As had been said before strange things happen when you go out hunting, and any feedback on what may have happened would be welcome.
Last Friday night 19:00 I was sitting in a shooting box on the edge of a large forestry block in Germany. Out comes a single boar at 60m and starts rooting around. I take a supported shot with a Sauer 202 7x64 using 175gn(11.2gm) RWS T-mantel. The scope is a Zeiss 3-12x56 with illuminated reticule.
THe boar dropped to the groud immediately at the shot and after a little bit of movement went quite still. I watched and waited five minutes and all remained still. I then phoned the forester to say we had a boar. Boar still there. I stand up start to get out of the shooting box to check the animal when I notice a second boar close to were I shot the first. With trophy fees for boar at up to 1800 euro I quickly checked were mine was and he had disappeared QED this was my boar walking slowly but with a normal step back into the wood. By the time I had the rifle ready he disapperared into the wood.
I was not stupid enough to go following him up in the dark so I marked the initial wound-bed and we returned in the morning with two teckles who are trained to follow blood.
In the morning we examined the wound bed which had a smallish patch of normal blood say 50ml but no bristles/hair/lung/liver anything just normal blood. Nothing back 30 m along the possible path of the bullet. The blood trail was minimal and disappeared at 60m into the wood. The teckles lost the trail once the blood stopped. We then decided to contact the bloodhound trackers who,s dogs are trained on foot-scent but this being a full moon and Saturday one was not answering his phone's and the other was working with a large push-hunt about an hour away. Light was going so the tracking was defered to the morning at 10.00 as the guy had an hours drive. THe whole thing repeated itself but the trail and the boar were
gone.
the trackers initial thoughts were that it was a high spine shot which concussed the beast and then he recovered and went off. However IMHO there was absoluly no hair anywhere and if you hit a beast high on the back there should be loads of it. - the mystery of hunting.
I aimed just behind the shoulder mid way up and he dropped so I think the bullet entered and deflected off a rib up and back possibly hitting the liver and not exiting. I would have thought it impossible for that king of bullet not to exit but remember the muntjac and the 308. The shot/shock dropped him and then he recovered, the only blood trail coming from the >7mm entrance wound which sealed itself. There are experts on this forum who will know if you can still follow up foot scent at 36 hours but in a busy public forest I think we were too late.
All the people involved were absolutly fantastic and seeing the dogs working was a course in its own right. I am sure the boar died of a liver shot but possible 1-3 km away. The forester may still find him but the scent wont need a tracking dog with this warm weather.
THe lessons learned are that im my book 7x64 is minimum and my 375 would have been better. Secondly never ever ever take you eyes off a dead animal even in the dark.

Mark

Mark, sorry to hear this. I am no expert on Boar physiology, but is it possible your shot went above the lungs but made it under the spine? Or maybe made a very high lung hit? I have hit deer in the liver a few times, they bleed out very quick.

These things will happen. I have had to bring the GSP in on wounded deer a couple of times, while it is not something I want to have to do, it is a great process to watch.

Mark my condolences - how ever, after reading your description and after my experience with tracking wounded boars I would dare to claim following: RWS T mantel is a soft bullet, the fact that boar (dont know what size - if big - they have an inch thick hard hide on their shoulder area) dropped and after litle movement went still we could presume that it was hit in the spine, that may as well be in the neck area. At night usually it is quite hard to tell if animal isn't quartering a bit (I assume boar was quartering away - a bit - also confirms that there was no hair, because bullet sliped in between the hair)- so it may be that bullet actually deflected after passing the thick hide, but not to the back (in that case boar wouldn't remain still) but to the front - through the shoulder muscle - to the neck - hit the spine (didnt broke it) and didn't exit. Yes sometimes you can track on 36 hrs old track, but according to my experience this boar is still well alive and will have to be shot once more. I am quite supersticious about boars and that brought me to 9,3 and hard bullets.

Sorry to hear this Mark, but as you know - these things happen every now and then, no matter how careful you try to be. I know that from experience.

