Quiet Pig Stunning Load

[curioushooter]

I'm telling you what happened. There were four witnesses. It's actually around 167 grains. I did not chrono it. 3.5 grains of unique from a 1 7/8" S&W 638. Probably 700 fps. I thought I missed despite pulling the trigger with the muzzle about an inch from the skull. Put four more in the poor animal before I got my double badger. A single 22 LR in the same place stunned it. And all other pigs with a single shot. I am thinking of sawing the skull open just to see what happened but am frankly so disguested by the whole ordeal I don't want to mess with it.
Do what you want but I will never shoot an animal with a low powered handgun that way again.

[M-Tecs]

Killed a lot of pig and steers with a 22LR. Biggest hog was 560 dressed so live weight was around 750. Steers were around 1,000 pounds. Did a couple of baloney bulls but used a 22 Mag. Don't know the weight but around 2,000 pounds.

Never shot one from the side.

For bleeding I much prefer sticking verse slitting the throat.

Pics of shot placement here https://www.hsa.org.uk/humane-killin...tioning/pigs-2

https://extension.sdstate.edu/home-hog-slaughter

Until the mid 50's almost all the commercial packing plants used 22's until various type of stun guns came on the scene. I don't remember the head count per year but your smaller local butcher shops still mostly use 22's. For a while OSHA was mandating 22 Long than later 22 Shorts. I believe they have backed off on requiring 22 shorts. 100's of millions of hogs and beef have been killed with the lowly 22.

[LUCKYDAWG13]

I remember when i was a kid 13 14 years old my buddy's Dad would kill a cow with a 22 LR with one shot in the head DRT

[country gent]

I have heard of hogs with thick skull plates, why we come from behind. Rounds that pass thru may be extra dangerous due to concrete floors and equipment causing ricochets. Inside a metal building everything is louder. It just seems to echo in them.

ALWAYS make sure the animal is down and dead before climbing in the pen to stick or slit the throat. Have everything laid out an ready for use. We had a small table that sat beside the "Kill" pen had everything laid out there on a towel ready to go. Slitting knife was freshly sharpened. Boiling pot was ready. chain fall and gambrelle was hung. Be ready to go. Have the tools sharpened and where they need to be ready for use. A lot of this can be done days before. Doing everything you can before makes Butcher day much easier and safer

[pcmacd]

A little 22 is all it takes? Thanks for the guidance.

I know a guy, years ago, used to take deer with a 22 pistol. He must have been one hell of a tracker?

[pcmacd]

Do you think a 148 wadcutter would be better?

Sir: a 148 grn wadcutter is good FOR ANYTHING.

[pcmacd]

I remember when i was a kid 13 14 years old my buddy's Dad would kill a cow with a 22 LR with one shot in the head DRT

I used to inspect factories for an insurance company in another lifetime.

Slaughterhouses were never a favorite.

Places that used projectiles always had a fixture to put the beast in a place so that they can't move, pulled down a fixtured weapon, and shot them in the head. This was used mostly for beef [it has been a very long time, sirs, so please don't beat me up on this?]

Sometimes they'd give the beasts a large jolt of electricity before fixturing them and pinging their brains, just to make them more docile. Likely 22LRs, don't know for sure, but that round generally would not overpenetrate and come out the other side of the skull.

That's why, apparently, the 22LR is the assassin's' favorite caliber, suppressed [I'm not the ex-purt here guys, just what I have read over and over?]

It goes in quietly, does not come out, and makes scrambled eggs inside? No collateral damage, as in passers by.

Safety for all except the victim, and I am not kidding.

Most places I inspected were pork slaughterhouses.

There, they usually put a chain around a rear leg of a porker, pulled the sucker into the air (the chain belt never stopped moving) and the next guy in line slit the throat.

It was not a pretty place to be, and if you din't wear hearing protection, you would go nearly deaf after a few years because, OMG, did those porkers SCREAM when getting hoisted up by the hind leg? The sound pressure levels, peak, A weighted, were over 130dB at some places I inspected.

That, friends is LOUD. And NOT something one can accommodate all day long.

[billyb]

Started working a butcher shop while in high school. Picked the meat up from the slaughter house, the men doing the work used 22 pistol and 22single shot rifle, Beef and pork, used 22 long, not long rifle. Shot some of the animals because they got tired of the killing. Shot some of my Dad's pigs also with the 22 long. It does the job.

[pcmacd]

I have heard of hogs with thick skull plates, why we come from behind. Rounds that pass thru may be extra dangerous due to concrete floors and equipment causing ricochets. Inside a metal building everything is louder. It just seems to echo in them.

ALWAYS make sure the animal is down and dead before climbing in the pen to stick or slit the throat. Have everything laid out an ready for use. We had a small table that sat beside the "Kill" pen had everything laid out there on a towel ready to go. Slitting knife was freshly sharpened. Boiling pot was ready. chain fall and gambrelle was hung. Be ready to go. Have the tools sharpened and where they need to be ready for use. A lot of this can be done days before. Doing everything you can before makes Butcher day much easier and safer

I had a buddy (my first manager at Hewlett-Packard in 1984) used to hunt feral hogs in north/central California, around Hearst Castle (Hearst, who brought in these beasts and let them get loose.)

Jon claimed that only the stoutest 44 mag solid, cast load shot into the breastplate of these feral beasts would work.

