OP said he lost hogs to cast, not deer.
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OP said he lost hogs to cast, not deer.
Whatever!
I guess I'm just not as good a shot as oldfellow is. All but 3 of the many, many deer i have killed were not complacent and well trained eating corn under a feeder. Thus, knowing where the artery area is above the heart exactly enough to put a bullet through them out to 200 yards on a fidgety or moving deer while still hunting instead of being in a shooting shack was a bit more than I opted for. I took the shot through the heart area (an area about the size of a soccer ball). With the shot through that area many times one or both front legs were broken also. The softer cast, slightly HP'd cast bullets never failed to kill the deer with one shot. Not always a DRT but many just staggered 10 - 30 yards and went down. Never had one run 100 +/- yards if the bullet went through the heart.
As popper's diagram shows there is a lot of lung area for a behind the front leg shot on pigs and deer too. On a side shot like that a softer cast 165 - 180 gr bullet at sufficient muzzle velocity with break one or more front legs and go through the heart area. With a younger pig (200 lbs or less) a through and through is also probable.
Larry Gibson
“Deficient observation is merely a form of ignorance and responsible for the many morbid notions and foolish ideas prevailing.”
― Nikola Tesla
Well none of that I can agree with. I've blown the top half of the heart off a few deer. Only one dropped. I've centered the heard of a few more, and one black bear. One deer did the so called high-kick, but that was it. With most, there was no way to tell them apart from a lung shot. I've dropped a lot of deer with double lung shots, and I see no reason to believe they are more or less effective than a heart shot. I still aim for the heart, as it is pretty well centered in the lungs. I have yet to find something that doesn't reliably exit a deer. I'm sure it's possible, but unless the bullet fragments into a bunch of chunks, or you are shooting a ridiculously weak round, the only bullets I ever catch are diagonal shots. I caught a 54 caliber ball, shot at an extreme angle, would have exited if it hadn't hit the shoulder bone on the way out. I caught a shotgun slug that had been a frontal shot, went through everything possible, and was in a rear ham. Caught a few bullet fragments. That's about it. Even 327 federal exits a deer on reasonable shots.Originally Posted by oldblinddog
Last edited by megasupermagnum; 02-16-2022 at 01:32 PM.
I shot a whitetail that ran 125 yards, the definition of a dead run. His heart was loose in the chest cavity. I have centered and split an elk heart and the cow collapsed where she stood. Never say never.
[The Montana Gianni] Front sight and squeeze
Well he said he had "mixed results" during deer season. I'm not sure what exactly that means, but he is not real impressed with what he has now on deer. I've never shot a feral pig, so I have no idea what that is like.OP said he lost hogs to cast, not deer.
OP hasn't said what the load of 4227 was under his Lee 170 gr bullet nor the velocity.......only that it was his "most accurate" load.
Larry Gibson
“Deficient observation is merely a form of ignorance and responsible for the many morbid notions and foolish ideas prevailing.”
― Nikola Tesla
Sorry about that I should have mentioned the load 26 grains of 4227 under 170 grain ranchdog 50/50 WW AND PURE LEAD. I shot 2 deer during season one at 100 ish yards and one just under 200. The latter may admittedly been to far but it WACKED him hard. No blood hair even a season tracking dog could recover him. Later seen on camera. Aiming point center of shoulder. I know I need to get out of that shoulder shot habit learned from shooting j word boolits and aim heart lung. I appreciate everyone’s input
Hogs are tanks. Tough as battery acid. I killed several hogs and lost several the ones I killed had no heart left. I shot one 4 times on a flying run across a peanut field hitting it all 4 times. I was impressed with myself because hogs are way faster than a deer but run straight not looping. One shot hit neck one shot just under spine through both shoulders one shot hit his hip and the killing shot in the head. I shot one deer early season heart lung that left a blood trail fitting a horror movie scene.
