On the other hand, I still remember with
alarming clarity, my first wild pig. It was shot with a .356 Winchester from a
lever-action rifle. The cartridge was brand new, not even available to the public yet. I
was on a hunt at Dye Creek Ranch, near Red Bluff, with a group of other writers from
Petersen's Publishing, and I was somehow elected to use the new .356 for this field
test.
Mike Ballew was the game manager of the ranch back in those days, and we bellied up on a
big boar. From a solid prone position I whacked the pig right behind the shoulder. The pig
flipped upside down with all four feet in the air. Then it moved ever so slightly. Since
it was my first pig, I asked Ballew if I should shoot it again.
"That pig's dead," said Ballew, and those words were no more past the edge of
his lips when the dead pig was up and running across the hillside with ghostly speed. It
was not dead.
Bob Robb said later that I looked like Chuck Connors of The Rifleman television
series fame. I emptied the .356 at that pig, reloaded, and shot some more before it
crested the ridge. The reality is that I hit the pig about seven other times with those
200-grain prototype Winchester Silvertips -- at least as near as we could tell later when
salvaging edible meat. The performance was explosive. Literally.
The bullets were behaving like .22 varmint slugs, blowing great divots out of the
pig and causing terrible damage to its meaty exterior, but never penetrating into the
vital organs. I was accused of killing the pig by loading it up with so much lead that it
died of heart failure from packing so much extra weight around while running furiously
across that hillside.
Those prototype slugs were obviously made with too soft a lead core and/or jacket material
that was too thin, and Winchester corrected the problem before the ammunition came on the
general marketplace. But the example graphically illustrates the toughness of wild pigs.
Unlike deer, pigs have massive bones in the forequarters covering their vital organs,
which are set further forward than with deer. Hunters accustomed to shooting deer well
behind the shoulder "in the pocket" will not score a lung hit on a direct
broadside shot on a pig. They will hit liver or gut, and pigs shot that way will travel a
long distance.
The biggest mistake first-time --- hell, even veteran -- hunters make is not using a
bullet that will break a front shoulder and penetrate into the vital organs. Most pigs are
deer-sized game, so hunters mistakenly believe they can shoot the same lightly-constructed
slugs and kill pigs. Well, they might get away with it for the first few animals, but then
a slug will come apart on a front shoulder, or it will not penetrate enough into the
heart-lung area from a rear angle. Then the hunter has a wounded pig on his hands, and
that either leads to an animal escaping or getting shot up with multiple hits to finally
anchor it.
In speaking with guides throughout the state and based on our staff's experience, there
was unanimous agreement the following bullets were up to the task (listed in order of
preference): Winchester Fail Safes, Barnes X-Bullets, Trophy Bonded Bear Claws, Nosler
Partition (or the new Combined Technology partition slug made with a joint effort with
Winchester and Nosler), Swift A-Frames, Woodleigh Weldcores, Speer Grand Slams. All of
these bullets open up rapidly and reliably, yet they still have the ability to penetrate
through bones.
The Bear Claws, Noslers, Swifts, Woodleighs, and Grand Slams do not have the penetration
ability in most deer calibers for you to shoot a pig running away from you and have the
slug penetrate through the ham or hip, the barley- or grass-filled gut, and into the
vitals. Out of calibers from the .270 upward, the other two slugs -- the Fail Safe
and the X-Bullet -- absolutely offer this penetration.
I shot a young boar on the Tejon Ranch in early April with a 140-grain Winchester Fail
Safe from (a) 7mm-08. The slug shattered the femur, devastated the ham with rapid
expansion, ranged through the entire gut cavity, into the chest cavity, exited the chest,
reentered the foreleg, cracked the foreleg and then deflected down along the bone to come
to rest under the skin -- penetrating nearly three feet of pig. It looked nearly just like
one that has been shot into gelatin and used in Winchester's advertising. (See included
photo) That is the performance you want in a slug to be used for pig hunting.
"It amazes me the number of people who don't put any thought into the thing that's
doing the killing. To them, a bullet's a bullet. They worry more about caliber and scope,
and don't get me wrong, that's important, but the bullet is the most important thing in
hog hunting," said August Harden, a longtime pig guide and operator of Cross Country
Outfitters in Paso Robles.
Guides like Harden see 100 or more pigs shot a year and have good insight on what works
and what doesn't. Harden is blunt in recommending two slugs unequivocally under all
shooting conditions -- Barnes X-Bullets and Fail Safes.
If you have questions about what ammunition to bring on a hunt for your rifle, don't
hesitate to ask the guide. Perhaps, if he makes recommendations other than what you have
read here, you might want to reconsider his qualifications.
With today's premium ammunition featuring top quality slugs from all of the major makers,
getting a good pig slug does not require reloading. All it requires is that you have
enough respect for the animal to make the small investment in buying, or reloading,
ammunition that provides a quick, clean, responsible kill. --- Jim Matthews
HOMEPAGE
© 2008 -- Cross Country Outfitters, Inc.
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