Big boy down this morning

This big feller had been working over a hog log on a fairly regular basis, so after watching him snarf up corn for a week, I decided to see if I could ambush him. Lo and behold, he actually showed up at the time the game camera was saying he would! I put 123 grains of Hornady's nice 7.62 X 39 in his ear, and he dropped like a rock. Watched him a while, and no movement at all. Gathered my junk and started out toward him, and he began thrashing around rather violently. I got to within 8-10 yards of him with my trusty Judge loaded up with 45 Colt ammo. And was about to put a round into him when he suddenly quit kicking, and I could see that he was no longer breathing and had, shall we say, a rather nasty head wound. Circled him twice just to make sure he really, REALLY was dead. The tape measure guesstimate was 240 pounds.



This little piggy will NOT be going to the market any time soon.

Well done! Don't blame you for being cautious. As they say - "It's the 'dead' ones that'll kill you."

That little piggy should have stayed home. I'm curious, I've seen several of your posts here that featured this rifle, or one like it. How many times before you started killing hogs with it were you told 7.62x39 wouldn't work for an AR cartridge? I was educated to that fact multiple times by internet experts. I have two x39 ARs that have run flawlessly since I built them. There is just something about someone telling me "you can't" that makes me dead set on figuring out a way I can. Kudos on the porker.

That is indeed a "rather nasty head wound"

Keep After 'Em!

Bar-D, the definition of an expert is: An "ex" is a has-been, and a "spert" is a drip under pressure! I wrote a very lengthy article for Varmint Hunter Magazine several years ago, and it in, I tried to tell folks that the X39 had gotten a bad rap over the years because of the environment in which is was deployed. I used a CZ bolt gun for the test firearm. I was so impressed by how accurate the round was, that I built one on the AR platform to see, if indeed, it was capable of putting all the bullets in the same hole like the B/A could do. Sure enough, with a good barrel and good ammunition, it's quite capable as a hunting rifle, and I've used mine to take deer and hogs out to 200 yards. The wound channel it leaves is ghastly. The projectile appears to tumble once it hits tissue. And, since it's used all over the world in AK's, it has proven that it will work through semi-automatics, even ones that are not built to very tight specifications. If, sometime you get bored out of your mind, PM me your email address and I'll be glad to ship you a copy of my article.

Were those tumbling bullets FMJ bullets?

I have wondered if some guys use the FMJ in the 7.62x39 for hunting since the SP are not common and I doubt the HP is of much use on hogs.

No, tacotime, they were/are Hornady 123's; SST's.

Do you mean they tumbled without expanding?

What kind of expansion are you seeing with that SST?

I have had my doubts about the SST but I know others swear by them. Most likely it was poor shot placement on my part though.

Nice one! Good shooting too.

You gotta love daytime pig killin’

I don't know if they tumbled or not, but all that damage you see was caused by a single SST that expanded violently as it passed through the pig's head. It may have been pushing cranial matter along in front of it. I've seen similar, but not quite as large, exit holes produced by the SST's in other hogs and in deer.

What a great way to ruin his day!

I too have heard that you can't get the x39 to work in AR. I have one that has been sub-MOA since I built it with almost any ammo I use. It is also the smoothest running AR that I have. I hate it when someone says I can't get something to work because it usually means I'm going to start a new project.

Sweet

Nice piggy

I often wonder when people mention pigs falling down and then thrashing a lot if they’re stunned by the shock of the bullet, getting knocked out and waking up before they have time to exsanguinate.

Not to be gross, but. Would you describe that wound channel as actually evacuating his brain? Out of curiousity.

I'm not medically qualified to make that kind of judgement. In the picture, you're seeing what I saw. If his brain wasn't actually evacuated, it was, for sure, rearranged! Again, I'm not medically qualified to know how it is that with a head injury this severe, any kind of animal can continue thrashing. With the main "driver" of the CNS destroyed, I figure the shock alone would be sufficient to shut everything down, and I wonder what's keeping the legs pumping. Nerve synapsis popping off as the systems shut down? I betcha that Double Naught Spy could shed some light on this subject since, from his commentary, he's a lot more knowledgeable about animal anatomy than I am.

Good shooting

I used to have a link to a video that explained the phenomena of the "curly shuffle" very well, but the short version is: the central nervous system is actually keeping the muscles in a relaxed condition and a lack of electrical signal will cause the muscles to contract. When you suddenly disconnect the CNS, the muscles begin randomly firing (contracting) until the muscle runs out of energy due to lack of blood flow and oxygen. That's why a heart shot can result in the animal running about 8 seconds or until the muscles run out of oxygen due to blood loss and he collapses. They will seldom twitch after collapsing because the muscles have already expended all the energy stored in them.

Thanks, Chopperdrvr; that makes sense to this old country boy!

Nice!