Perhaps I can add something on pigs. I have no experience of deer, but am surprised at the ease with which people seem to be able to kill them with non-HP cast bullets. Pigs must be a lot tougher, as well as generally offering less than ideal shots. There is also something deceptive about their shape that can so easily turn an intended shoulder shot into a rib shot. The following draws on the experience of shooting about 3,000 pigs with cast bullets, nearly all of them hollow point. My most recent experience is with .30-30, but it should translate readily for .308.
I note a general preference for soft alloys for deer, and by Larry Gibson for a shallow hollow in the nose to start the expansion. For pigs, I have settled on a harder bullet and as much velocity as I can get. In .30-30 I use #U321297HP sized down to .3125" in cases ONT, or at least uniformed, to .010" max neck thickness. I had great success with this bullet in .32 Special, and discovered by accident that I could successfully size it down for .30-30. My nose hollows are about 1/2" deep and remove 10 gns of bullet weight.
I find it easier to discuss bullet hardness by referring to bullet weight. For this mould, linotype casts 164.5 gns. Soft lead, if I could cast a decent bullet, might go about 180 gns. Over time I had settled on an intended weight of 170 gns. This is about 10-11% non-lead, and perhaps 18 BHN or so. I make the alloy from hardball range pickups and linotype.
What I have found is that groups were similar with bullets weighing all the way from 164.5 gns (lino) to about 173 gns. This was with velocity approaching 2200 fps. With 2208/Varget, and a range protected from wind, I was shooting under 2" groups at 100 m, and a composite of 43 shots with three lubes and this range of hardness went into 4 1/4". This was with a scoped Savage 99 with 12" twist.
I took a step back and then did some systematic and documented testing on pigs across the range of bullet weights from 164.5 to 173 gns. My criteria were that the bullet had to penetrate a large boar through both shoulders, BUT it also had to create enough damage for a rib shot without shoulder involvement on a smaller pig. A bullet that met these requirements turns out to be effective on the THS on anything up to a medium sized sow, and very effective on an angling flank shot on just about any pig. It is less effective on the frontal body shot.
Linotype worked OK on double shoulder shots, but was too hard otherwise. The softer bullets were OK on rib shots but less so on shoulders and angles. In the end, I was back to 170 gns, plus or minus a grain, as being about ideal.
These bullets DO NOT mushroom. They blow the noses off at some point after entry, but the shrapnel that comes off seems to be in largish pieces and creates a cone of mayhem inside the pig. The exit side of small pigs looks like they have taken a hit with buckshot. By contrast the slug that is left when the nose comes off seems to penetrate forever, and very few are recovered.
I shoot for pest control, so multiple shots are the rule. The first shot might be a nice broadside, even a double (which these bullets can handle) but after that it will be all runners at some sort of angle. Throw in some finishers and the odd multi-shot fiasco and the average slips back. Last year I averaged 71% with Sierra 150 gn bullets. The year before it was also 71%, but with the hard HPs, 162 and 165 pigs respectively. Hence I don't think the cast bullets as described are any less effective than jacketed, though they do give up about 1 moa to them in grouping.
Last edited by Wilderness; 02-17-2022 at 06:36 PM.
It'll be handy if I never need it.
Insomniac, agnostic, dyslectic - awake all night wondering if there is a Dog.
s-foot; I noticed the photo at the bottom of your original entry & you mentioned the LEE RN boolit. You show RN & FN, you said you had mixed results with cast (Showed mixed boolits)& finished the season with jacketed. this is where the statement came from.
Thank you Wilderness for this as it is always good to have real life experiences with cast boolits.
Wilderness
Excellent synopsis. Well done indeed.
Not with cast bullets but my first experience hunting/shooting hogs many years ago. It shows just how tenacious they can be, Hope you enjoy the story as I did living it....
The ranch was small as ranches go but with 85 acres and another 140 acres, we watched over we were able to have a small herd of beef cattle plus the usual assortment of horses, a goat or two, chickens and pigs. The place was located about five miles west of Dallas Oregon in the foothills of the coastal mountains. Both of my parents worked about 30 miles away in Salem so the task of watching over the cattle and other sundry chores fell to me, I was twelve years old when we moved to the ranch from Salem in early 1960. Between then and the time of this story I had many adventures or misadventures between my horse and my love of hunting and shooting. I had managed to accumulate a .22 single shot rifle, a single shot 16 gauge shotgun and a M94 Winchester 30-30 that I got for my 14th birthday in 1961. I also had a Daisy BB gun, a Crosman single action CO2 revolver and a S&W M&P .38 special revolver. The revolver was my uncles who left it for my mother to use for protection, but I occasionally mooched some ammo from him and was able to shoot it.
