.44 bounces off hog skull WARNING!!!

When I was growing up 'out in the sticks' I used to help this old guy kill hogs for people. They paid him to kill, gut, and hang them up.

Anyway. he always used a little .22 bolt action after I got one hemmed up for him. He would put the muzzle an inch or so below the eyes and the hog would drop straight down.
Click to expand...

Growing up I watched my Grandfather take many a hog with a little bolt action .22 and he would shoot from about 3 feet. The only time one didn't drop the hog immediately was when it turned just as he shot and it bounced off and hit another one. Both hogs started struggling and we had to butcher two that day instead of the one we had planned.
 
I dont know how many foot lbs it has ....

But I've always used the cheap rifled remington 1 oz:D slugs in 16 gauge to kill hogs. It only takes one, but i've also never shot one in the head, just broadside it in the vitals.
 
I am not 100% positive it isn't staged. If it were staged using 2 blanks first they did real good matching the reports with the 3rd being a live round.

I will say that the separated jacket theory is out of the realm of possibility. 2 rounds to the head suffering a separation of jacket but penetration of core would have left a hog live and awake sharpening his tusks right before the final shot that obviously does penetrate and kill.
easy to fake though... a little handy camera work to allow for dropping a previously retrieved mushroomed round for the next camera shot.
Brent
 
This is why I prefer JFP over JHP. Might be a moot point in a SD situation but I am a handgun hunter and prefer my bullets to go in before they open up. Knew a guy who always took out his hogs with a 38 scl without a hitch. One year switched to 357 and it took 3 shots. I think it was the difference between his 158 gr LRN which worked and his 125 gr JHP which didn't. Energy numbers sometimes lie to you.
 
oink

I did have a hog that took five rounds from a 41mag at close range. switched to 444 Marlin with 300 gr hard cast. No fun running thru the wood with 300 pounds of ribs closing in fast.
Much prefer to have 'em on the BBQ
 
I have talked about bullet design before ,If you put a hardcast in that hog it will put it down for good but in my younger days i learn about SP's and HP rounds early on and just stopped hunting hugs with them . I did use a 357 but with 180 gr hc rounds and they will break both shoulders or punch i nice neat hole in the head, There are 200 gr now from BB too. Like said to but not me doing it in the wild ,a 22 behind the ear works wonders on a hog. Turns them off so you can bleed them dry. but only in a pin setting.
 
Neighbor kid that I grew up with had one of the old Savage 110 bolt guns in .30-30. He reloaded his shells with 150 gr FMJ's that he traded from someone else. They worked fine in the bolt gun magazine, and they penetrated hogs heads.


I have looked at that film several times and I cant get it in my head that that .44 mag would bounce of a shoats head at 3 feet. I've butchered at least a hundred hogs and killed them all with a .22. I'm with whoever said that this was posed. My .45 with hard cast Keith SWC's over 11 grains of Unique would have shot completely through that hog. The .44 should have at least that much energy.....I'm thinking this is difficult for me to believe.
 
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Most all failure of one caliber or another can be lack of power or lack of penatration. Penatration has all to do with bullet preformance. I have only shot one very large boar and I didnt shoot him in the head. However from my years of hunting I cant help believe if a hard cast heavy bullet would have been used it would have penatrated. Many bear guides hate soft point and hollow point handgun ammo.
 
My dad used to pop 'em between the eyes from about 3 or 4 feet away with a .22LR rifle. That always stunned them, then we'd roll them over and stick 'em with a butcher knife.
 
We were going to have a pig roast down in central Georgia.
We went out to this pig farm and bought a hog "on the hoof" from the pig farmer.
This pig was bigger than the hog in this video.
Remember, all wild hogs in America are closely related to domestic pigs. Other than the little Javelina in Texas, all of the American wild hogs are descendants of domestic pigs. This hog that we wanted to roast looked a lot like the pig in this video, only the our hog was bigger.

I shot this hog in the head with a Ruger Single Six, .22 lr.
One shot, lights out.

The wild hog did not land in a UFO. It is just another mammal, not that different from you or I. Hog heart valves are routinely transplanted into humans.
Hog skulls are made of bone just like yours and mine, and if you hit them right with a bullet the pig will die quickly.
 
Not all hogs are descended solely from domesticated pigs...

... because some wealthy folk, the Vanderbilts I think, decided to import Russian boar so they could hunt them. Some were imported into the Asheville area of NC, and I've read about others that were released in the northeast. Not sure what their numbers were, but there's been some crossbreeding.

