Usually at night I'm traveling a lot from spot to spot and rarely have the opportunity for opening the animal's up and taking some pics.
A couple days ago everything fell into line so I figured I'd offer some of my observations on the reccurant "varmint projectiles for hogs" topic.

This fella and I had a disagreement and we worked it out at close range.

I am no DoubleNought Carpe Sus but I will try to convey what I've seen.

.308 110gr Hornady Vmax bullet straveling 2780fps at the muzzle average of a 5shot group via Labradar chronograph. (300HAM'R caliber. Ruger American Bolt action Ranch Rifle is the platform. The velocity is over listed max so I recommend others not attempt to match it)

The initial shot was estimated 15-18yds distance as he busted from the nest.
I did not lead him near enough and shot him off hand on a full run. That impact was in the right rear hip breaking it and in hind sight I noted it had arterial bleeding shooting from the entry wound. No exit or off side hide or skeletal deformation noted. I peeled the ham off verifying an entry wound approximately pinky diameter. Obvious signs of ruptured intestines were present so the search for this projectile ended. It was actually the final shot on the animal to look into and it ended quick after getting a whiff of that and seeing all the yellow Silver Nightshade fruit escaping the hole. Hard pass.

The initial shot took him down. He made no serous attempts to get up and quickly rolled to his side and quit moving. This idiot approached the hog from the upper edge of a creek bank to within 5yds and then the boar rolled over like he heard a Drill Instructor sneaking into the barracks. He made a weak lunge up the bank at me and I hit him with the second shot.

The impact location of shot 2 was less than optimal being off center line. Frankly it was rushed. You can see the entry wound in the front of his right shoulder. The impact of this 2nd shot rolled him farther down into the creek bed. If it wouldn't have rolled him down the bank he'd have been in my lap because this shot caused no apparent debilitating injury to the joint and there was next to zero bleeding noted internal or external.

The 3rd shot followed quickly when I realized he was trying to gain his feet. It entered low behind the shoulder as shown in the pics below. He was laying on his side, quartering away and facing snout down hill.
This was the kill shot thankfully, because I turned it into a train wreck. Long story short somehow the ejected case from the BOLT ACTION landed back in the chamber. I then made it worse as I swipped it deeper into the chamber as I tried to clear it.



Frontal shot impact noted

Size reference

wound path for recovered projectile. Estimated 8-9" after measuring my grip later.

Nearly complet intact 110gr .308 Hornady Vmax projectile.(not yet weighed being I have recently moved and not unpacked my handloading scale & equipment)

3rd shot entry wound

3rd shot 110gr .308 vmax projectile at 2780fps.


I have killed similar sized hogs with this bullet spit out of a 20" .308 at 3100fps. Those kills I specifically remember and have documented were over a feeder at 220-226 yards. I haven't ran the calculations but I doubt their impact velocity matched the impact velocity of these near contact distance impacts.

Should you trust a varmint bullet to perform on hogs?

Maybe not in all cases but I don't have any concern putting the 110Vmax or 125gr TNT to work in intermediate calibers at a bit lower than the standard varmint velocities those projectiles were designed for.

Can you trust a varmint bullet on hogs? Absolutely. That it is called a varmint bullet is a matter of design (possibly) and marketing (absolutely). That it may have been designed for varmints means that it should be good for varmints and that it was designed for varmints does NOT exclude it from use on other animals. With that said, there is no guarantee that it is good for varmints, hogs, or is even accurate. The trick is to find the appropriate round for the job. I have tried a bunch of bullets over the years and some perform as advertised and do very well. Some don't perform as advertised and do well, but differently. Some don't perform as advertised and just plain suck.

That a bullet was designed (or marketed) to do X, Y, or Z really doesn't matter. Not all bullets are marketed based on their design parameters. Sometimes, they get marketed based on how they performed. Hornady AMAX is a classic example. Originally, it was marketed as match ammo NOT to be used for hunting. Hunters found out it worked well and used it for hunting. Eventually, Hornady started marketing it for hunting as well, despite marketing different from the actual design parameters.

I would have expected your bullets to end up more like this...


You should not be recovering a nearly intact bullet, particularly at the shorter distances you were shooting. The VMAX should have been in a million fragments. Are you sure that is your bullet? I have now recovered multiple bullets in hogs that were not bullets I fired. flintknapper has as well.

As you may recall, I shooting Federal Speer TNT 90 gr. bullets from my 6.5 Grendel. They are a varmint bullet and they work great at least out to 300 yards. So the issue isn't whether you can trust "varmint bullets on hogs" but whether or not the particular make and model bullet you are using works from your rifle at your velocities.

While it does not look like VMAXs are going to work out for you in .308 based on this singular example, I would suggest that giving up on the bullets based on this singular example of an admittedly poorly shot hog may not be representative of what the bullet can do.

I lost my work on this thread's initial post once yesterday and the above post ended up rushed and less complete than I'd have liked.

Good point on clarifying it this is my shot.

This guy and several others that I have moved to the carcass pile on this property have indeed had been hit previously by other shooters. In this case both of the wounds in the photographed and the recovered projectile were 100% mine.

I see a recurring question on this forum asking about varmint bullets used for hogs and deer etc. I'm just trying to provide some real world examples I've collected in my field use to help people make some informed decisions in their proper context.

The point that I failed to deliver in my 2nd rushed post was that a varmint projectile is designed around particular use parameters to attain rapid fragmentation.

Using them out of those design perimeters, IE 500fps lower velocities in our pig hunting intermediate calibers or popular platforms with 10-14" shorter .308win barrel lengths (lower velocities), will usually lead to different results.

In this case a proven rapid fragmenting "varmint" bullet in a 3200+fps 26" .308 caliber rifle is not exhibiting the same terminal ballistic characteristics in the velocity window below 3000fps. At these lower velocities it is historically acting more like a classic cup and core design.

I have pics from over 100 carcasses over the last 10 months using this projectile in my application in the 2600-2700fps range and the results captured in the images above are common.

I am pretty sure we are on the same page Sir but I failed to articulate it. To be clear for readers, I don't consider these a failure of the bullet's terminal ballistic performance. I understood that these results would happen & have deliberately tailored my loads and projectile choice to achieve this result.

An interesting result.

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