It was in the fall of that year there was a very large windstorm in Oregon. It is today referred to as "The Columbus Day Storm". The storm did considerable damage throughout western Oregon including blowing our barn down and blowing a tree down across the pigs shed. My father worked at a cannery and would bring home our old Dodge dump truck full of the cull corn, beets, and carrots from July through January. We would have about 20 pigs to eat the cull and also fed it to the cattle. Come January all were in prime condition and at that time of the year we got top dollar for them. The tree also knocked down the pig fence so all the 20 or so pigs we had escaped. The pigs just went up into the thick Oak trees and made a home there. They would come to the feeder, like the cattle, when they heard the throaty roar of the old Dodge truck coming down the driveway; they knew when chow was on. It was quite a way from where the freed and now going feral pigs roamed to the boundaries of our ranch so we left the situation as was figuring we could round them up easy enough come January. However, the old breeding boar gathered up three young sows and took to going out of the pasture area and the "back forty" of the ranch with the cattle. There was about 40 acres of the ranch that was old unused prune and plum orchard along with numerous apple and cherry trees growing throughout the ranch. There also were the many acres of Oak trees with an immense accumulation of acorns around them along with some dense patches of tall Douglas Fir. Somewhere around December the boar and his three sows quit coming into the feeder as they really had plenty of food out in the "back forty" where they had taken up residence in a very thick stand of Oak and young Douglas Fir. In short order they became very wild, secretive and many times aggressive when approached. That set the stage for my first experience at hunting feral pigs.
The carrot harvest was a good and a long one that year with the harvest running into the middle of February. When completed it wasn't difficult to build a temporary enclosure and catch most of the pigs that were still feeding at the feeder. One old sow became quite wary and was not trapped with the others. After numerous attempts at trapping her, it
was decided she would be our family pork for the next year. The sow was getting more and more aggressive and would charge my horse when I tried to herd her toward the trap. The last straw was when, after one beer too many, my father decided I should rope her and drag her into the trap. The difficult part was not the roping – it was the dragging. The sow would have no part of that and quickly turned on me and my horse. I dropped the rope and got my horse out of her way. My father grabbed the rope and was promptly jerked off his feet drug face down all the way, about 80 yards, through the pasture back up into the trees. He was covered with all sorts of dirt, cow pie, and other muck and probably pig manure when he came cussing out of the trees. Of course, I had fallen off my horse laughing so hard and asked why he didn't just let go. He told me to quit being a smart aleck, go get my rifle and shoot the so and so blankety blank pig. I used my M94 with Winchester 150 gr Power Points. It was a pretty simple head shot at about 25 yards but I was still pretty pleased with my big game hunting prowess.
We didn't really pay much attention to the old boar and sows out in the back 40 as my father figured we would round them up come the next late summer and they would be "next years stock". So, spring passed, and the three sows had litters. I had several run ins with them during this time as they got rather aggressive. The sows would move away from the boar when the piglets were small which seemed to really aggravate his disposition. Seemed like that old boar would just as soon charge me and my horse as run. Come mid summer we set up a trap enclosure using pallets and caught all the young and dumb pigs but the old boar, the three sows and one piggy had been too wary and escaped the trap. The caught ones were moved down into the real pig pen. Over the next couple of weeks, it was impossible to get the boar and sows out of the thick Oak and Douglas Fir grove plus a couple large blackberry patches growing nearby. I had tried several times and they just got more aggressive. They also can move a lot quicker through that stuff than you can. Late summer brought us to a stand off. One of my fathers drinking buddies (he had quite a few) decided his "hounds" could run the pigs out of the brush.
