I know hogs are tough but come on!! I sneaked up on my hog feeder yesterday morning tring to catch one by surprise. I caught sight of a brown one running off so I thought, "Oh well, maybe next time". As I got close to the feeder I hear something move in the brush and see some black furr in the palmetto about 35 feet from me. Well I let loose with the 45-70 and the meat flew!! And so did the hogs!! About 4 little ones and the momma ran in every direction!! I think I ran in place for about 4 long seconds before deciding there was no threat to me.

After checking my pants, I looking in the area where I'd shot. There was pieces of meat and hide five feet high in the palmettos. I found this about 10 feet from the point of impact.

About 300 yards later, we ran out of blood trail. It was 1:30pm when we gave up. So you can't say we didn't try. She could have been just ahead of us but those palmettos were THICK and we were exhausted. That was one TOUGH hog.

Look, man I wasn't there and just going by what you wrote but, I was trained to never fire without a clear identification of my target for a variety of reasons.

Your post makes it sound as if you simply fired at a patch of fur. Did I read you right?

Lot of stuff I didn't say. I did say black fur. I didn't say that it grunted as it was shifting to my right(which was what caught my eye). Thinking that it was heading in that direction, I aimed about half a foot right of the fur for upper body shot. Nor did I say that I had been on a stand that morning and saw three does, one that walked about 30 yards from me. Or that the mosquitos were bad. Or that someone had stolen my game camera or.....

Hey Griz, I can relate to your experience. We shoot plenty of them every year and there are always those few that just seem indestructible no matter where or what you hit them with.

I slipped up on a couple that were on a small ridge and crashed out in the shade under a small tree year before last. I got up to about 25yds and they snapped that something just wasn't right with the bush that kept getting closer, and bailed off the far side of the ridge. I clambered up to the top and shot the one on the left first as it was headed for heavy cover, rolled it rear over ears, then swung around to the one headed out across the open cotton field and dropped it sliding to a stop on it's nose.

I was pretty happy since we were on a meat haul and these were both in the 200# class, and both sows. When I headed over to get the first one, which had ended up in some knee high grass and weeds it was gone. No blood, no hair, no meat, nada zip zilch. The other was right where it was supposed to be. I was pretty upset and even after a 45 minute grid search of the area still nothing was found to indicate I even hit the first one.

Fast forward two months, and another meat haul. I was this time using my Ragin Bull in 454 and some newly loaded up Cast Performance 265gr loads. Similar situation, we spotted some sleeping on the backside of a hill out of the blowing north wind, and put the slip on them. I was around 10yds from the first one that raised up and I put one of the 265's just under it's right eye, and out it's left rear ham. The other one raised up to leave and I put one through it's left ham and out it's right shoulder. Two shots and two hogs. I then proceeded to miss a third one three times as it came charging right at me out of the brush. Something like a point and shoot as there was no time to acquire sights as close as he was.

In the end the first hog I shot smelled horrible when we approached it to load it up. Further inspection showed that about a foot's worth of the right side back strap was missing and had started to heal over even with the infection which was very apparent. Remembering back to the way the hog reacted to the shot a couple months earlier, there was no doubt that this had to be the hog I shot and couldn't find. Being the way I am I dug around a bit and sure enough I found the mushroomed remains of the 150gr CL that I had shot from my .308, balled up in a mass of gristle, just above the ribs along the side of the spine.

We see them all the time missing legs, feet, and find where they have been hit and run off and survived not so good shots, and some that made it through what would have thought to have been a DRT hit.

As to the comment about shooting into the brush, well I can admit that I had my backside tanned pretty decently for doing that once. This said, when and where I hunt hogs at the cover is sometimes such that all you can see is an inch or so of hair when they are holding tight in the undergrowth. I have, at times when stalking had to adjust my scope, or use my binoculars at 10yds or less, to see which way the hair was pointing so I knew which end to shoot.