Not having much experience about boars myself -shot my first this August - I was surprised to find out how low their spine actually goes in the shoulder area.

My shot was a broadside shot from 50 metres with a 7x65R and a 150 gr Nosler Partition and it dropped the animal at once. It was dark and I waited for 10 minutes before my guide showed up and we went to check the animal and he was apparently dead, the entrance hole being visible just behind the shoulder in the middle. We put him in the back of our truck and drove to collect another hunter a couple of miles away. As he opened the backdoor to see the boar, he quickly jumped away and yelled: "It's alive!" As we all took a better look, the boar really seemed as it's lungs were still working, but since it didn't move anything else and we didn't want to pull it out, or shoot or stab it at the back of the truck, we closed the hatch and drove to the camp. As we pulled the pig out of the truck there, he was definitely dead. When we opened him we could see that the bullet had hit him in the spine and a small part of the lungs too. He probably died to that inner bleeding from the lungs, but not at once. Seeing the entrance wound I would have thought the bullet must have hit in the middle of the lungs and about 3" below the spine, but the spine was really much lower than I thought.
A lesson learnt by a lucky shot.

It sounds to me as though you missed the lungs high and the bullet went between the top of the lungs and the spine. My guess is that the boar will probably survive the shot and be fine in a month or two. I don't think that a larger caliber bullet would have made any difference. Was the pig angling towards you or away from you when you shot?

http://www.texasboars.com/anatomy.html

I have the same opinion like Mousy, that hits are called in german "Krellschuss", at the first moment the animals are immobile, but after some time, they are able to move on. Now, in automn or winter, such a shot is not deadly, in summer such shots are often deadly because of diverse infections.
Sometimes you have the chancs with a good "Schweißhund" to get such a wounded animal, but the part you don´t get is quite high.
Now, while the full moon phase, called the "boar-sun", such shots are quite often and tracking these wounded animals is usual job for me.

Mark,

I'm very sorry that you "lost" your Boar; what a disappointment! Perhaps another time. Diana plays some strange quirks with us when we are hunting.

Two things here from my POV. One the "supported shot" which tend to go high if one doesn't ensure your hand or something soft is under the forearm. Using the wooden High Seat rails as a support will definately put your shot high.

Two, the famous "Krellshuss"! I'm with Mouse & M-F. Any Wild Boar that drops to the shot is suspect in my book and you should have remained in a shooting position with the rifle loaded. VERY few chest area hit Wild Boar drop & succumb at the shot. The vast majority bolt a distance with a good heart/lung shot.

As Mouse & M-F have related I suspect you delivered a "Krellschuß" and temporarily stunned the Boar who after recovering simply got up and walked away.

The Boar's bristles which are directly above the shoulders & neck often give a very deceptive image when shooting at silhoueted animals in the dark. The bristles can be as long a 5"-6" at this time of the year giving the chest area a much larger apperance than it actually is. I've seen plenty of Wild Boar during the Drive Hunting season with such wounds that appear as someone has slashed the Boar with an axe above the withers or back and other than a large gaping flesh wound they are still quite healthy & active.

Not to troll your hunting story but like JHT, saw a "dead" boar rise from it's coffin and trash a guys 4-wheel drive vehicle by jumping into the Driver's compartment. This while I was sitting on the tailgate with it's owner drinking coffee.

Another time a perfectly heart/lung shot 25 Kg "Frischling" revived itself and bolted after laying "dead" for @ 10 minutes. It ran into a tree @ 50 meters away and finally expired. I know because I was in the High Seat with a German Forester. Neither of us could shoot because at the time I was offering him a liquid beverage from my hip flask!

It is like Gerry wrote, if a boar is immediatly lying without a hit on the brain or the spinal cord, than something goes wrong!
The spine of a boar is sitting not so high as on other animals like deer. There are big muscles on the top of the spine and shots through these muscles often produce a heavy punch on the spine, sometimes parts of the spine are broken without destruction of the spinal cord. The animal is paralysed for some minutes, this lameness is going away slowly, the first steps are often very slow and unsure, but with the continual loss of the lameness the movement is becoming more and mor sure. Sometimes there are big holes on the back, but these animals are very, very strong!
If you are tracking such mounded boars, sometimes they are very unfriendly animals...