Jon eventually started using a custom pistol cartridge based on the 45-70. A 45-70 Lindbergh? Linebaugh?

The cartridges were head stamped 45-70, no matter what he did to them. And the bullet was seriously weighty.

Whatever. It was much more than I would ever want to shoot out a hand canon?

I mean, a 50 AE in a Desert Eagle? 5 rounds is enough fun for me for a year or two?

This thing was waaaay beyond that.

Even then Jon din't consider it sporting and, later, only hunted them with bow and broadhead arrow.

As for me? I'd just like to take home the bacon?

[725]

I've only been involved in sticking them with a long knife, through the throat into the top of the heart. Was following a printed guide and it worked well when you got it right. Glenn Fryxell mentioned butchering and "the bullet for all seasons" in his article from the LASC. Dig up the article. It's worth the read.

[35remington]

I would put the velocity of 3.5 grains Unique and a 167 grain SWC with the powder charge oriented toward the bullet as somewhat to possibly well below 600 fps from a 1.875” J frame , having experience with similar charge weights and the vagaries of adverse powder position in that very barrel length. The charge is rather light and the powder position costs 100 fps versus oriented by the primer. What seemed okay with the gun shot level probably wasn’t when the muzzle was pointed down. The charge will not break 700 fps even with the powder by the primer.

If using a J frame snubbie I would suggest a 148 WC at 700 fps with Bullseye, Red Dot or Titegroup. Not quiet. But not position sensitive to anywhere near the same degree either.

The guys that do a lot of butchering around here often use budget 22 magnum rifles on the larger stock as it is the cheapest round they can buy that penetrates bone of thick bull skulls with certainty, and they carry the extra power over to their other duties on occasion.

[M-Tecs]

I've only been involved in sticking them with a long knife, through the throat into the top of the heart. Was following a printed guide and it worked well when you got it right. Glenn Fryxell mentioned butchering and "the bullet for all seasons" in his article from the LASC. Dig up the article. It's worth the read.

That most likely was Home Meat Curing Made Easy: Pork, Beef, Lamb Sausage Paperback – January 1, 1941 by Morton Salt Co https://www.amazon.com/Home-Meat-Cur.../dp/B0012MYHMM

When you stick the target is the large group of branching veins and arteries. If you cut the heart bleeding is less effective.

I prefer to hang and stick without shooting.

I highly recommend the Morton Salt Complete Guide to Home Meat Curing 1941. It's is a great book. The older Morton books detail how to stick the hog correctly. They recommend to get a loop around a hind foot, hoist the hog up in the air, then stick it. They don't recommend shooting first, they want the heart to pump with the full brain signals coming to it.

You use a hog sticking knife and go in through the thorax stopping just short of the heart and you angle the knife up until you hit the artery under the spine. The hog bleeds out in seconds. If you shoot it the quicker you stick it or cut its throat the better bleed out. With the 22 the heart keeps pumping for a while. I have never used anything larger so I can not comment. After I learned how to properly stick hogs I not have shot one since.

I currently use the F Dick 8" pig sticking knife https://www.knifemerchant.com/produc...productID=8590 They are getting hard to find in the US but depending on the size of the hog a 6" to 8" boning knife works fine.

[curioushooter]

22 LR did the job quite well!

[Bodean98]

Grandad would use a 16 oz. ball peen to sedate them and then get them in the air to stick their throat. He didn't want to ruin the Suiss or head cheese with a lead bullet!
He often would raise them up to 400 to 500 lbs. before butchering and they could be a handful.
Done right, it was the quietest and most efficient way for him.

[Buzz Krumhunger]

I’ve killed a pile of trapped feral hogs using a .22 mag revolver loaded with .22WRF hollow points. One shot in the head just above and halfway between the eyes, and they’re gone.

[sonoransixgun]

Another vote for the .22. Done many times, bang/flop (also for goats)....but I do like the idea of a light .38. I think that's worth exploring. Next time I need to do the job, I want to try it...

[DonHowe]

Dad used a 1902 Winchester .22LR. His dad thought LR was overkill. If left to their methods both men were quite efficient at the task. The mindset came from poverty where "rifle shells" cost money and nothing of the critter was wasted.

[KCSO]

In the 30's after my Uncle Norman Rann came back from prospecting he brought back to the farm his 45-90 Sharps carbine. He made and used a squib load for hog killing. One day the neighbour came to borrow the HOG GUN. Normans wife gave him the gun and two rounds of ammo, unfortunately full house black powder 500 grain loads. The results were both impressive and predictable and two hogs got butchered with one shot!

[curioushooter]

16 oz. ball peen to sedate them and then get them in the air to stick their throat.

An old farmer, recently passed, who slaughtered hundreds and hundreds of pigs in his life used a 2 lb cross peen hammer for decades before switching to a 22LR rifle as he got older and didn't want to risk getting bitten or kicked. Never reported a failure.

[curioushooter]

but I do like the idea of a light .38. I think that's worth exploring. Next time I need to do the job, I want to try it...

Did you read anything I wrote? This is a bad idea. If you try a 38 make sure it is pushed by plenty of powder or use it in a rifle. According to an article written by Glen Fryxel a 38special with a 358627 (a 210 grain+) and a small charge of unique worked very well on cattle. That is out of a rifle and could have easily been going 900-100 FPS.

The same load out of a handgun could be useless, as mine was.