12/11 Hog Hunt

[13Echo]

Amazingly tough animal is a feral hog or Hawg. You just have to admire and respect an animal that is that tenacious. I agree with Barvid that taking an animal's life, especially the life of an intelligent and resourceful one like a hog, should call for introspection and reflection on why we hunt and what it means to take another life. It's too bad the feral pig is so destructive as we tend to forget what an amazing creature it is.

Churchill said that, " Dogs look up to you. Cats look down on you. Pigs treat you as an equal."

Jerry Liles

[Woody]

Dave,

Years ago while in the Army, and training in Graf in Germany, I was on perimeter guard when we were attacked by "aggressers". They had been harassing us for several days, so I decided to "capture" one. I ran into the timber and heard one running through the brush ahead of me. Chased hard for a 100 yards or so, when I broke out of the brush into a small clearing. There I found my "aggresser" was a European Bore and me holding a M-16 loaded with blanks. I was lucky enough to be able to advance to the rear quickly.

Woody

[KL]

Why didn't you pull a Rambo and kill it with your bayonet?

[mdeland]

And strong, my dad used to say of our domestic hogs, "there ain't nothing a hog can't lift if he can get his nose under it" !

[Woody]

KL,

You ever seen a modern Bayonet?

Now if I would have had one of those pig stickers from an 03 or even better from a Civil War Remington.

Woody

[Rich Siegel]

A couple of years ago, I was hunting boars in Tenn. A small razerback, weighing about 175, slowly ran past me broad side at 35 yards. I fired a round with my Shiloh 50/70 using a 490 grain bullet and the hog never stopped. He and his three friends went over a small rise out of sight. I thought I had missed him and checked my sights to make sure they were not loose and then started cursing myself for missing at such close range. When I started to walk up to the hill, I saw a blood trail and found the boar down but not out 50 yards away. One final shot ended the hunt.

The animals are sure hard to kill and don't seem to know they are hit, even by a 50!

Rich

[Darryl]

Now that's a nice pig.

[Bad Bill]

Look in the new shilo web site at the trophey room. The hog there isn't as mean looking as yours but he sure is a big ol fat thing. I'd hate to stumble across him when out bird hunting with # 8 shot!

[John Bly]

Some of the European percussion hunting rifles from the mid 19th century were fitted with hunting bayonets which were a hunting knife that slid onto the end of the barrel and attached by various means. This enabled stabbing a downed animal in the heart without putting oneself in close proximity to the business end of the downed critter. Perhaps you should see about one of these for your serious hunting rifle there, Barvid. Those tusks are serious business on those big hawgs.

How did the hunting go with Tim the other day? Any luck? I hope to meet up with you again somewhere along the way.

[checker]

Bly, Barvid was busy entertaining us! No one made a shot, but I let David hunt my stand Saturday afternoon, and he saw two does and five bucks, all no-shoots. We still had a good time. How can you not have a good time hangin' with Barvid!
Ask David what he had for breakfast Saturday morning. Tim

[Darryl]

David, I was looking at this pig again - that's truly a nice one. I bet it made a nice smack when your bullets hit him.

I've killed a semi-truckload of hogs. I can count on two hands how many of them were that size or just barely bigger. Most of them are between 125-200 pounds.

I had a 1000 acre lease that was 1/2 in Dewitt County Texas, the other 1/2 in Karnes County Texas. That place had beasts like this one.
That was the only lease that I hunted in Texas where I'd kill hogs over 300 pounds.

Seems like everywhere else I've hunted, people hammer them before they get this big.

Nice hunt,

DR

[Bad Bill]

Darryl, you don't happen to own the Owens Sausage Co., do you

[KL]

I don't doubt what anyone here says about hogs, and I have never hunted one myself. However, after having used the 50-70 for some time now, and seeing what it did with one shot to a 1400 pound moose, it seems inconceivable that something along those lines, or even a 45-70, can't immediately anchor a pig if it is hit in a vital spot. Everything I ever hit with the 50-70 went down like a sack of wet cement. BTW, the moose got his from a friend of mind, not me. Come to think of it, I never hit anything with my all time favorite .300 Win Mag that also didn't drop on the spot. For what it's worth, I rarely load anything what one might call hot. I only load a .30-06 to around 2450 FPS. Recoil doesn't bother me but I have noticed that the fastest loads are rarely the most accurate. I maintain that precise shot placement, far more than velocity or caliber (up to a point), matters most. The best anti-recoil tricks I know are to mentally prepare for the shot and hold the butt stock tightly against your shoulder. It takes some practice to do that and relax your trigger finger at the same time, but you can pull your rifle up tight with your left hand. The worst way to shoot is to hold your rifle loosely and let it crash into your shoulder upon taking the shot. Accuracy goes to hell in a hurry that way, as it can I suppose when the excitement level of a hunt goes up like a rocket.

Woody, I know M16 bayonets are "maybe" 4 inches long---on a good day.

[rdnck]

KL--When feral hogs start to get really big, like Barvid's, it becomes a completely different ballgame. Don't underestimate what it can take to put one down if they get their adrenaline going. Shoot straight, rdnck.

[KL]

Years back, and I can't remember where and the exact when, I read an article about energy imparted to the target as opposed to energy that was essentially wasted. It gave the example of the stopping power of a 1911-45ACP which is big, slow, and doesn't necessarily pass through its target (man or animal) as opposed to a smaller but very fast slug that blows right on through. The idea was that the 45 that did not go through the target put all of its kinetic energy into the target's mass whereas the slug that hit, passed through, and kept on going contained a certain amount of kinetic energy that was not completely translated to the target itself and was thereby wasted. That was a large part of the explanation as to why the 45 ACP has the stopping power that it does.

That applies to all animal and human targets as well I would suppose, but I don't doubt redneck either. Drug addicts on crystal meth can be shot numerous times and not have a clue. At the same time I remember reading about Bell of Africa braining elephants with one shot from a 7 mm Mauser. If the accepted history is true, he took hundreds that way.