This question is directed at those hunters who have been fortunate enough to have harvested 1 or more wild hogs and various other game species. In particular, I am curious to hear opinions and experiences from those who have killed hogs and bull elk.

I am firmly convinced, from the animals I've shot, that hogs are distinctly tougher than deer. That's not saying much, as deer are relatively thin-skinned and lightly boned animals. I think we might all agree that hogs are at least 1 step up on the toughness scale, but where do they rank, compared to a bull elk?

__________________
Ask me about QDMA.

I call hogs as 2x tougher than a deer of the same weight. That is, the muscle and bone in the shoulder is about twice as thick as a deer.

Having said that, hogs will lay down and die (sometimes) from stuff a deer would run for miles on. They really aren't 100% comparable as a game animal. But, a good hog bullet will kill a deer, and quite often, a marginal deer bullet will fail on a shoulder shot on a hog.

I have helped butcher an (estimated) 800 lb. elk. Not sure I'd want to be near an 800 pound pig and make it mad by shooting! Still, the shoulders on the elk - although heavy - are not what I would have expected of a really, really, really big pig. I personally will speculate that a pig of the same weight as an elk will have more muscle in the shoulder area, plus the gristle shield. I've seen ~200 pound pigs that had one heck of a shield over the shoulder area..... much thicker than any elk hide.

__________________
MikeG

Frontal shots on some boars is like shooting the blade of a bulldozer, but heart and lung shots behind a foreleg will bring them down with only a shotgun or a 22 Magnum.

One of the hog-hunting guides I talked to in California said that he had customers bring all kinds of powerful magnum rifles, including a 375H&H, to hunt hogs on his place. His personal preference was a 270 Winchester, as a minimum, with a 30 caliber or bigger being a better choice. Still, he stated that he had not seen a cartridge that would reliably drop a large boar with a shot placed behind the shoulder...they would run almost every time. None of the hogs I shot dropped in their tracks, although one of dad's did, when he shot it just above the left eye socket.

I imagine if the poll said "pound-for-pound", the large boar would be considered tougher, but that's not really what I was wondering about. I think of a 270 Winchester as also being a minimum cartridge for elk; I'm sure it has accounted for a large number of both animals, over the years.

__________________
Ask me about QDMA.

Never shot an elk so can't comment on them. I have killed boars, though. Two years ago four of us went for a hunt on private property. One pig was shoulder hit & we never found it. I hit mine in the head, below the ear, with a 180 gr. 308 at about 75 yards. When we got up to the animal it was still trying to get up & really thrashing around. Put another shot in it right away & it died. It was 300 lbs. dressed out at the butchers. I was impressed how tough they are.

__________________
Life is Tough but it's tougher if you're stupid. - Sgt. John Stryker

Hogs are tough but easily killed if the circumstances are favorable. It is when the angle is wrong that things get exciting. Frontal head shots are not a problem with an unalarmed hog. The second hog is another story.
As a kid I had a spectacular failure when I shot just below the horizontal eye line with a 22lr and the pig - 210 pounds on the hoof, weighed with a big spring scale, tore down a feed bunk and blasted through a small fence. Dad killed it with a knife, getting a good gash on the hand for his effort. Dad stepped in between me and the hog, reached down around the muzzle with one hand and cut its throat with the other. My three brothers and I stood slack jawed and have never forgotten that one.
I have written before about some 30-30’s I loaded with very soft cast bullets at low velocity for a friend and he shot a young hog on the point of the shoulder with one. The bullet exploded on the shoulder and did not penetrate at all. The hair was blown from the spot on the shoulder and there was blood on the surface but no penetration.
Hagie and Keith have both written about taking Elk with 30-40 Krag bullets in the lung covered by a cist and healed over. I have a nice elk hide coat and the pockets are made from very thick leather. My uncles felt any good rifle was enough for Elk but I prefer the .35’s (358 Winchester and 35 Whelen). Most any good center fire will do the job, if the shooting conditions are good and the animal is not alarmed.

__________________
slim

All elk taken have been downed with one shot from 30-06, 7RM and 7x57 AI. Most fell on the spot or dropped within 30 yds.

Pigs did the same after being shot with 243 Win and 6.5-06. HOWEVER, all were still kicking.
a shot in the head, another shot in the head and a final shot in the head were required to finally get them to stop twitching.

My vote goes to the porkers as more hardy.

