Autumn rolls around and I'm a basket-case -- I've got specially worked up loads, a handful of carefully sharpened knives, I've got my hunting strategies all laid-out, and I am focused and ready for the hunt.Springtime rolls around and I am just ready to get out and soak up some sunshine, walk around and enjoy Creation, kick back and have some fun.For me, there are fundamental differences in autumn hunting and spring hunting -- autumn hunting is a passion, spring hunting is a vacation.Balance is good.
Balance can come in many flavors.Being a Southern Boy at heart, one of my favorite flavors is Carolina barbeque, so I have an inherent bias in favor of healthy supplies of pork in the freezer.Not surprisingly, this bias tends to focus my springtime hunting activities in the direction of hog hunting.For the last 20 years, I have had the privilege of living in the Pacific Northwest, so my autumn/winter hunting has focused on mule deer, elk and antelope (but it has included other species like whitetail and buffalo as well).But springtime rolls around and I like to shoot pigs!
Those of you who have been around HHI for a while may remember that I like to cast my own bullets and that I prefer to hunt with hollow-point bullets that I've cast myself.Over the years, I've shot several mule deer with cast HPs and have been very pleased with their performance.I was curious to see how they would perform on heavier, thicker-skinned critters.Hogs have much thicker skin than deer, as well as heavier muscle and thicker bones.A hog is by no means a Cape buffalo, but it is a step up from a run of the mill deer or antelope, and I was curious to see how my cast HPs would stand up to this added resistance.
The handgun hunter is faced with a number of challenges -- more difficult shot execution; more limited range (relative to the rifleman); some bullets perform well at handgun velocities, others don't; bullet manufacturers sometimes drop certain bullet designs that work well at handgun velocities, etc.Handgun hunting is a fascinating and rewarding pastime, but the bullet manufacturers don't always cater to our whims (sometimes yes, sometimes no).That's OK, we hold our own independence in our own two hands -- all we need to do is to do is to think about our needs, select a suitable bullet design and cast our own bullets (solid or expanding).Cast bullets give us a great deal of versatility.This, in turn, can make us independent of what the jacketed bullet manufacturers turn out, and allows the bullet caster to have a level of consistency not necessarily available to others.
While cast HPs have numerous advantages (performance, cost, consistency, etc.), they also have their limitations.If you run a cast HP at 2000+ fps, it IS going to fragment and go into little tiny pieces.For the tradition-minded handgunners who want to run cast HPs at 850 fps, there will commonly be little or no expansion (unless they are cast VERY soft, e.g. 40-1).As a general statement, cast HPs tend to do their best work between about 1000 and 1600 fps -- note that this velocity range very nicely encompasses the velocities of typical magnum revolvers (e.g. 1200-1400 fps).As a result of their expansion, some penetration depth is sacrificed, so I tend to favor cast HPs that are somewhat heavy for caliber, which gives a very satisfying combination of expansion and penetration.Over the past few years, I’ve shot several hogs with cast HPs, and had friends who have shot hogs with HPs that I’ve cast for them, or in some way assisted with.The purpose of this article is to summarize those results so that others can judge performance for themselves.
.40-50 Sharps Straight/403149 HP (315 grains).A number of years ago, I wrote up a project for The Sixgunner which was inspired by JD’s Woodswalker concept.I rechambered a 10” 10mm TC barrel to .40-50 Sharps Straight, with the intent of reproducing the original BP ballistic level from the 10” tube (the original factory load produced 1410 fps with a 265 grain bullet).In particular, what I was looking for was a .40 caliber 300+ gain cast HP, somewhere in the 1300-1400 fps range.The 10mm TC barrel had a very cast bullet friendly 1 in 16” twist, making it ideally suited to such a project.JD’s Woodswalker concept was built around the idea of “kicking the bushes and seeing what came out”, and having a light, quickly handled handgun that could quickly deliver a lethal blow at short to moderate range.I thought that the .40-50 Sharps Straight, with a 300+ grain cast HP at 1300+ fps, fit into that vision rather nicely.
Well the original load development was carried out using a variety of cast bullets weighing from 220 to 330 grains, but they were all solids.Best accuracy was obtained using 3031 and 4895.Velocities of 1300-1500 fps were easily obtainable, and accuracy was good with a variety of loads.Last winter I found out about Erik Ohlen and Hollow Point Bullet Mould Service (http://www.hollowpointmold.com/, modify@hollowpointmold.com, (541)738-2479).I had a spare single-cavity Ideal 403149, the old 330 grain round nose with three grease grooves, made for the .40-70 and .40-90 Sharps (both the Straight and Bottlenecked versions of these cartridges).I sent this mould off to Erik and asked him to convert it to drop HP bullets with a .120” cavity that was .400" deep, tapered and had a rounded HP tip.The mould came back modified exactly as requested and it cast beautiful bullets right away.They weighed 315 grains, and were .405" in diameter (which is just perfect for this particular gun).Load development revealed that 35.0 grains of 4895 delivered 1320 fps and very good accuracy.Spring had come and it was time to go hunt hogs!