Obviously in Europe it's not the practice to immediately dress out the animal as I always do ! That would save you from the 'rising from the dead 'problem . Why don't you do that ??

Sorry man, both for you and the boar.
Hopefully the boar will recover or he died fast without any suffering.
The answer to this riddle sure lies in the replies you got in the posts above.
I dont want to sound careless or so, but dont blame yourself. Everyone have to realize that if you hunt a lot, something like this will happen , sooner or later.
Hopefully you`ve done your "share of bad luck".
Better luck next time.

Hi Mete

I dont think the boar would have much appreciated me trying to dress him out just as he came round from someone (namely me) having just shot at him. Especially in the dark.
There is a saying that its "the dead ones that will kill you"

Mark

quote:

Originally posted by MarkH:

....THe lessons learned are that im my book 7x64 is minimum.......

Mark

I'm really sorry. I totally agree; my standard caliber for driven hunt of boar is 300 WM, loaded with 200 gr. Norma Oryx bullets. Could your bullet have crossed any brushwood, prior to hit the boar?

Two years ago my son shot a boar with a 35 Remington 200 grain bullet. He hit the boar high on the front shoulder broadside. We know that because we were on the ground and less than 40 yards. The boar dropped to the shot and thrashed around for a while. He got up, fell down, got up and fell down. The guide said you hit him good and the boar jumped up and took off for parts unknown. We found blood for a few feet, no hair or bone. Then he was gone forever. A friend said he saw the boar running away with blood high on the shoulder.
We hunted him for three days and never saw him again. I still had to pay for him as you draw blood and you bought him.
Last year we tried this again. My son hit a boar behind the shoulder with a .308 170 grain bullet when the boar twitched he hit him again. This time my son shot a second time so fast I thought he had a semiauto, but this time we brought home the bacon

quote:

Originally posted by mete:
Obviously in Europe it's not the practice to immediately dress out the animal as I always do ! That would save you from the 'rising from the dead 'problem . Why don't you do that ??

One reason to this is probably that lots of boar hunting is done in dusk or moonlight from high seats. It's easier to gut and field dress the animal in a place which has proper lighting, so they are taken to the slaughterhouse in one piece. We also do the same quite often with whitetails here in Finland.

quote:

This time my son shot a second time so fast I thought he had a semiauto, but this time we brought home the bacon

Once again confirming the wisdom of the saying:
"if it's worth shooting, it's worth shooting twice".

Did I read right? Is the trophy fee on a boar in Europe 1800 EUROS?

Hi John

Yes the State maximum fee is 1800 based on the size of the tusks. When there is only one boar in the field and its moonlight then trying to establish how big the boar is is difficult.

Regards

Mark

John,

Don't start raising your fees - just yet.....

Each German State (the 18 of them) have different Trophy Fee schedules. Yes, a life-time whoomper trophy will set you back some serious cash but the Day-In, Day-Out Garden Variety Wild Boar don't even begin to touch that Fee.

Sorry to hear that Mark. Anyone who hasn't been in your shoes though hasn't done much hunting of boar at night, or is just plain awfully lucky that his day hasn't come yet!! Interesting but quite 'normal' -- not much I can add to what's already been said and I agree with the 'krellschuss' guess. A couple comments -- I always say any shot you take in daylight is twice as hard as night, and I'll double what was said about the angle, very difficult to tell in the dark. What you think is a perfect broadside is often a quartering. If it looks quartering in the dark, then it is almost head or tail on. Boar can take a hit and keep on trucking, and I don't follow them through the briars at night either, unless it was a smallish one and I'm confident of a good hit, or in some cases when I've got a hunting buddy -- then I send him in first, like a dog , just kidding. The boar in my avatar took an '06 180gr Speer GS, thot it was broadside, it wasn't, ran 80 meters w/o a drop of blood, found next day w/bloodhound. Shot entered shoulder and diagonally away towards rear but did not exit.

