My buddy, Dave, is a Grendel convert. I lured him over from the darkside. He now owns 3.
We got a new property that we had been watching for a while. It is a nifty valley situation where the hogs are usually down in the bottom area or up the north side. Our first pass by the property for the night revealed that the hogs were already there and grazing on the newly spouted plants (winter wheat?).
Dave is shooting Speer TNT 90 gr handloads. I am shooting Federal Fusion 120 gr. factory ammo (recently chorno'd from my rifle at 2480 fps). Our sample wasn't very large and I didn't have much opportunity for necropsy work, but both rounds did alright. Dave had a sub par night. We started off the night by zeroing his gun with one of my suppressors, so that was solid. As near as I can tell, he shot 3 hogs. One that didn't drop (no exit) and that I finished off (large sow), one where the TNT overpenetrated after tearing through the lungs (large sow), and a body shot on a boar (no exit) that we tag teamed and was necropsied. On the boar, a portion of the bullet was found on the opposite side in the skin. On the hogs shot with Federal Fusion, it would appear that I didn't have any rounds remaining inside of the hogs. If there was an entrance, there was an exit. Hide exit wounds on hogs often fail to reflect the damage done inside and when I finger probed wounds through the hide, I found open areas indicating the bullets had expanded. Again on the boar that was partially necropsied, the Federal Fusion round had a small exit hole through the skin and apparently because the hog fell with the exit side up, no blood leaked from the wound. Peeling back the skin revealed a 1/2-3/4" diameter permanent would cavity. Probing the cavity revealed that the bullet passed through the cervical vertebrae, probably through the axis (C2) vertebra based on what I could feel, but maybe also C3. It was a little hard to tell where one stopped and the next started, particularly given the sharp bone shards.
Based on what I saw, which was all pretty cursory, the Speer TNT 90gr. did alright. I would not have expected it to exit at all or necessarily penetrate all that deeply, but it did well. The Federal Fusion penetrated quite well and appeared to expand just fine. The wound channels produced that I could feel and one that I could see indicated a permanent would channel akin to what I expect was the diameter of the bullet, not huge, but respectable.
FYI, the landowner limited the area we could hunt on the property to two adjoining pastures, roughly 40 acres in total. I am not sure the reason for this, but the larger pasture (~23 acres) is where we were seeing hogs previously, so this worked out fairly well for us.
We got a new property that we had been watching for a while. It is a nifty valley situation where the hogs are usually down in the bottom area or up the north side. Our first pass by the property for the night revealed that the hogs were already there and grazing on the newly spouted plants (winter wheat?).
Dave is shooting Speer TNT 90 gr handloads. I am shooting Federal Fusion 120 gr. factory ammo (recently chorno'd from my rifle at 2480 fps). Our sample wasn't very large and I didn't have much opportunity for necropsy work, but both rounds did alright. Dave had a sub par night. We started off the night by zeroing his gun with one of my suppressors, so that was solid. As near as I can tell, he shot 3 hogs. One that didn't drop (no exit) and that I finished off (large sow), one where the TNT overpenetrated after tearing through the lungs (large sow), and a body shot on a boar (no exit) that we tag teamed and was necropsied. On the boar, a portion of the bullet was found on the opposite side in the skin. On the hogs shot with Federal Fusion, it would appear that I didn't have any rounds remaining inside of the hogs. If there was an entrance, there was an exit. Hide exit wounds on hogs often fail to reflect the damage done inside and when I finger probed wounds through the hide, I found open areas indicating the bullets had expanded. Again on the boar that was partially necropsied, the Federal Fusion round had a small exit hole through the skin and apparently because the hog fell with the exit side up, no blood leaked from the wound. Peeling back the skin revealed a 1/2-3/4" diameter permanent would cavity. Probing the cavity revealed that the bullet passed through the cervical vertebrae, probably through the axis (C2) vertebra based on what I could feel, but maybe also C3. It was a little hard to tell where one stopped and the next started, particularly given the sharp bone shards.
Based on what I saw, which was all pretty cursory, the Speer TNT 90gr. did alright. I would not have expected it to exit at all or necessarily penetrate all that deeply, but it did well. The Federal Fusion penetrated quite well and appeared to expand just fine. The wound channels produced that I could feel and one that I could see indicated a permanent would channel akin to what I expect was the diameter of the bullet, not huge, but respectable.
FYI, the landowner limited the area we could hunt on the property to two adjoining pastures, roughly 40 acres in total. I am not sure the reason for this, but the larger pasture (~23 acres) is where we were seeing hogs previously, so this worked out fairly well for us.
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