On this particular trip, I was breaking in two first-time hog hunters, so I was primarily concerned with getting them good shot opportunities, and then I would focus on getting my own hog after that.Well, shortly after they had their two hogs down, I was given a very nice 35-40 yard broadside opportunity, and the .40-50 Sharps Straight Contender quickly jumped into action.The 315 grain 403149 HP hit the 250 lb sow just behind the left shoulder.She spun around and trotted quickly away from me for about 10-15 feet and then collapsed, with a geyser of blood coming out of her right shoulder, so I knew right away that the 403149 HP had exited.Examination of the wound channel during the gutting and skinning chores revealed a 1 1/4” hole through both lungs, with about 6” of bloodshot tissue surrounding it.On the inside of the ribcage, there were holes the size of a half dollar, but the exit wound on the farside hide was only about the size of a nickel (but it had bled freely).Clearly, the 315 grain 403149 HP had expanded nicely, and punched right on through that thick pigskin.There was very little bloodshot meat around the bullet hole (presumably due to the moderate velocity of the .40-50 Sharps Straight Contender).
.44 Magnum/RCBS 44-300-GCSWC HP (297 grains).Earlier this spring I shot another meat hog (I’m an alumnus of the University of North Carolina, and I wanted some fresh pork to make some Carolina barbeque for the ACC and NCAA basketball tournaments; UNC won the national championship, so it must have worked!).For this hunt, I was using a 8 3/8” S&W Model 29-5 that I bought from my dear friend Rob Applegate.I had it loaded with a 297 grain cast HP based on the RCBS 44-300-GCSWC mould that Erik Ohlen had converted for me (.150” diameter cavity, .250” deep, with a 7 degree taper, and a rounded tip).This bullet has proven to be uniformly accurate in all of the half dozen revolvers I’ve shot it in (although not all of them will shoot it to point of aim).Loaded over 21.0 grains of Winchester 296, this 297 grain cast HP delivers 1325 fps from the long-barreled Smith.
The hog hunt was in early March, and the weather had been cold and wet.The ranch was extremely muddy.Fortunately, the animals were concentrated down in the basin near the lower elevation water holes to get out of the icy winds up in the hills.I found a nice 175-lb meat hog on the edge of the woods at about 25 yards, and punched him right behind the left shoulder with one of these 297 grain HPs.He flopped over onto his side with a grunt, kicked twice and died.During the gutting/skinning process it became clear that the front half of both lungs were shredded and bloodshot and that the bullet had exited right through the middle of the right shoulder.The holes on the inside of the ribcage and the damage to the lung tissues clearly showed that the cast HP had expanded well.In this case there was a modest amount of bloodshot meat, but that was probably due to the bones that were hit as a result of the shot placement.
.44 Magnum/Lyman 429640 HP (285 grains).One of my compadres this spring was Rick Kelter (the webmaster of the Los Angeles Silhouette Club; www.lasc.us) and he was looking to make meat with a modified version of the Lyman 429640 (originally the Devastator HP).In this case Rick had Erik make a new HP pin for the Devastator mould with the same configuration of the 300 grain RCBS mould described above (.150” pin, .250” deep, 7 degree taper and rounded tip).Rick picked out a nice little sow (about 225-250 lbs) and placed his shot superbly, just behind her left shoulder, about halfway up.He was shooting this 285 grain HP out of his Ruger Super Blackhawk at about 1325 fps, and the bullets were cast of WW alloy with about 2% tin added.The shot knocked the sow off her feet, but she quickly got up and trotted off.He followed her for a quite a ways, and was eventually able to get a few other running shots off, two of which hit her (low in the throat).She holed up in some brush and Rick was able to track her into the thicket and put a finisher through the top of her head.Post-mortem revealed that the first bullet had failed miserably -- the bullet had fragmented and penetrated less than 2”, it did not even penetrate inside the ribcage, in fact it did not even break the ribs!I would have thought that any 285 grain .44 Mag bullet at 1320 fps, regardless of design or alloy, would have penetrated more than 2”, but not this time!Rick followed up and made sure the animal wasn’t lost.As for the cause of the failure, we haven’t figured that one out yet -- Rick did the “hammer-smash test” and they did not shatter.I think the basic design is a good one, but this one bullet failed and I don’t have a good explanation as to why.
.44 Magnum/Lyman 429421 HP (240 grains).In contrast, the previous spring I shot a 350-lb boar with a 429421 HP at 1350 fps from my pet 5” S&W 629 -- now keep in mind the 429421 has a deeper HP cavity and weighs only about 240 grains -- and it blew through that boar like he wasn’t even there!Both the entrance and exit holes bled freely, and the holes on the inside of the ribcage clearly showed that the 429421 HP had expanded superbly.