And I'll add that is is much easier to field dress in a cool room (wildkammer) with hoist, lights, running water, etc -- not to mention in some lands/states if not all you must collect blood, muscle sample, and the 'pfeil' -- the part where the diaphram connects to the spine -- tested for trichinosis/disease, etc. This would be much more problematic without a hoist and lights in a dark field. Finally, like Gerry said, you must be hunting trophy Keilers of more than 5 years old w/20cm & up tusks if the trophy fee is that much. Most are much cheaper, if not no-cost, Waidmannsheil, Dom.

Hi Folks

It seems to me just a whole line of small errors that compounded into the loss.
1. Too soft/fragile a bullet
2. Slight misplacement of shot
3. Missed the moment it stood up for a second shot.
4. Unfortunate delay in follow-up.

What weight/type of 7mm bullet would you professionals recommend excluding Barnes??

Mark

Hi Mark,
In my experience here in Argentine Patagonia, having used mostly a 7x57 and also a few times a 7x64 on wild boar and red deer, I cannot recommend a better bullet than the RWS H-Mantel and, close second, the Nosler Partition. At the distance you usually shoot at night, the 173 gr H-Mantel in the 7x64 (or in the 7x57) must be perfect. In my experience it allways do an outstanding work in the animal: penetate, exploding the front part inside making a tremendous damage and, also in my experience, allways exit leaving a good blood track.
My Best Wishes for your next hunt !

Patagon Hunter.

- CDP
- A frame
- Naturalis P.S. (not sure if available in 7 mm)...

weight - as heavy as possible

Mark,

I load 7x64's for one of my hunting buddies and he has shot a quite a few pigs of every size from small to large with an old vanilla-flavored Hornady 154 gr. Round Nose. You wouldn't believe the number of 7x64's that are used on Piggies here in the Fatherland, many ,many ,many! Plugs 'em every time. Plus you had the perfect optic onboard, too.

Don't be too hard on yourself pal - these things happen. Just like everyone has mentioned. I would seriously hold any hunter who hunts alot suspect if they related they had a PERFECT record. All sorts of weird things happen out here in the dark.

For next time though. If a Pig drops instantly at the shot; reload and attempt to get your night vision back asap ('cause the muzzle flash seriously degrades it right after the shot) hold the rifle on the Pig and WAIT. If it twitches again after that - give'em another one.

As Gerry said!


I don´t like to keep on shooting, making holes and damageing meat in an all ready dead animal but when it comes to boars, I will not hesitate to take a coup dé gras, or in real life turns a insurance shot.

With some experience of boars and a larger experience of training to shoot at people ie leo/mil style training the rule is always to take at least one insurance shot when you still have the weapon/rifle/gun trained at the target.

At hunts in Skåne where my father owns land, there have been cases not unlike the one MarkH has had.

The boar "heals" its wound due to the fact that there are skin, fattie tissue, ligament tissue and then flesh, different layers that all run in different directions in the body of the boar al due to it´s construction.

Hence the no blodtrace situation.

In short, I am sorry for your loss Mark, better luck next time.

Best of regards Chris N

Mark, I´m quite sure, that it was not a mistake of the 7x64 and the Teilmantelrundkopf (RN), sorry to say, it was poor shot-placement. If you are looking for a good bullet in the 7x64, look to the 160grs Speer MagTip, the 160grs Nosler Part. and perhaps to the new Lapua-Naturalis, which I use with great succes in .30 and 6,5mm, but without own experience in 7x64.

The Czech guys we hunted with last year told us to hold lower and further forward on a boar than you would on a deer. Also, they said to always try and break a shoulder if possible.

My total of boar is one only, so my advice is second hand at best.

Shooting **behind** the shoulder is usually a mistake unless the animal is facing away from you diagonally. If you follow the anatomy link that I posted above, you will see that the heart/lungs area on boar is very far forward. In some circumstances, the paunch can almost extend forward up to the leg.

