Good for you.

Since 2000 i've killed hundreds of wild hogs, mostly with muzzleloaders. For years i hunted hogs at least two days per week. Presently i usually hunt hogs one day per week.

Forgive me for not buying into the hogs are tough as rhinos stuff. They are easy to kill when hit in the right spot. i don't rightly know where the hog that is the subject of this thread was hit, nor do i care. i do care that the hog ran off to suffer; the only hog to get away wounded in years.

Couple years ago i started hunting wild hogs with patched round balls, but not exclusively. When hunting with iron sighted conventional muzzleloaders i limit my shots to 75 yards due to old eyes. My .54 TC FireHawk muzzleloader is scoped and i've killed wild hogs at ranges of 125-140 yards with patched round balls fired from that gun.

No, i don't buy your stuff that round balls are not effective on hogs past 50 yards.

Okay, I got a bit of a head ache trying to understand this.

We are all agreement that the .54cal fires a larger and heavier ball, correct?

The larger ball carries higher knock down power #'s.

I shot my 175-200lb hog at 47 to 50ish yards with 80gr 2fg goex and a 177 grain .490" round ball. The ball went straight through the hogs shoulder bones, breaking both completely in half during inspection while butchering the hog.

How exactly does the .54cal which fires a heavier, more Ft lbs of energy round ball, still have the limit of my 50cal on hogs? :happy0157:

Also, what plate are we talking about? I saw a typical shoulder plate but nothing that was thicker than elk or deer that I have shot. I'm pretty sure I hit that plate with my .50cal round ball.

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I really wish we could have found that hog, but with no light and thick brush, we will never know what happened.

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On second thought, I believe grouse said he was can hunting hogs with some guys and they were shooting 2-3-4 shots into these hogs before they died. And they were using big lead conicals, not round balls.

I don't believe in knock down power. What I do believe in is tissue damage and hydrostatic shock. The latter is achieved and increased by velocity + frontal mass of the bullet.
Each of us have their own opinion on this but there is a reason you see a lot of bear guides carrying Marlin Guide Guns in .45-70 or 450 Marlin chambering rather than a 300 or 338 WM.
And also the reason I like using a .54 or lately a .58 on my black bear hunts.

IMHO that statement of yours I put in bold makes absolutely no sense. You say you don't know where he was hit. Why not, since I would hope you know where you were aiming and assuming you know what you're doing it should have been in an open enough spot to take the shot. Why then would you follow that up with a statement that you don't care where it was hit? You should both know where the animal was hit at the distances you say you're shooting and certainly care about where it was hit since it ran off and you didn't find it! My earlier comment about shooting them below the ear and they won't go anywhere was based on the fact that I'm always in an elevated stand where I have the time to wait for that shot and shooting from a stand is as solid as bench rest shooting. Hunting on the ground like some of you are and with what you are will certainly take some skill and knowledge of when and how far to shoot compared to the way I mentioned.

Jon, when you have personally taken well over 3000 hogs with pretty much every kind of weapon legal to take them with you may learn what that protective cartilage "shield" is as well as every other feature of a wild hog. Here is a picture and before you say "that's a fat layer", it isn't.



That is straight up cartilage and it can and will absorb a LOT of the hydrostatic shock from a large metplate bullet especially that of a round ball. Add to that a thick layer of fat on a winter hog and you have a pretty thick layer of resistant and impact absorbing material. Think about the physics of how a bullet works for a minute and you might grasp a little of what I am trying to explain to you.

As far as your question goes, if you think about it, you hit your hog with that .50 cal in the thinnest part of the cartilage right on top of the bone. Hard bone is actually LESS shock absorbing than that cartilage and fat layer is.

Maybe you can come up with a formula to calculate where the bullet hit the hog. i don't have the time. This morning i'm taking a Ruger 10/.22 to that lease and killing some small pigs before they become hogs and totally trash the deer hunting on that place.

Pertinent information:

1. Hog was walking at a fast clip.

2. Distance was about 65 yards.

3. i put the corsshairs about one foot in front of the hogs nose.

The vaunted "shields" are not cartilage. They are more like thick somewhat harder fat that usually come off with the skin. Coyotes here eat the "shields". In any event a 150 pound hog does not have much in the way of "shields".

Sure sure SH ;)

I know, we need lehighs to get the job done! :D

Now you're catching on. :p

Never said that. Don't need someone trying to put advertisements in my writing either. Just saying folks should stay within the optimal range of whatever bullet they intend to use for a specific animal. Whether that is a PRB up to a sabot it is just basic logic as well as the humane thing to do.

Pretty sure they know that.