I just completed my .308 Mauser 98 Project and to initiate it properly I want to take it on my first pig hunt in CA. I was thinking that the huge supply I have of 180 grain Ballistic tips would make a good choice. What do you think?

Any good advice as to powder choice(s)?

How big is the pig and where will the bullet impact? A spine hit through the neck ia a lot different than a shoulder hit. A 50 pound pig is a completely different animal than a 500 pound pig. Pigs have been killed with a .223 and lost with a .45-70. Go big and heavy on caliber and bullet weight. pg

WC-846 is a great powder, same as W-748 or BLC-2

I don't think you'll have a problem with 180 ballistic tips. However you may want to consider the 180 grain Nosler Accubond. Do your load development and target shooting with the Ballistic Tips and then load up the Accubonds for the pig hunt. The Accubonds were interchangeable with the Ballistic Tips in my 30-06 load. The Nosler Partitions were also interchangeable in the same load but just a bit less accurate than the BTs and the Accubonds. Big pigs are pretty thick skinned especially in the shoulder area.

Unless you get a perfect shot opportunity you are likely to have that bullet blow up on you on a hog of average size or larger. As mentioned,go with an Accubond or something tougher; even an Interlock would be better.

The Ballistic Tip myth continues.

My son hunts deer with a .30-06 that I load 150 grain Ballistic Tips for to 3000 fps. Almost every year he takes a couple of incidental hogs with it while deer hunting. One year, he took it to South Texas specifically for hogs and killed a 200 pounder. Neither he nor I can remember a hog that took more than one shot. All sizes, all angles, all distances.

The solid base design on the Ballistic Tip provides pentration all out of proportion to the otherwise rapid expansion of the forward section. It is true that Ballistic Tips will destroy more tissue, but then destroying tissue is what kills animals, isn't it? Duh.

At .308 velocities your 180 grain Ballistic Tips will penetrate all of the hog you're likely to come across and then some. Have fun, and don't be suckered into believing that you have to buy some $1-a-shot bullet for hogs.

My brother just shot a 200lb boar at 75yds with 200gr Accubond out of a 300 WSM. Bullet hit a rib going in and logded in a rib on the opposite side. Weight was 130gr. I was hoping for a little better performance out of the Accubond. I shot a 150lb sow with 250gr GS out of a 35 whelen at about 75 yards penetrated about 30 inches of hog plus went thru the spine, recovered weight was about 204gr. I like that better. I bought some 180gr North Forks for my BLR 308 and some 225gr for my whelen. I can't wait to try them out on some hogs. Gearing up for elk this fall.

if BT's are so great for game, why are there Accubonds?

Like most folks here, we've seen the bt's blow up... Seen too many of the shatter into fragments... this is NOT what a bullet is supposed to do, unless one is varmit hunting.

I'll bite on this.. solid base helps it out penetrate? HUH?? I've yet to find a bt that, if it has any significant weight retention, is anything BUT base left...

woodleighs are solid base bullets, that expand fairly well... and retain weight

partians...
failsafe
SIERRA GAME KINGS

are all better hunting bullets than BT's....

jeffe

Major Caliber

I just bought a house near the casino in Baldwin. It's on the bayou on Chitimacha Trail. I just got on a lease about 4 miles from my house thats about 3000 acres of hardwoods with about 14 members. It is absolutely overrun with hogs. They did find a dead buck back in Feb. look like about a 150 class.

Not trying to be a fence sitter here, but......

BT's are marginal on large pigs. If I was sitting in an elevated blind such that I was not in the path of a potentially pissed off wounded boar, I would (and do, 180 BT, 300WSM) blast away. If I was on the ground, and therefore also unable to shoot as accurately, I would go to a stronger bullet.

Accubonds are a great choice, bridging the wide chasm in performance between the BT and Partition well.

FWIW I have seen the skull of a 250+ pound hog with a 180 gameking buried 2 inches in.....300 Win, range of 5 feet.

I'll say this again, just to be clear...

If BT's are great hunting bullets, why did Nosler spend teh money and are now marketing the Accubond, which is a VISUALLY indistingishable bullet?

The reason? Because BT's are not the answer
jeffe

MC,
"to make money" of course.. and with the equipement fully depreciated, the BT's do nothing BUT make money... lower variable cost per unit.

In fact, they've STOPPED MAKING the 375 BT... at least Midway, Huntington and Lockstock have stopped carrying the 375 bt..

and the heavy 308 bullets.. with high SD... wow, it's only accubond...

Fact of the matter is, Nosler knows there was a requirement for a better highly accurate bullet than the BT...

jeffe

CDH,
I disagree with you on your statement that "BT's are THE bullet for thin skinned game", from my own field experience.