Now that was a sight to see; three grown men (they picked up another drinking buddy at the local bar) who were a little on the inebriated side, and a pack of howling hounds! My part in this sport was once the pigs were run out into the open I, on my horse, was to herd them back down to barnyard where they would find the luxury of the cull food and would go willingly into the pen with the rest of the pigs. That was their plan anyway. I didn't think it would work quite that way and remembered my Grandmother saying something about God saving us from drunks and Irishmen (My Grandfather was an Irish bootlegger during Prohibition). It was hard to say how many howling hounds there were as the noise was an atrocious racket. I was having trouble just controlling my horse because of the racket and had not yet dismounted. It looked like a scene from "The Three Stooges" as the three of them had all the leashed howling hounds wrapping leashes around their legs every which way, tripping them and in general creating mayhem. I'm not sure who was howling more, the hounds or the three stooges cussing and cursing! Well, they finally got the hounds unleashed and the proud owner was yelling "hunt'em up" or some such thing. The hounds milled around and finally took off on the fresh pig trail and dove into the thicket howling and baying. Such a sight to see!
Last edited by Larry Gibson; 02-17-2022 at 11:31 AM.
Larry Gibson
“Deficient observation is merely a form of ignorance and responsible for the many morbid notions and foolish ideas prevailing.”
― Nikola Tesla
There was a tremendous racket of dogs barking, yapping and howling along with pigs squealing and grunting coming from the thicket. The owner of the dogs had quickly produced a fifth of Old Crow from behind the seat of his pickup and they were already drinking to the success of their plan. I wasn't as sure as I could hear some of the dogs yapping turning into yelping. I had dismounted from my horse pulling my M94 out of the scabbard at the same time and levered a round into the chamber. By this time I was reloading using a Lee Loader and had some 170 gr Speers loaded over the scoopful of 4895 as the ammo in the rifle. I had it well zeroed so it hit just above the bead at 100 yards. About the time I was thinking of moving my horse back and tying her to a tree three of dogs came yelping out of the thicket with the youngest hog fast on their tails.
This melee ran right through the three men who promptly dropped the bottle of Old Crow and scattered helter skelter too! I probably would have died laughing at that sight, but my horse had jerked the reigns out of my hand and was now the object of the hog's attention. As she was turning tail to run, I was backing up and the dogs had jumped into the back of the pickup and were already cowering in their cages. My father yelled at me to get the heck out of there as the three of them had run around to the backside of the pickup and were peeking over the bed. All of this was happening pretty darn fast. The hog had given up on my horse and was crossing in front of me at maybe twenty-five or thirty yards heading back for the thicket on a run. My father yelled to; "shoot the damned thing" so I held on its nose and fired. The 170 gr bullet took the hog in the neck right at the junction of the shoulders and it did a complete somersault and slid to a stop very dead.
I just stood there watching the tail end of my horse disappearing through the trees headed back toward the barn. My father and the other two guys appeared from around the back side of the pickup and started thumping me on the back saying that was the damnedest shot they'd ever seen. I didn't have time to bask in heroics as the other dogs really started yelping and all of them, but one came high tailing it out of the thicket. All of them seemed to have blood on them and a couple of the dogs were limping. My father, brave soul he was, insisted we – he and I – should go into the thicket to see what was happening. Since I had the rifle, he was a short step or two behind me.
The owner of the dogs and the other guy then went to lamenting the broken bottle of Old Crow more so than the injured dogs who by now were also whimpering in their cages. That was, until my father and I came back and told the owner the boar and sows were tearing apart the dead dog and eating it. Then the owner started blubbering and crying. My father decided I was to kill the hogs if I could while they took the injured dogs to town and would come right back. There was immediate discussion of also getting another bottle of whiskey. They did throw the dead hog in the back of the pickup to drop off at the local slaughterhouse. Slaughterhouses would take farm animals shot in those days if they were for your own use. My father again told me to shoot the hogs if I could but not to "do anything stupid" or "take any chances". That seemed rather redundant to me at the time…..