The anatomy cut-away shows that the heart/lungs on boar are fairly small, quite low and further forward than they are on deer. I would even go so far as to say that the behind-the-shoulder shot (except when facing away) shouldn't be taken on pigs. Either through the shoulder low, or else draw a mental line from the eyes to the point of the shoulder. The spine will run along that line and a bullet from any decent caliber will kill the pig quickly.

Finally, someone whose opinion I respect made the observation that if a pig squeals when you've taken a body shot, keep shooting. It means that you've missed at least one of the lungs.

About shooting at night, I have found that in addition to silencing the gunshot and taking off recoil, the moderator also takes off the muzzle flash which is a great benefit, should you need to take a quick second shot. Because of these three benefits I highly recommend moderators to everyone who has the chance to use them especially when hunting in dark.

I think, that there is nothing wrong with a shot behind the shoulder, but it is correct, that an animal with a broken shoulder has more movement-problems. But don´t forget, that a big boar (Keiler) has very massive bones and many bullets don´t penetrate both shoulders!If the shot is sitting in the heart-lung-area, normally every boar will die very fast. Perhaps it will run some yards more with a shot behind the shoulder, but it will die very, very fast! If the shot is sitting in front of the diaphragm, all is o.k.! I never had a problem with a boar with a shot in the heart-lung-aera, what I could not say about red-deers, where I had often troubles with high lung shots!

Hi,

I have shot many Big Red Deer here, near Bariloche, some with the heavy winter coat, and many wild boar here, not very big, and some very big in central Argentina, mostly in the south-west region of the Province of Cordoba.
I used more the 7x57 and also a .375 H&H with a variety of bullets (there isn´t a .375 H-Mantle). With the H-Mantle in the 7mm the efect on any shoulder or frontal/quartering hit have been IMPRESSIVE on either species. I used, use and still have some rather old steel jacket cooper nose H-Mantel, both in bullets (green plastic cilindrical boxes with 25 bullets) and factory rounds. I am surprissed not to hear more commentaries about the use of that great bullet by the European hunters.
PH

ditto Monastery Forester - just one thing - there is a definte difference between night/day shooting - beware of low night shots

1. mind the angle from the highstand when animal is close
2. usually with the moonlight there is a deep shadow under the boar that makes animal looking lower than it actually is and most (~80 %) of trackings after night shot boars are low hits usually in one of the front leg

...to avoid that, I advise clients not to start their aim rising from beneath the animal going up but from the top downwards (the top line of the animals silhouette is usually the only definite height estimation) - same goes with bears...

oh and I found the story that matches my guess stated above (after all it is just a guess) if that was the case, Mark you were very close to bag that boar (scroll down to "mley 1" post):

necked boar

Hello Mouse, how is your tracking-season? Here, I have a lot of trackings nearly every day while the moon-season, but also a lot of work after the "Drückjagden". I`m working with two HS.

...there has been a good yield of beech nut this year so boars are mainly staying out of the feeders so far, also with lack of snow we have hard times to locate them for driven hunts - tho managed to get some - tracking business as usuall - it is good you use two dogs for tracking I try to manage with one wishing many times to have another there - after having some close calls with cheeky pigs so far (closest was a ball with boar shot in the sternum with .243 winnie, that managed to slaughter my dog and rolled me down - back in 01) you have a strong point there...

Hi Guys

The shot was behind the shoulder as the boar was parallel to the side of the box at about a 30-40 degree angle snout facing to the right so I was hoping to come in behind the 'elbow' to get to the heart and lungs. Obviously it didnt work. Perhaps I was trying to be too clever.
Mouse/M-F would you go straight up to a downed animal like this to check/finishing shot or would you wait.

