesn't work well with the right bullet, shooter and conditions.

My favorite pig shot was on a now deceased friends ranch outside of Camp Wood Texas. This was 2000 or so. I was in a ground blind hunting deer with my 9 year old middle son. I had my Ugartechea 12 gauge Jabali SxS slug gun with the well regulated 1 oz Brenneke MP slug. A hog came from the right side of the blind, put his nose in the air then just rocketed towards us then turning away giving me an azz shot at about fifty yards. Two inches right of his hole was mine and he tumbled.