This could have gone in firearms or in survival or where ever but figured this might let some one see it that it could help. I went to pick up 2 pigs today and took my .357 along to put them down with. I had it loaded with 'Winchester .38 special +P 125 grain JHP PERSONAL PROTECTION' ammo. These things look like they would be some pretty wicked rounds for defense and since they are +P one would assume they would do pretty well in the power department. WRONG!!! The first pig was a small one and I put one shot in its head and mannaged to drop it as one would expect but the second pig was around 250 pounds and I shot it dead on in the forehead just as you should...it didnt even fall down, so I shot it again in the head, and again and again and again. I shot that pig in the head 5 times with those rounds and the pig never did fall down! After the fifth time I shot it (and the 1 for the first pig) I reloaded with .357 American Egale rounds and shot the pig once in the head with those and finaly put it down. I just figured that folks needed to know about this since this was an animal about the same as a human and this ammo is widely sold (I bought mine at Walmart) as 'Personal Protection' ammo. If that pig had been an attacker all that ammo would have done would have been to get me killed. So just a heads up that just because the ammo is marketed as defensive ammo dosent mean it will stop or even slow down an attacker, so make sure you know first hand what any ammo you rely on for your protection will do and what it wont.
I've seen it done in the pigs ear with a .22 rifle. I've always herd you put the barrel in or behind the pigs ear. Bill
As long as you have round nose .22 lr you can be several feet away and shoot them in the middle of the forehead and drop them without a problem, same for even large cattle. I also shot him a couple of times from the back of the head. I butcher nearly all my own meat so putting them down is nothing unusual to me and also worked for a while in a butcher shop on the kill floor killing and skinning them. I had one other load that failed me and even it wasnt nearly as bad. That was a handload with super soft hollow based button nosed wad cutters over a mild load made for targets. Even with them the pig was knocked down the first time and after 2 more he was done. Thats what was so disturbing about these results, especialy from a 'Personal Protection' ammunition since I hit him all 6 times where he needed to be hit but those rounds just didnt have what it took to do the job when even a .22 lr in round nose will do it. Once used the .357 which was a flat nosed jacketed soft point it did the trick with no problem and always has. I had been keeping these +P rounds in my carry gun and wanted to be sure of how they preformed, glad I found out now. Im starting to think this may be a pretty common thing to hollow points since I know while a .22 round nose will do well on droping animals with a head shot inside 10 yards, hollow points commonly bounce off. These hollow points didnt do anything and the wad cutters I had a problem with in general preformed similar to hollow points. In all fairness I dont know and these loads may preform ok on soft tissue but if they hit solid bone such as a head shot they are beyond worthless.
In know my Hydra-Shoks work well on pigs. I have killed a big sow with a shot right between the eyes. She dropped like a ton of bricks.
The problem with a point-blank head shot wit JHPs is that they flatten too quickly and disperse their energy much too quickly. Also, the extra powder in a +P might not have time to burn completely. I have never had a solid bullet fail on a head shot but have had similar results a couple of times with hollow-points. I once had a coyote pup that got bit by a rattler and I decided to put him down with a .38 using a frangable round....little devil ran to his burrow under my cabin and I thought for sure he would die there and leave a most unpleasent stink but a few days later he crawled right back out and was none the worse for wear except for a big scab on his noggin. Old Miss Garner, at Tennessee shell thought that was the dearest story, saying that god must of had special plans for that little coyote. My wife (number 2) had found them nursing on their dead mother months before and tried to treat them like dogs. Then one of them got bit by a big snake and shot all in the same day...super coyote...sort of..if you haven't figured it out by now, this doesn't have a "and they lived happily ever after" type ending.. A few weeks later, I was returning from the river, where I had spent the day diving for mussel shells. It was a most unpleasent and cold day and I was less than happy that my truck had ran into a ditch and broke an axle, causing me to have to walk several miles back to my cabin. The one neighbor I had (about a mile down the road) raised show chickens...didn't know there was such a thing, but there really is...chickens that you don't eat, don't send to Col. Sanders, you just apparently enter them into chicken shows and make them into some kind of celebrity chicken that is worth more than my truck with the broken axle; but I digress...Marcy's cute little coyotes must have used up all of their devine intervention before I got there because when I came upon them playing tug-of-war with one of Brown's prize chickens, I picked up a tree limb about the diameter of my thumb and hit one of them, intending just to get his attention and make him drop the chicken. Broke the suckers neck and he dropped like a polled steer. The other one tucked his tail and slinked along behind me back to the cabin where I promptly got my shot gun and killed it too. Marcy was enraged and shouted at me " what the hell did you do that for?" Well, I knew it was an eventuality so I just decided to get it over and done with and only have to deal with a single night of sleeping on the couch over that.
