New Mexico Hogs

P

PIGMAN

New member
I hunt Javalina here in Arizona and for those of you who don't live around them to hunt 'em, they are mutant pigs with big ones weighing in at about 60lbs. I shoot them with a 22/250 with good results.Here is a picture of these critters:

http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/st-plains/nature/images/mammals-javelina.html

I found out from NM Game and Fish that New Mexico allows anyone to hunt ferral hogs with out licenses or bag limits. A hunting trip to the New Mexico Boot Heel is on in order to lend my assistance to the New Mexicans in controlling the spread of these undesirable beasties and to fill my freezer with pork.

I have been able to find out that ferral hogs vary in size from about 50lbs to around 300lbs for a big one. With this in mind,I am thinking about taking a 22/250 for the small ones and a 45/70 (with hand loaded ammo producing about 2200 ftlbs of energy at the muzzle) for plugging the big fat rascals.Since I have not hunted ferral hogs before can anyone suggest any better choices of caliber or places in New Mexico for hunting these things.
 
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I have never hunted hogs.

I do have a friend who used to do so. I remember his slow progression from 44 magnum rifle, to 444 Marlin, to 416 Remington Magnum. I guess the progression of cartridges corresponded with the frightening encounters with really big feral hogs who when shot, wouldn't just lie down and die, but who would attack him in his blind.

Like I said, I haven't hunted these critters, and 416 Remington Magnum may be a really big cartridge, but I think I would take a lesson from Gary and start at that point.

YMMV :)
 
I would leave the 22-250 at home. In New Mexico, the terrain could present many shots at distances over 150 yards. I wouldn't want to shoot a tough animal like a feral hog with a 22-250 at any distance over 100 yards. Take one rifle to do what you need at the ranges presented to you. I would say that a 30-06 is a better choice.
 
Plug them in the ear and you'll have no problems with the .22-250. If your rifle can stabalize the bullets there is premium ammo in 53 grain TSX or 60 grain Nosler Partitions then just about any shot is possible. There are other premium TSX bullets out there for the handloader but I know these two loads are offered in Federal ammunition.
 
You may be right about using a .416 RUM stubbiecat and Able suggested a 30/06 instead of a 22/250 and I hear these beasties are mean and hard to kill too. I also have a .375 H&H but thought it may have been a little too excessive for hogs but maybe this is the best choice for plugging hogs especially since it is sort of in between the 30/06 and .416 and as also pointed out most shots will probably be in excess of 100 yds. The 45/70 even when loaded to its full potential doesnt do well at longer ranges so i will use a .375 mag instead for the big ones and I will see if my hunting partner wants to take a 22/250 for dispatching the little guys. An ear shot sounds like a good place to shoot 'em too. I am not sure which bullet Federal uses but it imagine these operate similar to the Barnes X and I have several boxes of both .22 cal and .375 X bullets on my relaoding bench.
 
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We've got plenty of hogs down here, most are larger than 60 pounds, many around 200 pounds. Over the years I've killed and caught a bunch. They're just about as easy to kill as deer and any rifle that will take a deer will kill a hog. No matter what you might hear, they ain't Rhinos or Cape Buffalo. Bullets don't bounce off them and a head or lung shot does them in. Like any other wild animal only wound them and you might have a thrilling experience, but with a good shot they're bacon, sausage, or Cochon de lait.
 
My experience hunting hogs is limited to one trip to South TX. But I would say your normal deer or elk rifle is perfect. I carried my .45-70 in south TX, since it was pretty dense thickets there. It worked great. But I used a .357 with a 3" barrel one day. I was working rather than hunting so that's all I had with me at the time. The .357 worked just fine at 3' though.
 
60 lbs.. thats nothing:D come down here and check out our 250lb monsters.

As far as putting them down, pigman is right, they arent elephants, and a 30 06 should be plenty sufficient for any size hog.
 
I say the OP will be fine taking what he had planned to take. As long as he doesn't plan on any real long shots with either. If the typical hunting ranges in NM are 100 yds and further, then something along the line of .308/.30-06 might be better.

I've used my Ruger SBH in .44 mag to take a number of hogs down here, including some pretty good sized. Of course, the range has usually been less than 50 yds.

As always, choose your shot according to what you are carrying and it's capabilities.
 
I hunt Javalina here in Arizona and for those of you who don't live around them to hunt 'em, they are mutant pigs with big ones weighing in at about 60lbs.
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Javelina are collared peccary, and are not pigs. In fact, they are only distantly related to pigs. There are rules governing the taking of Javelina.
I found out from NM Game and Fish that New Mexico allows anyone to hunt ferral hogs with out licenses or bag limits.
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I would not want to try to convince a game warden that the Javelina in my truck is actually a feral hog, I don't think he would be amused.
 
Scorch is right; a javalina won't pass for a feral hog.

I have a buddy over in SE NM, and he hunts about as much or more than anyone I know. He ranches, and spends a lot of time killing coyotes.

And he's good at it.

About a year or so back, me mentioned that NM was supposed to be having a few feral hogs migrating into the state from Texax. He hadn't seen any.

As far as I know, he still hasn't.

Hunting them would seem like a long shot there. May way to try Texas.

