Hog hunting
 

Well, I see the other thread was closed. At the risk of providing more raw meat for the pit bulls I have ONE other post on the subject. First, let me say that I in no way meant to imply that my heads will penetrate what I hear is the " shield" of a boar. From what I have heard in passing NO broadhead will penetrate the really big old boars. I could be wrong. And if you read my post you will see that my comment was that " they seemed to think that was a good test" . Again, I just recall hearing something about it in the course of the year somewhere, I didn' t question it further at the time except to hear them say the hogs were killed ok. Others here surprise me with their seemingly low opinion of dealers. Call me pollyanna but I am just the opposite. And I may be wrong, considering I have never hunted with a dealer, there are no archery shops here, and the shops an hour away probably couldn' t bring my name to mind. So there is no use in calling in the National Guard here on any dealers. But from what I have gathered in my limited experience, and being at trade shows and talking with them on the phone I personally have a high opinion of them and think they do an invaluable service for archery. Frankly when I heard the comment instead of immediately coming to a negative conclusion my reaction was to trust the source. I figured if a dealer did it nothing bad was occurring. I seem to recall hearing somewhere that the vitals of a hog are more behind the shoulder than with deer. Could easily be wrong, not at all sure. But I assumed, since I had heard you couldn' t penetrate an old boars shoulder, that they weren' t shooting old boars. That they must have been shooting younger hogs or sows with equipment that would penetrate the shoulder straight to the vitals and would be deadly, and a test to see whether there was complete arrow passthrough with a head or just the penetration with the head. Don' t know, didn' t get details. They could have been shooting old boars for all I know, but I doubt they were that stupid. And it could be criminal to shoot ANY hog in the shoulder. Don' t really know, never been, never seen one. I WOULD like to impart this wisdom to archers new to game hunting. If you are as ignorant as I am on a species such as hogs, bone up before you go, as I will certainly do before I go, if I ever get to dang it. To the website head honcho, if I have caused a problem here I apologize. And this IS my last post.

RE: Hog hunting
 

FYI. You can and I have seen arrows penatrate the shield of very large hogs. Key ingrediants; High poundage bow, heavy arrow and very very sharp broadheads. I hog hunted in Perry Florida a couple of weeks ago and a couple of the other hunters where using expandables. They were warned but it feel on deaf ears. The expandables one guy used just bounced off the hog. The other guys did penatrate but not a clean kill. Used the dogs to help track it but do to high water, we did not find it. We did find it the following week. What a waste. Shots on hogs should be focused farther back, avoiding the shield.

RE: Hog hunting
 

I know nothing about hog hunting, we have little to none here in New England, but I' m curious, what would be the evolutionary advantage to this " shield" . Being a biologist makes me wonder, does it fully cover vitals or are the vitals further back as stated? If the vitals are further back what is the shield for? I' m sure it didn' t come to be to deflect expandables. Most natural kills by predators would probably be to the neck region, does it extend up around the neck? Is it just a callous built up from wallowing and rubbing. Like I said, just curious, sounds like it serves some purpose that would have come up thousands of years ago. Thanks

RE: Hog hunting
 

Eggman.
the shield covering a boars shoulder is built up gristle mainly for protection when the boars fight.

RE: Hog hunting
 

Oldhootowl, I' m not saying I' m in your corner or that it was alright for you to bring up the hog topic...........but it is interesting to me that you got jumped on so hard about the hog statement and there' s a 3 page thread going right now about spine shooting deer . I guess it' s all how you word it !! [:o][:-];)

RE: Hog hunting
 

I have often heard that hogs are tougher in terms of penetration than a whitetail deer and based on comments on this thread I would assume that is because of the " shield" . Would there be any other reason?

I also seem to hear that expandables, in general, will not work well on a hog for the reasons I mentioned above. What level of KE do you folks think would be necesssary in order for them to work effectively?

