I don't mind admitting to doing something that may have some questioning my sanity. Heck, I question it all the time ha ha. But yesterday morning's event may verge on being a dumb stunt -- even for me.

Anyway, I took my big orange buddy Marmalade outside to do his business and stayed out there with him while he entertained himself with a piece of moss. Sitting out there in the quiet morning, I heard a commotion nearby and a doe repeatedly sounding the alarms, her snorts coming just seconds apart. We've had problems with stray/feral dogs harassing deer in the past, and after seeing two of them last week, I figured they had returned. So I reached back into the house and grabbed my old Ruger Security Six.

I barely passed the yard gate when I saw the problem: a doe was trying to stand her ground with a boar. I knew she had been bedding a fawn in that spot and figured she must be trying to take the hog's attention away from it and perhaps keep it safe. In hindsight, I should have retreated for a rifle, but instincts sort of took over. I don't even recall thinking about it and don't even remember hearing the shot, but I sent a 158 grain JHP 70 yards downrange and (I hoped) into the hog.

He swapped ends and disappeared into what's currently a dry stream bed that's overgrown with all sorts of brush. The grass leading into there is chest-high right now, and a thermal wouldn't work in finding a heat signal in that jungle. You can't see but a few yards in front of you thanks to all of the vines and undergrowth. Being that I just sent a barely-sonic JHP bullet in the direction of a large, sturdily-built target, I elected not to follow up immediately. I collected my thoughts, collected my fur baby and went back inside, trying to replay in my mind just what had transpired.

I was REALLY hoping the shot didn't wake my son because he'd want to have an adventure and play retriever/tracker, and I was anything but confident in what the results of this debacle may be. But in just a couple of hours, the buzzards provided the final piece to the puzzle and told me all was well.

The hog -- somewhat surprisingly -- only covered 50 to maybe 55 yards. Apparently his leg was forward when I fired, and the 158 grain CCI Blazer appears to have laced the heart. With the carcass having sat out in the Texas heat and the fact that buzzards had already worked on him, I chose not to open up the chest. But when I flipped him over the check for an exit, it saw a distinct lump under the hide. So I sliced into it and was rewarded with the recovered projectile.

After cleaning and shining it up with an old toothbrush, I found that it had expanded to .514" and retained 143 grains of its weight.

Would I want to do this again? The answer is a definitive NO! All worked out just fine, but I would not want to make a habit of pressing my luck quite that much. Way back when, I cleanly took more than a few hogs with a .44 Magnum and have always considered that power/performance range sort of the cut-off point for piggie cartridges -- at least for my own usage. Had the cylinder been filled with Barnes copper HPs or Buffalo Bore hard-cast loads (or the range been shorter), I may have felt somewhat more positive about the situation. But the thought of using a "soft, slow JHP" kept running through my brain. Plus, thanks to RA and neuropathy, I rarely shoot a revolver anymore and maybe should have thought about that before pulling the trigger yesterday LOL.

I just thank my lucky stars that things worked out as they did.

All right!!! Never get tired of reading about your adventures.

Well there ya go. Nice hit on that pesty hog and probably saved a fawn or two or three. How's the heat down there?

quote:

Originally posted by custombolt:
Well there ya go. Nice hit on that pesty hog and probably saved a fawn or two or three. How's the heat down there?

Thanks. It's been one of the hottest months of May on record. This afternoon, though, was not bad as we had intermittent cloud cover. But yesterday morning started out warm and humid and only got worse as the day progressed. My thermometer said yesterday's LOW temp was 80.

Check out the thorns on these vines...

Great shot!

You need more practice with that Ruger.

Want another box of my cast slugs??

A sticky place like that is good place to leave 'em lay.

George

Thanks, George! I certainly wouldn't mind having more of those slugs. The kids burned through a lot of ammo and left my .357 stash rather empty LOL. I have a bunch of brass sized/prepped/primed, but I'm out of component bullets for the .357 Mag. But the kids are older now, and between their work and college, etc., they don't have much time for burning up too many rounds.

I used to shoot revolvers quite a bit and hunted for several years with a Ruger SRH .44 Mag, but the RA and neuropathy began to make that unpleasant. The .357 doesn't bother my hands as much as the .44, though. I still like to put some lead downrange and even thought about using a wheel gun for "doe days" in November but just haven't gotten to do that yet.

Dang me Bobby, I hadn't realized you were a gifted pistolero as well as a legendary rifle shot.
The expansion you got from that Speer bullet is advertising copy-worthy.

quote:

Originally posted by Bill/Oregon:
...a gifted pistolero...

Nah...not even close. This was just a case of the hog having very bad luck.