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Acceptable Accuracy For Hog Hunting

True Story:

A few weeks/months ago my brother and I were shooting rifles at our local range when a member and his guest showed up. The guest was there to sight in his 300 Win Mag for an out of state hog hunt. He fired a few shots at 50yds then moved his target to 100yds and fired a few more. He cased his rifle, thanked us for our patience and left. I didn't think much about it, as it seemed a normal zero check to me. As I was putting my target stand back in the house I could not help but notice the grouping on his big black circle target. I have never hog hunted, so Ill ask those of you who do. Would you head to the field with this?

When I am hunting, I drift back and remember what dad taught me. If you cannot kill the animal with one shot, don't shoot.
I have helped others that wounded the animals in tracking them down. They would usually die of their injuries later on, and if a predator did not find them, the meat was wasted and the animal died in pain for nothing.
I zero at a quarter mile. Every shot must be within an inch and a half, the size of a 25 cent quarter.
Then targets are set at 50 yards, out 50 yards, again, and then I know where every shot will hit out to the maximum I will shoot.
Some shoot just good enough. That is their right, and their prerogative. I was just raised differently.
 
I have shot a lot of pigs, here in Florida, Texas will be a lot different, I have used everything from a .223 to a 338 RUM. I would suggest bringing enough gun,(slugs are amazing). Use bonded bullets!!!

Big pigs are hard to kill, if you don't shoot them in the right place (with the right kind of bullets!!) with the caliber you are using, you are going to have to go into thick stuff with snakes.., shot placement is key.

MOA is fine, 6 moa is "no bueno" we were 200 yards max, most of the time 25-50 yards on a good stalk.

We would ride around in a truck, find a sounder then sneak up on them some times we killed one, sometimes 3 or 4 each us and we'd have a pickup full of pork sausage( sow taste a lot better so shoot a big sow first!)

It was always just at dark when we saw them here, nothing was ever perfect for shot picture or rest… if it can go wrong, it will!!! So a good follow up shot was often needed on the big ones not to mention that pig 2 & 3 are haulin *** after pig 1 is shot, even with a can the jig is up!

The pigs do carry Brucellosis, it is a bacterial disease, that can be transmitted to humans, so keep that in mind as well if you are going to process them yourself and cook it well done.
 
I hate to be the one to bring it up, but..... the feral hog problem is a product of their (our) own doing as they were introduced for example in Texas back in the 1930's by rich landowners for sport hunting. We reap what we sow.
 

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True Story:

A few weeks/months ago my brother and I were shooting rifles at our local range when a member and his guest showed up. The guest was there to sight in his 300 Win Mag for an out of state hog hunt. He fired a few shots at 50yds then moved his target to 100yds and fired a few more. He cased his rifle, thanked us for our patience and left. I didn't think much about it, as it seemed a normal zero check to me. As I was putting my target stand back in the house I could not help but notice the grouping on his big black circle target. I have never hog hunted, so Ill ask those of you who do. Would you head to the field with this?
**** poor at best.
 
I hate to be the one to bring it up, but..... the feral hog problem is a product of their (our) own doing as they were introduced for example in Texas back in the 1930's by rich landowners for sport hunting. We reap what we sow.

It is of our own creation, but not because of bringing in hogs for hunting. Feral hogs have been around for a very long time. As long as there have been hogs in Texas, they have been free-ranged, though that is now largely out of favor. In fact, free ranging was common world wide. My father grew up in east Texas, where he would turn out the hogs in the morning and go down to the bottoms and whistle up his hogs in the evenings. Sometimes he got more back than he turned out, sometimes less.

Free ranging created all sorts of problems and we can see that feral hogs were a menace even back in the 1600s...

They had to build a palisade around Jamestown, not to protect it from the Natives, but to protect it from feral hogs...

Where did the wall in Wall Street come from? Protection from hogs.
 
I am in the "animals deserve a clean kill" club, and I wouldn't own a rifle that shoots like that, it will obviously kill a pig at the ranges it was shot. Effective accuracy. I wonder how many of those ol' eastern and southern boys have trusty thuty-thuties or slug guns that aren't even that good. You know…slug guns and lever-actions are only "accurate enough to kill deer out about a hunerd yards."
 
GIven the type of group that we are (shooters/hunters, most capable with equipment and capability of 200-800 yd shots, and beyond) and the nuances around feral hogs and the serious damage that they cause, I am not surprised that thos thread is ready tomroll over its 7th page of responses.

Here is my take- if there was ever a time when a family or friend had a rifle that had poor to medium level accuracy, or had a circumstamce where one had a rifle with garage sale ammo of mized type, or a shooter that had little to no practice with a certain rifle, hunting feral hogs is the place to gain that experience. It is just plain different than other types of hunting.

Having lived around areas where hogs were bad, I can tell you that killing a single hog with a great single shot will not make a difference in the problem. It takes serious numbers to be killed which means that the first shot will be the only one where decent accuracy will matter. Once you shoot once, all hell breaks loose and it becomes a matter of how fast you can cycle the action how much practice you have with moving targets, and how many rounds your magazine holds.

The idea of an animal deserving a fair and ethical shot, went out the window for me on feral hogs (only) when I experienced the damage first hand to a few farms, and the other non-invasive species that used to reside on these farms.

At the end of the day there is no better motivator than failure, so maybe 6 MOA man will seek advice from the guy next to him at the range (like one of us), so he can increase his effectiveness.

Lastly, for all you macho types that preach about just getting tougher, and learning to deal with recoil and muzzle blast, you should educate yourselves about the fact and statistics related to those things. It is not normal human behavior or instinct to punish yourself or subject yourself to anything that is startling/mild to moderately painfull, etc. We should all advocate for use of whatever technology is available to mitigate the recoil and muzzle blast so we can continue to welcome new shooters and hunters into our group of progun support. Its jist the right thing to do.
 
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