Technical Issues, But Still Two Hogs Down At Distance

[Double Naught Spy]

Dealing with electronics always seems to introduce another avenue of failure into activities, even if they are necessary. Sometimes, the problem is with the user. This hunt was plagued with two, seemingly unrelated events, but I don't know if me taking everything apart and putting it back together created the 2nd problem or if it is an unrelated glitch or potential scope failure. Time will tell. The first problem was my fault, not keeping a battery fully charged.

First hog down was a nice head shot at 160 yards. The show impacted a tad lower than I would have liked, but the bullet apparently caught the lower portion of the cranium and caused sufficient brain damage. The SST 123 gr. bullet exited out the opposite side. The 2nd hog was shot through the front of the shoulder at 250 yards and the SST 123 gr. bullet exited behind the opposite shoulder. I suspect there was spinal involvement.

I have shot a variety of bullets into hogs, but I keep coming back to SST 123s (and TNT 90s). They just seem to be all around decent performers.

[Constitutionalist]

Always a pleasure! Thanks, DNS!

John

[gwtx]

Good shootin Brian. Hope the bug in your gear just goes away. Maybe it was a "loose disconnection"
Not funny. Thanks for the video. +1 on the 123 SST. It just works. Keep up the good work.

[sundowner]

As always great video Brian , thanks for sharing .

[VASCAR2]

[Double Naught Spy]

If I am going to change caliber, it will be for something strikingly different than 6.5 Grendel. Ben plays with different calibers and rifles and is all over the board, which is sort of cool and completely bewildering to me. I know guys that make tiny incremental changes in caliber, claiming X superiority of a given attribute that I figure in the grand scheme doesn't matter all that much, which is why I would go with a more major change. In all seriousness, I love my Marlin 1895 in .45-70 and if I think I could run a thermal for a long time on it, I would hunt a lot with the Marlin.

There are some real expert gun folks who can readily change between calibers, velocities, etc. and still manage to mentally do windage and elevation on the fly for estimated ranges to hit moving targets. I am just doing well at keeping with with subtle changes in bullet weights and velocities within the Grendel caliber. I went from .308 to 6.5 Grendel due to a medical issue years ago (now over, BTW) and found I was just as effective with the Grendel and so stayed with it. I have a fair understanding of what I can do with it and try to work within those parameters. I am comfortable with what I can do and it can do and so see no need to play with other calibers. That doesn't excite me. Nothing wrong with other folks that like to play with other calibers.

On your 2nd statement, good "shot placement" is all about exterior point of impact, trajectory that the bullet then takes through the body, and how well it penetrates. I say this because people often think that the spot on the outside of the body (actual POA) is what matters and it doesn't, except as a reference. A shoulder shot is often considered good shot placement and on most broadside shots, it is, but on severely quartering away shots, it isn't. A broadside abdominal shot isn't considered a good shot, but a bullet hitting the same place on a quartered away shot certainly can be...if the bullet makes it to the vitals and damages them appropriately.

So what the bullet hits inside the body is what really matters. LOTS of calibers have the ability to get the penetration necessary to hit and do damage to the vital structures. Holes in the meat are often impressive as well and make for good photographs, but meat damage isn't what brings down the animals. Animals die as a result of cessation of brain function and that occurs as a result of blood loss, suffocation, and/or significant CNS damage. The more damage done by the bullet, often the greater the likelihood of a good kill (defined how you want). A deer will likely die just as dead with a .223 FMJ through both lungs as it will with 6.5 Grendel SST 123 gr. through both lungs, but the SST will most assuredly do it faster as it will produce more damage. A larger permanent wound channel is more likely to do more and more significant damage vitals damage than a smaller permanent wound channel. So bullet type DOES matter.

Of course, there are folks that want various types of damage. The type of damage I am after may not be the type of damage you are after. I had a guy noted that he need a bullet that always overpenetrated because he needed to be sure there was an exit wound for a decent blood trail in case his animal ran. His choice of the right bullet for hunting would differ from mine as I don't care if it overpenetrates or not as long as it produces a larger permanent wound cavity.

I often shoot and reshoot hogs. 6.5 Grendel does not reliably produce hydrostatic shock sufficient to shut down the CNS. I don't know that any hunting caliber does for hogs, but larger and faster expanding bullets are more apt to do so, but again, not a 100% thing by any stretch. Larger and faster calibers tend to produce more recoil and have slower followup shots except for those who are better skilled or more well muscled to handle the task. I am not one of those folks, but I can handle a Grendel fairly well, but can't handle a, say, .308 nearly as well.

Given that I often reshoot hogs, people tend to think that my 'shot placement' was poor, that the caliber was insufficient, or that hogs are mythical monsters that just soak up shots and usually, none of these assumptions are necessarily true. I may heart shot or double lung a hog that doesn't go down immediately because it did not suffer the necessary hydrostatic shock to drop it in place. I know it is apt to run for maybe 5-30 seconds and cover a lot of ground. I don't want to have a prolonged search for it. I hate wasting time looking for blood trails in the dark. So I will shoot it again and again until it stops and ideally until it shows no signs of conscious life. Another hog hunter referred to this as "breaking down the hog" and sometimes that is exactly what you have to do to stop them before they get too far away. That hunter, BTW, shot what he thought was the vastly superior 6.8 SPC, LOL.

Bill Wilson claims his .300 Ham'r is a "better killer" than .308 or 6.8 or any other caliber that he has used. This is a really intriguing statement as it shoots the same bullets as .300 BO and 7.62x39 at a slightly faster velocity, but the velocity being much slower than .308. While I am sure he is 100% impartial in his evaluation of the caliber, I have yet to see any actual hard data to suggest there is a magical velocity sweet spot his caliber hits that is between all the rest and I am inclined to believe the Hawthorne Effect is influencing his results. That is something we all have to be careful of when we evaluate performance.

[VASCAR2]

[Double Naught Spy]

Oh sure. Deflection inside the body can and does sometimes happen and is not really predictable. I can't imagine trying to aim at one part and hoping to hit something that is on a different trajectory, but it does happen. Sometimes this can be beneficial, other times, not so much.

I can see the McDonald's commercial for it now. "Off the femur, through the abdomen, circumscribing the rib cage, nothing but heart."