RE: Hog hunting
 

CBM SC, I understand where you are coming from. But if you look at the two posts you are talking about you will see the difference. In the one about the spine shot, the person who posted it talked about the fact that when he shot, he shot a little high and it dropped the deer in it' s tracks. Alot of the responses were that yes it had happened to alot of others, and the vast majority said that they hope it doesn' t happen again and they didn' t like it. Now to oldhootowlspost, he made a comment about a group of dealers who were testing his broadhead by INTENTIONALLY shooting the hogs in the shouldr bone. There is a big difference there. I was one that posted negatively about his comment. I never accused him of being one the guys doing it or being behind the test. I just said that I felt it was wrong to do, and that I couldn' t believe that he even posted that comment in relation to trying to back his product. just seemed like a poor decision on his part. I will say that other than a few isolated incidents that were reported, it sounds like the Slick Tricks are a very good flying broadhead. It is a shame that all that had to go down like it did. But I guess that people did take offense to the hog statement, and with good reason. So all in all, the two seperate posts were very different in nature.

RE: Hog hunting
 

Frank.
The main reason expandables dont work all that well on hogs.
Hogs skin in much thicker than a deer,their bone structure is also a lot thicker than deer bones.
Thats where you need a good head to smash through the bones without breaking off blades.
I have used the gold tip gladiators to take a hog but they have a tip very simular to the muzzy tip plus they also have 2 fixed blades.
The key to taking hogs with bow and arrow is a well placed shot behind the shoulder on a 1/4ering away animal.

RE: Hog hunting
 

I agree on the quartering away shot.
And just to help those out on the sheild issue:
From what I' ve heard, the sheild is scar tissue formed from the larger boars fighting with each other. I' ve seen it on pigs from up in my treestand as they went by (as recently as a month ago). The bigger boars usually have it.

The best example I can remember was a riffle shot pig on my lease that was so big It hung from the top of are skinning rack and it' s head was laying on the ground. As they skinned it from butt to head, the skin wouldn' t even fold down along side the body. It just hung in the air at a 90 degree angle when they got down to the scar tissue/ sheild area. It must have been 1.5" -2" thick. I remember saying to myself " there' s no way I would have even tried to shoot that thing with my bow" . I also remember his tusk/teeth were so sharp you didn' t want to apply preasure when touching them. They were sharper on the tip than the sharpest pencil you can think of.

RE: Hog hunting
 

PABOWHNTR, expandables are not reccomended for larger hogs but I have take hogs around the hundred pound mark with expandables and have had complete pass through and a very quick kill. The main problem with expandable heads are when you dont get complete pass through. A hog has a very thick layer of fat and long hair that will seal the small entrance wound produced by an expandable head very quickly making tracking difficult. As far as KE, if you are getting at least in the high fifties, and can gat a broadside or very slight quartering away shot you should be fine.

RE: Hog hunting
 

Thank you for answering my questions folks. Now, to be more specific, lets assume that I am shooting Rocket 3 blade Steelhead 100s out of a bow that is generating roughly 70 ft. lbs of KE (270 fps-430 grain arrow). Do you folks that have experience with hogs think this is satisfactory setup to achieve a complete pass through on most of the hogs out there? (assuming proper shot placement and a well tuned bow)

RE: Hog hunting
 

Frank.

With 70 # of KE I dont think you would have a problem on average sized pigs. But you could run into problems if it was a really big boar say over the 300 mark.
I would still recomend a good fixed blade broadhead tho;)

These animals are the toughest animals your gonna get in Nth America and can be very dangerous I have a scare on my leg as proof of that;)

RE: Hog hunting
 

I personaly witnessed a shot (I was ten tree' s away) my buddy took on a ~250# boar with a sidewinder. (The scale was missing in camp, but both of us couldn' t lift him onto his 700 polaris, we had to use my quad to drag the hog onto his rear rack.)
He shot it about where you' d shoot a deer, and got a pass through with the arrow falling out the other hole about 15 yards down the trail the pig left on. He shot it a little behind where most of the sheild was. The sidewinder opened just on the other side of the fat layer, but before the ribs. This pig still went ~ 80 yards before pileing (SP?) up.
He shot another larger pig with this same broadhead without getting a pass through. He said it only went 30 yards before expiring. Upon gutting the boar he said the lung area was nothing but jelly.