Mark

quote:

Originally posted by MarkH:
....Out comes a single boar at 60m...... I take a supported shot with a Sauer 202 7x64 using 175gn(11.2gm) RWS T-mantel........
THe boar dropped to the groud immediately at the shot and after a little bit of movement went quite still. I watched and waited five minutes and all remained still.........
Mark

Everythings sounds good, except the 5 minutes waiting, what were you waiting for??
Its my natural intension to make my way to a downed pig without too much delay,But I do so with caution and readiness for another shot. I usually wait a few moments after the initial shot to see what hog will do next,but once hes respectfully down,I dont generally waste much time getting closer to him to properly reassess.
Some time ago we were cruizing a wheat crop at night and spotted a boar,the handiest thing was a Rem87012gPump-SSG load,the boar was at the outer limits of that weapon,took the shot any way,he just dropped in the wheat and folded up,stone dead when we got there. It suprises me how hogs die to SSG loads, I still dont understand it....Then you have solidly hit beasts with more than adequate cartridges(175gn7mm) just walking away, dont understand that either.

...don't be so hard on yourself - its just hunting after all - I remember an old hunter from our places that used his 7x57R with soft SPCE bullet from Sellier & Bellot toped with 4x32 scope for anything, that on case of shooting boars in the night said: "sometimes it is the backside infront so: not behind the shoulder but in the middle you should aim" - this philosophy has its own back rents but mostly worked ok for the guy - if bullet gets in the chest or belly cave the animal is doomed it just take more or less tracking next day - as M-F said boars are quite soft for good shots, but in case of bad hits they are firmly clinging to their lives - I had to track a boar that has his milt shot apart for couple of kilometers the next day and after 15 hours from the initial shot he was still on his feet ready to fight...when shooting I always wait (with rifle ready), after a minute or so I light a cigarete and enjoy those sweet minutes of satisfaction calming down, before the bloody work...as you said - never take your eyes off a downed animal - I allways approach the dead animal with rifle in hand and if the animal is not within sight I leave it till next morning when I come back and check it out with dog...after initial shot there is no hurry - even at day shots that went bad there is always wise to leave the animal for 3-4 hours to calm down and let the wound do its job - mostly wounded animal would withdraw just as far as it would feel secure and find a good place to rest and if we push it from there right after shooting it would go as far as it could, making tracking unnecesary longer and more difficult...there are exceptions in case of grazing shots, shots to the head (snout) - and there is still going dilema about shots in the front legs...

quote:

Originally posted by MarkH:
Hi John

Yes the State maximum fee is 1800 based on the size of the tusks. When there is only one boar in the field and its moonlight then trying to establish how big the boar is is difficult.

Regards

Mark

Dificult is an understatement. For me at least it has always been a matter of checking once he's on the ground but I'd be afraid to put him on the ground for 1800 E. You could hunt 5 days here and take half a dozen boars for that money. Just how big of tusks would an 1800 E boar have?

quote:

Originally posted by Gerry:
John,

Don't start raising your fees - just yet.....

Each German State (the 18 of them) have different Trophy Fee schedules. Yes, a life-time whoomper trophy will set you back some serious cash but the Day-In, Day-Out Garden Variety Wild Boar don't even begin to touch that Fee.

No worries Gerry, no fee raising here. Actually I've been thinking of lowering fees for high seat hunts and driven hunts, the wild boar is very destructive and breed like crazy, as I'm sure you well know.

Mark,
by the way and so you don't feel quite so bad about what happened I will confess to having wounded and lost at least 4 wild boar that I remember. Night hunting by the light of the moon is , at least to me, a very difficult thing. The thing is, the ones that get away, they keep growing in your memory untill they become the largest you have ever shot at.

There is always a next time.
Cheers.

John

John,

Dom mentioned something about the Fees on Boars several threads ago.

Each German State (sorry; I put "18" (eighteen) on another thread; musta been a typo there are 16 German States). They all have different Trophy Fees but generally the really steep part of the Fee Schedule normally starts around 5 years of age & >20 cm tusks. After that it pretty much goes straight up!

Hi guys!

The Swedish hunting association has created a short training game for just this thing.

http://www.jagareforbundet.se/webbjaktskolan

click the link and the orange pic, you will have your choice of, Moose, red deer and boar there. practice your shots and even though the info is in Swedish one can easily understand the results of each hit.

Enjoy.

/Chris