Of my 6 orphans there is now only one left. Quartering sharply to me right to left. He dropped immediately without moving. When I first walked up to him there was a little blood in his mouth and that was it. I saw a split in his skin in his belly and thought it odd because I wasn't aiming there nor was there any good or any visible damage beyond the split. Looked like it was sliced with a razor. Anyway rolled him over and still no blood anywhere. I was puzzled. I dragged him away from the feeder and finally saw the entrance wound high on his L shoulder. I reexamined him and found a wound on his right hindquarter. After some deliberation on my way home, best I can figure is he was sharply quartered, the round went through him and partially exited his rear leg. The belly split was the result of some sort of overpressure. It was precisely down his midline and it started at his penile sheath. 🤷‍♂️ .308 custom loaded 168 gr. HORNADY AMAX.

I may be wrong but bet the stomach had good resistance with stuff in it and expanded a lot from the dump of energy there and the bullet came apart with a fragment of the core exiting (or could be the just greatly slowed down bullet exit). So lots of energy dumped in that location expanding outward.

I haven't watched this whole video but good slow motion shots of bullet expansion and transfer to jell blocks.



I have seen a split like that on one about that size that had drank water at the tank before I shot it.

If it is going to happen, it will be on smaller pigs/shoats like that most commonly. No blow out shown in the images above as nothing was blown out. It may have been a near blowout where the skin tore if there was sufficient expansion, but the abdominal muscles did not fail and held everything inside, hence no blow out.

👍

Semantics aside, are you thinking also this could have been a tear from distension/overpressure? I found zero evidence of a bullet fragment causing it.

Semantics aside, are you thinking also this could have been a tear from distension/overpressure? I found zero evidence of a bullet fragment causing it (though not discounting the possibility completely).

Could that cut have already been there?

More than likely a wound from a bigger pig tossing it out of the way at the feeder.

If it was not already there (see previous 2 posts), then failure of the tissue via stretching from over pressure would be a possible explanation. I not seen that without the accompanying failure of interior tissues, however. I would expect there to be a blowout, but I don't know that it must happen.

@DNS, Gary, Pig$ - all are possibilities. My process of elimination based on the cleanliness of the wound itself, the cleanliness of the slice, the location of the slice, and the lack of any obvious internal wound indicating fragments, had me leaning the way I did, as impossible as it seems. I wish I had done a mini necropsy but it was still early and I was after the larger sounder that never came.🤷‍♂️