Well, there I stood watching them drive off. I told my father I would follow my horse back in case she didn't make it to the barn. I looked at the thicket hearing the hogs grunting, looked at my M94 with six rounds left in it and then walked back the barn to get my horse….and more ammo. As this was late summer the days were long so when I returned to the thicket about an hour and a half later there was still a couple hours of daylight left. I had tied up my horse downwind which made her nervous and used a reverse slipknot so she could jerk loose, if need be, but she seemed calm enough to stay put. I levered a round into the chamber and put another into the magazine, so it was full up and approached the thicket very carefully. I could hear an occasional grunt but it was hard to tell how far into the thicket the hogs were. I got several yards into the thicket where I could kneel and see what was ahead of me for probably 25 yards or so. Thought I could see the back of one hog but wasn't sure, so I got up and proceeded slowly. About the time I could see it was a hog the sow must have winded me as she stood up, grunted, and started toward me. I shot her straight down fairly between the eyes and she died right there.
At the shot the boar and the other two sows busted out of the thicket on the opposite side. I ran after them hoping for a shot but they kept going straight down a trail single file at a fast trot. I really didn't stand a chance catching up with them. They went through a hole in the brush along the property fence and under the barbed wire out into the very large open pasture of the neighbor’s place and were headed over the hill toward the neighbor's house and barnyard. I ran back to my horse and quickly mounted, went through nearest gate and out into the pasture. I figured I was in big trouble for as sure as heck running the hogs off toward the neighbor's place would be considered "doing something stupid".
I didn't know how but I intended to try to head them off before they reached the neighbors barn as they had some young calves penned there. The neighbor’s pasture was in soil bank and there wasn't much to hurt so at a full gallop I crested the hill in time to see the hogs crash through the calf pen fence. It was just woven wire held up by flimsy posts which slowed the hogs enough for me to catch up to them. Fortunately, the hogs didn't injure any of the calves but the neighbor's dog was not so lucky. It tangled with the boar and received a very nasty gash down its back leg and lower stomach. I cut between the barnyard and the house which turned the hogs away from the house and yard. They then ran up alongside the barn and around the other end. The neighbor lady was yelling and screaming as I brought my horse to a sliding stop in front of her, dismounting with my rifle, handing her the reigns, and yelling at her to "hold my horse, please".
By then the hogs had circled clear around the barn with the boar in the lead and were heading back the way they had come up the hill at a fast trot. The last sow in line was some distance behind the boar and other sow and was limping bad, apparently injured in the fight with the dogs. That last sow was quartering away going uphill at what was probably about 100 yards from me. I leaned against a fence post and aimed a little out in front of the sow's nose, but it was not enough as the shot hit her hind quarter and broke her hind leg. The sow, severely crippled then, was still trying to go up the hill. The boar and last sow kept going without a backward glance. I grabbed the reigns of my horse from the lady and swung up into the saddle saying, "thank you". It looked like the lady's
Larry Gibson
“Deficient observation is merely a form of ignorance and responsible for the many morbid notions and foolish ideas prevailing.”
― Nikola Tesla
jaw was hitting the ground and her eyes were as wide as saucers! As I galloped toward the crippled sow, I shouted back to her that I would be back. I was able to close the distance to the crippled hog quickly, dismount and finish the job with a shot to the sow’s head. I again swung back into the saddle and at a gallop crested the hill in pursuit of the boar and last sow. I glanced back at the farmhouse seeing the neighbor lady waving at me and saw the calves still running in all directions. I was even more certain then I was in really big trouble for "doing something stupid".