Also, which blanket statement am I making? I stated simpley, that the BT's equipment is paid for (max IRS allowable depreciation on equipement in 20 years) and that all BT's that run off the line are now CLEAR of the accounting cost assigned to them via their depreciation schedule. Those schedules could be one of three ways.. 1: per unit, 2: per machine hour, or 3: per time period (months/quarters/years)

The accubond
1: costs MONEY to develope and test
2: costs MORE money to make the machines to run the bullets
3: costs MORE money than the BT as it is more complex than the BT. This is supported simply on the basis of TIME to production. If item X requires 10 machine operations, and item Y requires 11 operations, ON THE SAME TYPE of machinery, item Y will inherently take longer to produce. Perhaps not a neat,simple 10% more.. but even if it is 1% more, than means that the max production per day is 99% of item X

Allow me to explain BULLET FAILURE.. When a bullet is recovered and/or there is no exit wound, and the largest single fragments weighs LESS than 70%, that bullet has failed. As the curve is pretty sharp in retained weight (RW) generally ranging from 100% to 75%.... and then usually failing into FRAGMENTS under 70% rather than pieces, I feel safe in this statement.

I have NEVER recovered more than 20% RW in a BT that did not exit an animal. I have about a 45% record of these bullets NOT exiting game, and of those, the single largest piece was a shed jacket (that in and of it self, a bullet failure) with splinters of lead.. all this an "amazing" depth of less than 10 inches...

When a BT hits ANY 'skinned' (thick or thin) animal, it deforms, mushrooms, and then FRAGMENTS. I have taken deer with neck shots, the last time I used a BT was a 150 gr in a 708 striker pistol. I believe the load was ~2600 fps, range was 117 long steps. I shot the deer just lower than I expected, only hitting soft tissue (a kill shot even with a solid, but a bit lower than I wanted). The BT EXPLODED and in that animals ~4" neck made an exit "wound" from about .75" into the neck, expanding at about 60degrees, exiting by nearly blowing the animals head off.

A simular shot, made with a 225 gr hornady .375 at 2900fps, about 145 long steps, was made on a black buck doe.. within 20# of the deer... the 376 steyr shattered the doe's neck, had an exit wound of about .75, and kept going.

the SD of the 225 was FAR lower, and the bullet was at least 150fps faster than the BT. That bullet did not explode.

BT's are not for game, gents, no more than using a 223 or swift should be acceptable to use on deer. Do these bullets kill animals? Yes.. if the chips were down, and you had to make a long angle shot as your first shot wounded the animal (it happens...) would you trust a BT to humanely take the critter?>

NO you wouldnt.

jeffe

I have NEVER recovered a Ballistic Tip! All of them were pass throughs on deer, all were .277 130's and 150's, and 1 was at 11 paces with a 3100fps impact speed.

The original poster stated that he had plenty of 180 grain Ballistic Tip bullets on hand...would they be good enough to hunt pigs with? The answer is yes. I have harvested about 40-50 truly "wild" free-ranging hogs all on public land in my lifetime. These were all shot by stalking or waiting on stand, none were taken with the aid of dogs. I have shot them with everything from bows and arrows, muzzleloading rifles and pistols, shotguns with turkey loads and buckshot, and centerfire rifles. The hogs have been all sizes from shoats to 300 lbs. I would not hesistate to use 180 grain, 30 caliber ballistic tip bullets on any hog, especially at .308 Win velocities.



X

CDH,
my BP aint up over BTs... especially for someone that says "excessive meat damage" and 300 wsm in the same post.

The bullet failed when it did not retain weight. If the shot had been a texas heart shot, after a fumbled first shot, the animal would have been "killed" and the meat ruined... resulting, in my NOT so humble opinion, in a failure to take game cleanly.

a 22-250 or 220 swift is a fantastic killer... and, as we all know, and even greater WOUNDER of animals... but they take game.

As the normal tracker of the wounded, in our group, I have been the one to follow up on loads of "i misssed it" game...

a shoulder shot with a BT, on HOGS (this is the forum for hogs) that just so happens to slip 3" behind the shoulder means an hour or 2 for me, with a double barrel 12ga and a 45LC ruger.

Do I fail? absolutely... do I try very HARD.. yes I do....

Will I tell the guy with BT's that he has to stay with me the entire time? YUP!!

As a business person, if one makes a product, that has ZERO machine cost associated with it, I do not market another product unless there is a PROBLEM. I NEVER replace an existing product with a higher cost one, unless there is a PROBLEM

just my thoughts on the matters.. post away, as once again I will say "one can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink"

jeffe

I've killed about 50 wild hogs in Georgia during the past 10 years, but only one with a BT. I was walking to my stand and I had a 7mm Mag with me. A group of hogs came out of the thicket about 30 yards to my right. I needed some meat, so I shot the smallest boar who was facing me. The pig moved just as I shot, so I caught him in the shoulder with him facing me dead on. The bullet blew up and caused the most horrendous wound channel I have ever seen. It ruined the front shoulder, rib cage and back ham of that boar. It certainly killed the hog, but the meat damage was unacceptable. I shot another boar last year at the same distance with a 7mm-08 Partition. He dressed 272 and dropped like he had been struck by lighting. There was very little meat damage and the bullet was mushroomed nicely in the dirt right under the hog. In my opinion, the partition is a superior hog bullet. I also like the fail safe. I want to have something left to eat when I'm done if I shoot at close range with a high velocity caliber.