__________________
NRA Benefactor Member
NRA Certified Police Firearms Instructor
NRA Certified Range Safety Officer
NAHC Life Member

"Firearms only have two enemies - rust and politicans" author unknown

When I saw the title to this thread, I thought it was about toughness of the meat. I've had old bull moose and elk that were too tough for anything but burger and sausage while younger animals and cows were tender. I've not tried hog hunting, but would would expect the meat from wild hogs to exhibit similar differences in texture. Is this true, I understand domestic pigs follow a similar pattern?

I've only seen 1 hog drop straight down when a friend I was sitting with shot one at 25 yards with a 22-250 at the bottom of the ear. All others have run some, sometimes not that far but did run some. A few years ago there was the story of the kid that shot a 1051lb hog in Alabama not Georgia with a S&W 500mag I think 8 times it was, may have been more but I can't remember. They are tough though !

I'd consider the boars harder to kill although I don't have much experience to back it up. However I do have some experience on elk. Elk as a rule aren't hard to kill but sometimes takes 'em a while to figure out their dead.

__________________
Still Learnin' as I go!

NRA Life Member

Interesting results in the poll, so far...

6 say elk, 6 say a big hog, and I'm the only one who thinks they're about the same.

One important distinction that just occurred to me, from another thread, is that hogs are most often shot at modest ranges, whereas a proportionately higher percentage of elk are shot at longer ranges. I suppose that would mean you'd need a more powerful gun for the elk, in case you wind up shooting at 300 yards or more?

__________________
Ask me about QDMA.

I said the same too.

I have never hunted Elk but I knew allot of Elk hunters when I lived in Idaho for a year back in '81/'82. The most experienced Elk hunter I knew also had extensive experience with Moose, and he said the Elk was allot tougher than a Moose. I got to join him to do some preseason scouting, a great experience watching him "talking" to bull Elk with his call. He used a 30/06 and 180 grain soft-points nothing special just standard Remington Core-Lokt loads.
I base my comments on his experience with Elk, and my experience hunting Hawaiian boars since I was a young teenager.
Pigs and deer have slightly different anatomy but different enough for those with deer experience but inexperienced with pigs to make a difference. A kill shot for someone used to hunting deer especially what he thinks is a good heart shot on a deer when aiming at the pig is usually in for a surprise when the pig runs off on a shot which would have dropped a deer. This experience exaggerates a pigs toughness legend even though they are tougher than the average deer. I've shot the majority of my pigs since the mid 70s with my Marlin model 1894 in 44 magnum, and I have never had to shoot a pig twice nor track one down. These were all body shots, I prefer not to take heads shots, too messy for the lu'au. Use enough gun, and know the anatomy and pig will drop just like any other animal. Pig hearts are lower in the chest and further forward than on a deer.

Great picture, Ganjiro! Is the purplish stuff supposed to represent the shield on their shoulder?

__________________
Ask me about QDMA.

I've seen that picture before, and it seems pretty accurate to me. There is a thin window between the back of the legs and the guts. You can slide a bullet in there and get the lungs, but it's a tough shot. With almost all presentations it is best to break the shoulder or neck on a pig.

__________________
MikeG

I've shot hundreds of pigs, no Elk, but I think what makes the bigger boars so tough is the way they fight.
The fight lasts a long time usually with the two fighters digging their tusks into the others shoulder. After a while that shoulder gets thicker with scar tissue. I haven't see that on younger pigs or sows.
I have killed many of them with the a 223, just because while varmint hunting, I won't past a shot on a pig.
While their "will to live" is incredable, once a 55 gr soft point is in the chest cavity, it will usually blow on through. Some go down on the spot, others run a ways but either way, they are dead.
I think the important thing on a big boar is to work the bullet into the chest while avoiding the flat shoulder shot.
And I would definitely prefer a larger caliber, 243 and up, but the 22's will do the job.
Good luck.

__________________
Throw another log on the fire

Another distinction between wild hogs and elk is what we might term the "respect factor". Where hogs are abundant, they are a nuisance, plain n' simple. Shooting one and having it run off to become coyote bait is no great tragedy. Whether right or wrong, a big bull elk is held in MUCH higher esteem. The elk is absolutely a tough animal, but the idea of losing one to a smallish caliber bullet would make any elk hunter ill. I think this may be why many elk hunters will choose a larger, more powerful cartridge to hunt them with, even though something as small as a 243 will undoubtedly kill them, under ideal conditions.

__________________
Ask me about QDMA.

I shot a hog a 250 lb. hog about a month ago with my 22-250. Shot it directly behind the front shoulder, the hog "ran" for about 20 seconds, he didn't cover much ground though, running while laying on your side does not get you from point A to point B very quickly.