Daryl
 
We have a bunch of ferral hogs here in Az. too. Usually the way it works, is a guy uses an ultra light to spot them and uses a radio to let the hunters know where they are. So far as the weapon used, we have dropped them with bows and various handguns and rifles. They aren't all that difficult to drop with the average high powered revolver or rifle. A kid that was with our hunting party chasing these animals around was using a .243 and didn't have any problem what so ever. The largest one from that heard we killed that day was over 300 lbs. and the small one was around 150 lbs.. They are rather good eating, but the sides normally used for the bacon, isn't good on those wild ones. It actually tastes pretty nasty. But the rest of the pig is great. And one more important detail, make sure you wear gloves when you are handling the animal, even when you are handling it while cooking it, and be sure to cook it completely becuase you are going to expose yourself to trechinosis(I don't think that is the correct speeling). Most commercial pork is safe from this threat now days, but wild pigs will deffinitely be infected, as are bears and javelina, and I'm sure some other animals I'm unaware of.
 
Ya we've always used a 30-06 and upwards for hunting hogs. Usually you'll find the 200-250 pounders, and they'll go down with a well placed shot. Sometimes though you have to take a shot while the hog is running, case in point my brother and I were hunting, I had just shot 1 and we saw where the rest ran off to. A few hundred yards later, I thought I heard something very faint from a thicket of bushes, and I started towards it. I got to about 20 yards away, and a hog bursts out straight toward me. I'm still not sure why I thought I could safely do this, but I had already shot one, so I turn to my brother, who is on the other side of the hog from me, and yell at him. At this point, I turn back around, and luckily the hog thought that meant I wasn't scared, so he turned and ran off, my brother took 4 shots at the hog with a 30-06, all hit, 1 was a vital shot, and the hog was still running until the 3rd shot. Even with 4 in him, he took another minute to die. Turns out this one was right around 350 lbs.

So yes, if you're sitting still in a blind with complete surprise on your side, shoot hogs with a .270, it's a great choice. But me, I like to hunt, so I'll stick with my 300 winmag and .45 at my side. If something is charging you, you want to open as big of holes as you can in it, because when 15 hogs charge you, the last thing you want to be doing is shooting a bolt action 22/250 at them. I plan on getting a desert eagle as my backup :) Great excuse to have one.

edit: That's him, size is deceiving a little, but that's a big atv, and a big dog behind him. We had to winch him out from where he was to the atv, and it took 3 of us to lift him just on top of the atv.

Pigonthe4-wheeler.jpg
 
I've only shot 1 hog. A big 300lb sow at 75yds with my 30-30. More than enough gun. 150gr jacketed FN. She dropped at the shot, got up and ran about 10 feet and was dead when she hit the ground again with a pass thru double lung shot.
 
Thats a real fine porker there THEMUSGRAT. I was watching the Sportsman channel last night and some guy plugged a Warthog with 7mm WinMag somewhere in Africa. The 7mm sure enough killed it deader than Julius Ceaser but he was only 50 yds away and made a clean shot to the shoulders.When they retrieved the beastie they were surprised to find that the bullet failed to go thru the thing. Generally the hog family of critters seem to be very tough foul tempered animals for this reason I am in agreement with those of you who think that the bigger gun is the better gun when it comes to dispatching these things.

With everyones advice in mind and since I have one I believe I am going to use a .375 H&H with 270gr Barnes X bullets. If a 22/250 works using a head shot to the ear then a .375 should work even better. Truly when you are hunting dangerous stuff there is no such thing as too much gun.I am also thinking firepower may be a good idea as well ,since if one of these rascals charges like THEMUSGRAT's hog did and since it required 4 rounds of 30/06 to make a believer out of it then maybe I should take an LR8 along as well for a back up just in case things go side ways. After seeing the warthog shot with a 7mm WinMag on TV and since the bullet failed to exit said beastie I think I will pull some mil-surplus AP off 30/06 cases and load some .308 cases with them inorder to assure optimal penetration.

Isn't a peccary basically a mutant pig? No matter, regardless of the peccaries genetic pedigree, most all of us gun toten god fearin country folks like me know full well that if it looks like hog it must be a hog and the only difference that really matters between the two species in this case and from this country boys point of veiw is one kinda pig you gotta buy a tag to shoot and the other kinda pig you dont gotta buy a tag to shoot.
 
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Isn't a peccary basically a mutant pig?
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Actually, they aren't a pig at all. To me, they look more like a large hamster, but from what I understand they're their own species. Closest relative is said to be a hippo.

But like most good ol' boys in Az, I've refered to them as pigs many a time.
 
A butt ugly hamster and I sure am glad they turned out to be a SMALLER relative to the hippo:D

There is actually a map online that charts the where abouts of ferral hogs. According to the hog map, New Mexico has 'em in the Boot Heel and along the Pecos river at Roswell and NMGF confirms same.So far they seem to be isolated to these areas and are there in decent numbers.

If we find 'em will plug 'em and if not even a really bad day of hunting is better than a good day at work.
 
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I saw that same map yesterday. Kind of interesting to see some of the isolated spots with hog outbreaks. The bootheel area is especially interesting. I'm guessing they must have got there from Mexico? But even the Mexican side of the bootheel is mighty remote country. It just shows you how adaptable the hogs are. I did some work down in the bootheel area, but that was 30 years ago. No doubt hogs are not the most dangerous critters roaming in that area nowdays. Back then, before GPS and technology, there were a few times when we didn't know for sure if we were on the US or Mexico side of the border.

If I was hog hunting down in the bootheel, I would definitely want to have a buddy along with me.
 
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