Well, while I tend to agree with Jeffeosso on this, my answer to the original question is that Ballistic Tips will certainly kill a hog, if the shooter is willing to carefully place his shots on larger hogs. Just like with any bullet, but more so with BTs than other tougher bullets, shot placement is critical. I can kill a hog with a .22 LR and wound one with a .458, just depends on where you hit them. On the 50 pound babies choice of bullets doesn't matter much, unless you like to eat them. HOWEVER, personally I would choose a tougher bullet if I was going hog hunting. After all, how much does a box of 100 better bullets cost? How many times do you expect to shoot on your hog hunts?

I certainly wouldn't claim that I'm anywhere near the most experienced hog hunter on this forum but I've killed well over 50 of them, all in hunting situations, not dogging them, and been around another 100 or so that have been shot, so I can claim some modest degree of knowledge about bullet performance on hogs. BTW, we dress and process most of our hogs ourselves, so I get the whole picture as it were. It has been my experience that short of really large dangerous game such as a Cape Buffalo, that for whatever reason, hog tissue brings out the worst in bullets, mostly referring to performance on larger hogs. I am not sure if it is the hair/hide/fat layer or what, but bullets tend to perform poorly on hogs as compared to deer, for example.

When the great Matchking debate was ongoing, I loaded some 168s up in a .30-06 at about 2700fps and went hog hunting. As luck would have it, the first one was relatively large for around here, about 275. He was facing me at a slight quarter angle at about a 100 yards and I shot him at the base of the neck into the chest cavity. He dropped, kicked a few times and that was that. One shot, one kill as the snipers say. HOWEVER, the bullet went into the chest cavity and blew up, shredding his lungs and heart. Biggest piece I recovered weighed 82 grains. I didn't measure it exactly but it didn't exit the other side rib cage, so penetration was less than 10 inches. Now, admittedly BTs are not MKs, but they are not very tough either. So, in this case the bullet performed perfectly in that it more or less instantly killed the animal. Had I hit it a couple of inches to the right on the shoulder, I suspect the animal would not have been recovered.

This is a long way around the bush of saying that I agree with Jeffeosso that I'd choose a better bullet than a BT IF I was deliberately setting out for hogs. IF I was deer hunting with BTs, which I usually don't BTW, and a hog came by, he'd be a shot and likely dead hog. While I don't waste them, around here hogs are vermin and the general attitude is any shot hog is a good hog, recovered or not. Lots of local farmers shoot 'em and leave them.

Good luck hog hunting.

Quote: Allow me to explain BULLET FAILURE.. When a bullet is recovered and/or there is no exit wound, and the largest single fragments weighs LESS than 70%, that bullet has failed. UnQuote.

If what you state above is true, then 90 percent of all hunting bullets fail to perform because the Nosler Partition retains only 60% of it's original weight. Nosler also states very clearly the Accubond will retain 70% of it's weight, again, based on your statement, that would make the Accubond a failure of a hunting bullet.

OK, I am not interested in argueing, and I myself am now loading Accubonds in my 7 mag, and I intend to load it in my son's 270, but I myself have shot mule deer with 130 grain BT's out of my old 270, and 140 grain BT's out of my 7 mag on mule deer. I never lost a deer shooting the BT. The agrument here was that the BT is intended for thin skinned game, that is true. There are two schools of thought on bullet performance for deer. Some want a hole thru both sides ie they want an exit hole for tracking. Others argue they want that bullet to expend all of it's energy within the animal for maximum destruction of tissue, organs, etc, which equates to death for the animal. Myself, I am leaning towards the TSX, Accubond, and Interbond for mule deer loads now, but for different reasons, what if you do encounter a problem bear, etc, I would feel better with something better than a BT.

Another point on the BT, in the 30 caliber, it is a tougher bullet than the lighter, or smaller caliber BT's. Having said all of that, I would use something alittle tougher on wild pigs personally, but I would not be surprized with someone with a 30 caliber using a BT taking care of his pig.

I am also one of those who thinks the BT was or is a much better deer bullet than many give it credit for. I must be lucky because terminal performance I got from the BT's on deer was good, but then, so was my shot placement. It's easy to bash bullets, but funny how all 4 gunsmiths of mine swear by the ballistic tip for deer and antelope...............