I've never killed an elk, but been in camp when a large bull has been taken. They are large, tough animals that have little in common with a typical mule deer or whitetail and I always wonder why so many hunters try to figure a good elk cartridge by judging what a cartridge does to a deer. I have seen some large hogs & boars killed including one very large one of well over 400 pounds. Using a similar(?) comparison of a large bull elk & a deer, there is a huge difference in a small boar, a sow and a very large boar, when you want to kill it with gun or bow.

A small boar has no shield. A boar of, say, 150 pound is just beginning to accumulate the hard gristle plate over it's neck and it's shoulders, but it is minimal. A sow will never grow a gristle plate, but they can grow quite large and will have the bone structure to match their size. I've helped to skin a sow of ~ 300 pounds, and saw the damage done to the shoulder by a .270 Win. I've also helped skin a 260 pound boar and by that age & weight a boar has a significant shield of 1-1.5" covering neck and shoulders (pictures below). The largest hog I've ever seen (a huge boar) had a shield that simply had to be seen to believe. None of it was less than 2" thick and in places it was 3" thick.

I saw two bullets from a .44 mag carbine (270gr Speer JFN) get turned by the shield on two good shots/hits at 45 yards. One bullet, the 1st shot, was directly to the neck, just behind the right ear. The bullet was found against the vertebra while skinning that boar. The shot knocked him off his feet, but he began to get up again immediately. The next shot was to the middle of the shoulder and knocked him off his feet again. This shot never even drew blood, stopping just short of the shoulder bone in the shield. Two more shots to his underside almost finished him, but a 5th shot, to the neck @ 10', was needed as he tried to regain his feet again.

I've read a lot of comments from those that have killed a lot of hogs and claim they are easy to kill. I won't argue with anyone who claims so. But I also know, as fact, that a very large boar is a totally different animal than a 50-150 pound pig of either sex. And, I did not see any shield of 2-3" thick on the elk we skinned either.

The two first bullets from the bigger boar are shown below. The shield depicted is the 260 pound boar and the boar pictured is also the 260 pounder.

Attached Thumbnails

       

__________________
A veteran is someone who, at one point in his life, wrote
a blank check made payable to "The United States of
America" for an amount of 'up to and including my life.
That is honor, and there are way too many people in this
country who no longer understand it.

My experience with hogs is very similar to TnHunter's. The ~250lb sow I took with my 270 was across a canyon at somewhere between 250 and 300 yards. She ran around in a 50 yard circle and was long dead by the time we got there. That's about what I would expect from any large critter shot through the lungs.

The boar I took during a night hunt a few years later didn't weigh quite as much, but took several shots from my 270 and my buddy's '06 before it was down for good. (OK, so it was HIS shots that put it down...not mine. ) I didn't pay much attention to the shield on it...just skinned and processed it. On another hunt, my dad shot a very good-sized boar at over 200 yards with his 243. The guide called the shot as a good hit, right on the shoulder. He was watching through binoculars and saw the dust fly off his hide. Three hours of looking, with the guide's tracking dog, found no blood or signs of a hit. I imagine when that hog died, most likely from natural causes, it had parts of a 100gr Hornady BTSP in the shield over his left shoulder.

__________________
Ask me about QDMA.

When I was about twelve, me and my cousin run up on a boar and a sow and a few shoats. I had a .22 semi-auto rifle loaded with LR rounds. He had a 12 gauge loaded with 4s I think. I got three shots off pretty quick, aiming for the "T" (like you would a deer) in the shoulder. That just pissed him off. My cousin let loose right after I did, and that made him chase us. I don't remember how long we ran before we looked behind us and realized he wasn't chasing us anymore. Never did find him either.

Just from that incident, I'd say they're pretty tough. What convinces me they're really tough is this:

We usually hunt hogs in Florida with dogs. My dad had gotten a pit bull recently (I might have been fourteen) and we took him out to see if we could find a bar to take home or a boar to cut for later hunting. We came across a boar and the dog latched on to his ear. That hog dragged the dog for about a mile through palmettos, myrtle brush, sloughs, farm fields, and finally an almost dried up pond. The mud was about waist deep and the hog came out the other side exhausted - with the dog still on his ear - both covered with greasy mud. We cut the boar, had to pistol whip the dog off the boar, then let the hog go. In that instance, I'm of a mind that pit bulls are almost as tough as hogs...

__________________
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction." - Albert Einstein