He was using an older (but great) Mathews 3d-pro with ~80# pull shooting some overdraw cut down aluminums at @ 270 fps. Not sure what his K/E was, but it was up there.

I personally lost two out of three pigs last year using a 1" cut 4 balde fixed broadhead. I feel it was the smaller cut that cost me as both the pigs I lost had what looked like perfect pass throughs. Plenty of blood for ~80-150 yards, and then nothing.
The one I did harvest only went about ~50-60# and was shot at a severe angle. DOA

Me personally, I plan on shooting my next pig with a large mechanical. If it' s a bigger pig I will wait on a quartering away shot. In my opinion, the more damage done will equal the less distance traveled after being hit.

RE: Hog hunting
 

True story!!

My brother shot a mechanical at a 200+ hog from a tree directly above. He uses either Rockets or Spitfires and I' m not sure which one this was. Anyway, he shot it a bit high and hit in the area where the head and neck come together, slightly to the right of the spine. He got about 4" penetration on the shaft! This was a 70 lb Mathews Q2. The hog jumped at the shot, then stopped and shook the arrow out, then walked off never to be seen again. These are tough animals for sure!!

RE: Hog hunting
 

Good thing he moved his foot out of the way;).

RE: Hog hunting
 

Thanks for the advice guys. I do not anticipate pursuing them any time soon but it is nice to have the info when I do eventually head after them. I guess I need to take one of the Bowtech' s with me though instead of my regular hunting bow...:D

RE: Hog hunting
 

Frank.
Just take the Pat Dually and the hogs wont stand a chance:D
Those bows at 60# hit a lot harder than other bows set at 70#;)

RE: Hog hunting
 

Close. I was going to tote the Pat SC...70 lb, 30.5 inch draw...:D

RE: Hog hunting
 

I have killed a few hogs as we are run over with them down here in florida . I have used muzzy 100 3 blade heads with brand new blades and they worked well . The only other head I would consider would be a magnus 2 blade that was scary sharp . The sheild is made up of fat but its not your normal fat its like hardened concrete fat and is very hard to cut through . Down here it shows up on boar hogs when they get to about that 150 lb size and when they get bigger than that it just gets thicker and tougher . A side note , I shot a boar last month that went about 200 lbs with my 30/30 he ran at the shot and I herd him crash around 100 yards away , when I went to the spot where he was standing at the time of the shot I found no blood . I followed his prints for 90 yards not one drop of blood
then on a fence post I found some blood and he was laying 10 yards away so the comment about them not bleading through the sheild is correct . It was a perfect shot right through the heart . I' ve seen it happen many times , they can be very difficult to track when they dont bleed . Their vitals are not further back than a deers vitals if anything they are a littel lower .

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RE: Hog hunting
 

150# Boar-complete pass thru Double lung-25 yd. shot. charged, shot again -pass thru & 1 40 cal bullet to keep him from getting us. Ground blind.
125#Boar-up to fletch,both lungs, quarter away 20 yd. shot-charged me , dropped at my feet as I was goin up a tree. (stalking-actually going back to truck when he jumped up from a thicket)
100# sow-complete pass thru 15 yards (both hips-bad shot) went 50 yards-DEAD..
250# boar-1 pass thru guts at 20 yards-10 min later-15 yd. shot-complete penetration-chest, broadside-heart. Took 1 step & rolled over. (using dogs). Hog had charged us 6 times in 3 hours.
All taken with my 8 year old Darton-60# & 2117 Eastons with a Rocky Mountain 3 Blade 125 gr. Razor.
1 Elk, 2 deer also. All in the past year. It works for me..