I mentioned in an earlier thread that I had purchased a Marlin CB in .38-55 and had sighted it in with Buff Bore 260s using a Weaver 1.5 x 5 scope. Until today the only thing I had shot with it and the Buff Bore (BB) loads was a feral cat at about 110 yards where it gave a satisfying "thump" and sent the cat to the great catnip field in the sky.

At any rate, yesterday my son, 11, and I were fishing on a pond on my ranch and we saw a BUNCH of hogs around the edges and well before dark. I really couldn't believe it. Naturally the guns were back at the truck. So I told him, we'd get them another day and kept fishing.

Today was cloudy and cool which is normally good weather to produce earlier, meaning daylight, hog movements so I waited until he came home from baseball practice about 6 and we went hog hunting. I thought we'd do some stalking, but as luck would have it, drove up to the lake and about 200 yards away I spotted a few hogs wallowing, etc in the reeds. The wind was really coming out of a bad direction, but I told my boy that we'd drive a couple of hundred yards cross wind from them and try to sneak back up on them. With luck, I said, we'll cut them off from the woods and they'll have to come by us. And...for once....it worked out nearly perfectly. I turned the scope down to 1.5x as we walked up where I hoped they would still be.

As I said, I had loaded the Marlin up with BB .38-55s after sighting it in and had used one shot to kill that cat. I think that left 8. Since the most hogs I've ever personally shot at one time until today was 2, I figured that was plenty with some to spare. Wrong......My son had his Ruger .243 with a 6x Leupie on it. Turned out to be too much scope for this situation. At any rate, we sneaked up and I could only see one hog in the water's edge in front of us. With the gun wt. my son is only fair offhand, so I told him I was going to shoot the one we could see and to get ready. Bam...at about 40 yards thru the shoulder, the hog keeled over in the water, never took a step. Very good performance for the BB loads. Sheeit, there were hogs coming from every which direction trying to get behind us into the woods. After that, it was like a shooting gallery. My son said that Marlin sounded like a machine gun. Hogs ran in front of us, behind us, and a couple went away from us. 8 shots later, I was dry and my son had shot a couple of times but was having trouble seeing anything but black when he aimed at a hog. He handed it to me and I took 3 more shots with him handing me his last spare bullet. Killed two.....well, I had to finish one of them off later.....with the .243, and flat missed the last one running at about 80 yards. Shot over his back. When the smoke had cleared I could only see 3 dead hogs. I told my boy, that I knew I was hitting most of them and there had to be a bunch of them around. Long story short, I had to finish a couple off across the creek with a .308 (didn't have any more .38-55s with me) but we had 8 hogs down. Seven were full grown, biggest was a boar about 250 and the rest were sows running between about 100 and 200. One was a piglet I shot when I didn't realize there were more and more coming.

Geesh, 8 dead pigs....I called for help and we just finished cleaning and cutting them up.

The Buffalo Bore .38-55s performed extremely well. Althoug we were in a rush, I think most of them completely penetrated and we didn't recover any bullets. I'll check the gut piles when the buzzards finish. Did find one .243 Rem core-lokt 100 grainer and it was still together but much lighter.

They're pricey but the Buffalo Bores will do the job and I have a good feeling for the Marlin rifle as well.

I've since got some brass and dies and will reload from now on. That $1.75 a shot haunts my Scottish ancestors but the money was well spent today.