However, I had no time to feel sorry for myself as the boar and last sow were now more than halfway back to the fence line. If I was going to be in big trouble, then the other two hogs were not going to get away with putting me in that situation. I knew there was no way, even as fast as my horse was, that I could beat them to the property line fence. I turned my horse toward the left open gate. We went sailing through the gate at a full gallop heading for the thicket as I figured that's where the boar was trying to get back to. I made it to the edge of the thicket just in time to dismount, shove two more cartridges into the magazine and take up an ambush position where the trail from the fence came into the thicket. I had little or no time to wait. My blood was still rushing, my heart was pounding, and I was sweating like the proverbial "stuck hog" as the boar, in the lead, came straight down the trail. I got two quick shots into him straight on in the front shoulders at maybe 30-40 yards and then had a broadside running shot on the sow as she swung around the side of me still trying to make the thicket. The shot, at a very short range, took her through both front shoulders and she piled up. I quickly levered in another round and swung back to shoot the boar again, but it was not necessary as he was down for keeps. I was so pumped up I think I let a war hoop out that wouldn't quit and probably did a little victory dance too!
Getting on my horse I then rode back to the house to see if my father had returned yet. On the way the shakes set in, and I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. For the first time in my life, I was truly scared of the consequences of something I had engaged in. Maybe I did do something stupid and took a few chances, but the thrill was unbelievable. My mother had my father and the other two guys in tow when I rode up. She looked awfully relieved and was glad to see me. The first inkling she had of the whole adventure was a very excited telephone call from the neighbor lady. When I told her what happened she took the new bottle of Old Crow away from my father and his two buddies. She proceeded to tell them, in no uncertain terms, that of all the dumb and stupid things to do was to leave me alone to shoot the hogs. In defense my father replied saying that I was entirely capable of handling the situation and, in fact, had done so. I knew I was off the hook then as he was acting downright proud of me. She ordered them to go back up on the hill and take care of the dead hogs. My mother said I needed to put my horse away and go to the neighbors with her.
I was glad as I was pretty worn out and wasn't looking forward to helping load the dead hogs. I think my mother saw I was a little scared as she told me I had done a good job even if it was probably very foolish. My mother and I then drove over to the neighbors in our old Rambler station wagon; she had me take a "snort" of the Old Crow on the way and it settled my nerves a bit. The owner was there by then with his wife who was all excited about that brave boy who saved her life from the marauding pack of 40 or 50 "wild crazed hogs!" After some discussion my mother let them have the sow hog, I'd killed in their pasture for their dog that had to be "put down" and the trouble caused. The neighbor already had the calves rounded up and the fence fixed so there wasn't much other damage. The bright side was the daughter who had come home with her father. I had for some time thought she was kind of pretty, but she was a year ahead of me in school and had not even noticed me before. Seems that for the first time she took notice and smiled at me asking if we could go horseback riding sometime, but then - that's another story.
After leaving the neighbor's place mother and I stopped by the top of the hill where my father and the other two guys had managed to find the dead boar and two dead sows and had already thrown them in the pickup. The dog's owner had buried what was left of the dog that was killed, wasn't much left though. By then the Sun was going down and the three men left to drop the hogs off at the slaughterhouse. The sows went just a little over 250 pounds on the hoof and boar went better than 350 pounds. Not large for domestic pigs but pretty good for feral hogs. After dropping the dogs off at the local vet’s, the men also spent the rest of the evening in the local bar reliving "their" adventure. I did hear later my father kept bragging about his "hard riding and straight shooting boy". I showed mother where the last shootout had taken place and managed to find two of the 30-30 cases where I had shot the boar and last sow. On the way back to the house mother had let me have another "snort" and I settled down even more. I went to the barn and curried my horse and gave her an extra bowl of oats. Every boy should grow up with such a horse, such a rifle and such adventures. Later at the house, as I was cleaning my M94, I figured this "big game" huntin' was pretty dad burned exciting and perhaps just the thing I always wanted to do. And so, it has been…….
Larry Gibson
“Deficient observation is merely a form of ignorance and responsible for the many morbid notions and foolish ideas prevailing.”
― Nikola Tesla
Excellent information
Wonderful read Mr. Gibson!
WOW YOU SHOULD RIGHT A BOOK OF SHORT STORIES. What an adventure. Thanks for sharing I felt like I was right in that thicket with you
Great story Larry!!!!
You are one cool customer.
Don Verna
I have to agree with the story-telling book idea! I would buy it for sure! That was an AWESOME story!
I firmly believe that you should only get treated by how you act, not by who or what you are!!
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