I see all these videos on YouTube of hunters taking wild boar with air rifles. How is this possible? My buddy just got back from a wild boar hunting trip in Upstate New York where he shot a 300 lb wild boar in the head with a 30-06 rifle and it got up and ran away! He tracked the blood for 400 yards! When he finally caught up to it he shot it again and it took off and ran another 100 yards! When he caught up to it the second time he thought it was dead. It started to get up and he shot it in the head for a third time before it finally died! So what the hell are these guys using for pellets in their air rifles? In the videos thy're taking them with a 45 caliber Texan down to those stupid Gamo videos that are taking them with a 177.
How is this possible?
I have shot and killed over a dozen hogs in the last 4 months. I use a .257 Condor with a Noble drivetrain and r&l shroud. Here is my original post on another forum. If you look close enough you will see I shot these pigs in the heart from 128 yards. The heart sits right above the front elbow an inch or so. The big pig at 4:38 was about 170 pounds and shot with a 80 grain hollowpoint. The key is you need about 1 to 1.5 times of FPE per body weight. My gun produces 175 fpe with the 80gr hollowpoint. https://www.gatewaytoairguns.org/GTA/index.php?topic=136596.msg1365959#msg1365959
I found the big pig the next day. How I missed it the night before I'll never know. Here are the pics and if you scroll down you will see one of the bullets I recovered.
https://www.gatewaytoairguns.org/GTA/index.php?topic=136644.msg1366609#msg1366609
I've had buddies on the Facebook airgun groups kill feral hogs up to like 169lbs with .25cal air rifles. Hatsan's and the like, and none-PCP at that. Bust'em in the brain box with somethin like an H&N Hornet for good penetration. I've seen them go down out to about 32-38 yards with the .25 caliber rifles. Just gotta practice good brain shots and they'll faceplant themselves.
Your buddy's last shot is the only one that hit the brain John; the other shots just destroyed the hog's face and/or jaw(s). Centerfire-rifle deer hunters might consider a head shot to be precise shot-placement; but it isn't, any more than a chest shot is. Brain and heart shots are precise shot placement.
Couple of things- the pigs brain is much smaller than most hunters allow for. There are some great videos on the Tube showing the actual brain size, vs. The illustrated pictures you see sometimes in books or online that are slightly exaggerated in size.
2nd, HunterR, above, has a lot of videos online from his Texas hog hunts. He's put down A LOT of pigs with Airguns, and most of them are DRT. He's got some that just turtle onto their backs, 4 legs up in the air like a cockroach in a Raid commercial
I've shot pigs with powder burners, mostly animals that were moving. They've run the gamut of DRT's to multiple kilometers of tracking to finalize the hunt. Airguns aren't really good for pigs when they are moving- I'm having a hard time hitting rats or ground squirrels that aren't stationary. Placement, distance, energy and getting the good shot off contribute to success.
I also neglected to mention that a pig's skull is thinner on the sides than the front/forehead. So at about a 30-45 degree angle between the ear and the back of the eye should give a good brain shot for air rifles. Or that .30-06 for that matter. And don't bother trying to shoot a feral pig in the same spot as a deer lung/heart shot. They have a near bony cartilage frill under the skin over the shoulders and down the front haunches. Think of a triceratops, but with the frill inside under the skin. I also got the Remington 725VTR stock back from Mid-Ohio Hydrographics. A new breech seal and 3 shims sealed it up. A .25M I'll let my son use when we get a vehicle again to chase Mr. & Mrs. piggy.