.44 Special/Lyman 429421 HP.Several years ago, I sent my esteemed friend John Taffin some 429421 HPs cast out of 20-1 alloy for his cherished .44 Specials.As he summarized in his excellent book “Single Action Sixguns”, these bullets at 1200 fps authoritatively stopped a pair of big boars that weighed in at about 650 and 550 lbs respectively.John double-tapped each boar (John is fast with a single-action sixgun!), and in each case, one 429421 HP exited, and one 429421 HP stopped underneath the farside hide.Both of the recovered bullets were mushroomed pretty as could be, with excellent weight retention.Yup, the .44 Special, when properly loaded, is still a very special sixgun...
.44 Special/Lyman 429251 HP (240 grains) and .45-70/ Lyman457122 (330 grains).Further evidence of this can be found with a big ol' boar hog that I "collaborated" on a few years ago.This 750-lb boar had been shot with a .45-70 loaded with the 330 grain Gould HP (Lyman/Ideal 457122) at about 1500 fps.This first shot was placed through the shoulders, and passed forward of the heart, and just caught the front 2" or so of the lungs.The bottom line was that the boar was seriously hurt, and limping badly, but was still on his feet and moving, and was showing no signs of going down anytime soon.I was carrying a custom 7 1/2" .44 Special, made on a SS Ruger NM Blackhawk by my good friend Dave Ewer (I chose the larger NM frame for this gun because I had it built specifically to shoot the Keith .44 Special load, and SS so I didn't have to worry about hunting in rainy weather).It was loaded with the Lyman/Ideal 429251 RN-HP over 17.0 grains of 2400 for a measured 1235 fps and superb accuracy.I shot him twice through the lungs with this load, just behind the shoulder, and he went down hard.One of these shots exited, and the other was found underneath the farside hide.It had expanded to .60+ caliber and weighed 190+ grains.The wound tracks showed substantial tissue damage to the both lungs.This boar weighed about 750 lbs and was covered with some very thick hide.The fact that one of these .44 Special punched through that hide after going through a hog of that magnitude amazed me.The 330 grain Gould HP punched through both shoulders, and tore a large hole through the meat in between, and then also exited through that thick hide -- in short, it did everything that could have been asked of it.If that first shot had been placed a few inches farther back to where it could have had more of an impact on the lungs, I believe that none of the others would have been needed.The Gould HP certainly performed up to expectations.
.338 GEF/Lyman 33889 HP (246 grains).Back in 1993, J.D. Jones helped me put together a wildcat for the Contender that was based on the .356 Winchester necked down to .338, with a 40 degree shoulder and the body taper blown out.I named the cartridge the .338 GEF and have used it to take antelope, whitetail, mule deer and wild hogs.From a 12" Contender, it can launch the 200 grain Nosler Ballistic Tip at 2100 fps, and the 250 Nosler Partition at 1900+ fps, and shoots both very accurately.More recently, I was wanting to see how well cast bullets would work in this gun, so I gathered up a handful of moulds and went to work.One of these moulds was a single-cavity Lyman 33889 that I had done a little lathe work on to convert it to drop 246 grain HP bullets.Loaded over 46.5 grains of H4831, this bullet was launched at 1600 fps (exactly the velocity I was looking for with this cast HP), with excellent accuracy.One snowy morning, I found a nice little 225-lb black boar rooting around in the snow and mud and was able to put one of these 33889 HPs right through the middle of his ribcage from about 40 yards away.He trotted away from me for about 15 feet, fell over and rolled back downhill towards me, with a geyser of blood coming out of his right side as his lungs deflated, so it was clear, right then and there, that the cast HP had passed through and whistled off into the muddy hillside behind him.Tracking the wound channel, expansion was excellent, and tissue damage to both lungs was severe.
OK, so over the last several years I've had a lot of fun hunting hogs with cast HPs, and in my experience, the cast HPs have performed admirably.As a general guideline, I wouldn't go any lighter than about 200 grains with a cast HP when hunting hogs, because their thick skin and heavy muscle demands a certain amount of bullet mass for good penetration (and preferably exit); and generally speaking, I wouldn't go any faster than about 1600 fps since higher velocities can cause a cast HP to come unglued, but in my experience a 250+ grain cast HP at 1200-1400 fps does an admirable job of converting a pig into pork.You'll have to excuse me now please, I have to go turn the barbeque...
Hog killed with .338 GEF, Lyman 33889HP
Hog killed with .338 GEF, first shot with solid, finished with 429421 HP Keith from .44 sixgun
.40-50 Contender
Hog shot with .40-50 Contender, showing exit wound