Of course, many and probably the great majority are descended from domesticated pigs; the numbers in many areas have led to "pest" designation for feral hogs.

This is kind of like the English lord who wanted to hunt rabbits in Australia in the 1800's. He imported some, not realizing they had no predators in Australia. The rabbits mulitiplied rapidly, and wrecked a lot of the Australian ecology.
 
The 22 is quite deadly because of its small nose.

I ran a couple numbers just to see some figures. Just for info referance much like the the Taylor KO value... (fps x gr. weight x meplat devided by 7000 (gr. in a LB)= KO Value)the numbers mean nothing other than a way to compair one round to another witout using the Ft Lb tables, we all know FT Lbs. mean very little when it comes to hunting situations. But this helps to refurance the force on the nose of the boolit/penitration possibility

Fps x weight of boolit in Lbs, divided by nose area in inches (wad cutter measurement)...

.....the 22LR, 40gr. WC @1200fps gives a number of 184

....the 44mag, 240gr. WC@1200fps gives a number of 281,

now if you take the 44 and expand it out to 3/4" (like the one from the video), this number drops down to 92!! HALF of the penitration number of the 22LR... Now it kind of makes sense how the 44 failed so badly

Yeah I know hogs don't do math:D but it does give a look at how the 44 could preform so poorly with SP of HP ammo. Diameter just gets too big for the weight, to allow for good penitration..... and they were probly using lighter bullets than the 240gr I used in the above figures.

Just for fun I ran this formula with the 475L.. a 430gr.WC hard cast @1200fps gives a number of 421.... and the 458 mag with a 500gr@2200fps gives a refurance number of 952! HELLO!

I hope this formula is helpful to someone ... if it is not please don't drag me accross the coals...(to badly..LOL)
 
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Don't know much about tables and charts and the like, but I did notice two things that stick out in my mind about this video. #1 the guy shooting isn't wearing any obvious hearing protection. If I shoot my 44, 3 times in a row, my ears would be bleeding, and I would have to holler for anyone to hear that was with me. #2 there is no leaves being blown around from the percussion. If I shoot my 44 that close to anything on the ground, it will blow leaves off the ground for 2 or 3 feet around.

My thinking is he is shooting some kind of cowboy round with a really cheap made bullet.

I load my own ammo, and have shot several hogs with them and have never had anything happen like that. I've shot hogs from 10 ft. out to 30 yards and most of mine takes the side of the head off the exiting side.
 
Aside from the issue of the jacket possibly bouncing back and not the lead itself, I noticed a couple of other things about the shooting of the pig.

The first and second shots generate much less physical impact movement of the pig than the third shot. Why? There is no damage to the face or head of the pig from the first couple of shots. Why?

Well maybe because the first shot actually hits the downed tree first. It appears to continue on and hit the back of the pig. The second shot appears to pass between the pig and the ground, below the pig's left ear. In other words, the shot doesn't hit the pig solidly either.

The third shot is supposed to be into the pig's eye. Yet the closeup at the end shows that at 3-4 feet, the shot clearly missed the pig's eye. However, the pig was significantly impacted by the third shot.

Conclusion? The shooter is a crappy shot. The first shot went through wood first, likely stripping the jacket off, and impacting the pig as fragments, not as a solid slug. The second shot doesn't actually impact the pig directly and likely missed below the pig. The third shot does directly impact the pig and the pig is finally put out of its misery, but the shooter clearly missed his stated target.
 
You guys aren't implying that things aren't as they appear :eek:.......

Havent you ever heard that if it's on the internet then it must be true :cool:.
 
Saw the same thing happen with a bear

I saw a DNR officer shoot a problem bear in the skull plate with a 44 mag pistol.
Same result.
- Only made the bear mad as hell.
The bear had been trapped in a cage several times before and had been relocated 30 or 40 miles away but kept coming back to the same residential area to get into trouble over and over again.
The decision was made to put it down this time.
After he calmed down a bit my dad put a 22 LR in it's brain.
 
The moral of the story is don't shoot fancy jacketed hollowpoints when solid hardcast lead should be used. Silly rabbit, jacket hollowpoints aren't for hunting!!

Read about Larry Kelly shooting a bear 6 times in the face with 44 JHP's point blank when it came in his tent and they flattened out on the the face and didnt penetrate, someone with a Rifle had to make sure he could write the story...:D
 
"...stick with semiautomatics. More bullets downrange is a good thing...." No it isn't.
Looked like that idiot was using a JHP. Obviously won't penetrate.
"...jacket hollowpoints aren't for hunting!!..." They are. Just not hogs when you don't know where to put the bullet.
 
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