My opinion isn't the last word on anything. I have been wrong before & will surely be wrong again if I live long enough. I hand cast "OOO" & 0.35 cal. buck from hard alloy. Yea, you can kill deer & hogs with #1 buck. I have done it a number of times (deer). My personal experience has been the bigger pellets kill much more consistently. They are a win win option. The only way you can know what any buckshot load will do is to shoot it & see. However, in my experience with buckshot from 1961 to present, the bigger numbers track straighter. This generally results in the same number of a bigger pellet striking the target, a win win!
I have never shot a wild hog with buckshot & never will. I have killed a lot of hogs with a rifle & have witnessed a lot of hogs being shot with buckshot by others. I can recall one small boar (100 lbs. or so) that was shot 3 times in the head with #1 buckshot at point blank range before going down. I have never seen a clean one shot kill on a hog with buckshot. Maybe you have but I never did. Typically, it takes more than one shot & then they don't die right away. I have seen many more shot that didn't go down at all & that is why I don't use buckshot on hogs. So how did "Bubba" know the deer was past 50 yds.? Did he measure the distance or just guess at it? My experience is that experienced hunters usually know when game is in their "kill zone" but if you ask them how far it is, they usually get it wrong. How many deer did he shoot that he didn't recover? People tend to remember the good shots but forget the ones that ran off wounded.