Boar Hogs And Bullets - Lock, Stock & Barrel

At Rifle, we try to answer read- ers’ queries in a timely and helpful manner. Most questions of a technical nature are cleared up easily enough by our editorial staff, and advice is provided when requested or deemed necessary. What’s more, since most readers are sportsmen, other less technical topics pop up now and then.

- Lee J. Hoots

Take, for example, letters received in the past few months (and many like them over the years) regarding an appropriate rifle and cartridge for the “biggest and rankest” feral hogs “weighing up to 300 pounds or more!” Three similar notes were mailed by readers who planned out-of-state deer hunts this year and wondered if their favorite rifles chambered for traditional cartridges such as .270 Winchester, 7mm-08 Remington or .257 Roberts would also handle the biggest boars, game that was new to these riflemen.

The topic of pig rifles and cartridges apparently gets too little play in much of the shooting press, where the newest cartridges and long-range potential of bullets with high ballistic coefficients (BC) too often take precedence. The number of feral hogs shot each year is impossible to know because most game departments don’t bother to keep track. The most recent U.S. Geological Survey estimate is more than 6 million feral hogs in the U.S. spread over 35 states, and counting. So, owing to the increasing popularity of hunting non-native, invasive hogs, and the more important need to keep their numbers in check (an apparently impossible task), the subject of hog rifles is worth exploring.

Insight based on nearly four decades of shooting wild pigs with 12-gauge slug guns, AR-type rifles and various bolt rifles chambered for cartridges from the .243 Winchester to the .300 Weatherby Magnum and .50-caliber muzzleloaders in several states may clear up some misinformation and misconceptions. For example, where I’ve hunted them, few truly freerange boars will ever weigh 300 pounds unless fed by a landowner.