Bullet to the back of the head.

Son's boar

My son put a .30-06, 150gr. bullet at the base of the skull at the back of this boar's head Sunday morning. The boar dropped, screamed, and then took off. He found lots of blood, tissue, and bone, and later sighted him laying down up on a bluff, but the thing got up and took off when he went up there. Surely it can't survive. If it can, my son may have created "The Creature of Bear Creek."

I'm proud of my boy anyways. He went out there with his family 'cause I asked him to go kill it. I'm recovering from the shoulder surgery and I had the dam thing on camera, scaring the deer off, every day for a week. He hasn't hunted with me, or at all, that much. He got some good experience with it running off. '08 Springfield that my grandfather bought in a general store for a dollar after The Great War. (I put a decent scope on it and a decent trigger in it.)

I will now teach him that there are indeed certain applications where the Texas Heart Shot is called for.

I'd wager the shot was actually higher than thought. Probably at the very 'crest' of the skull and got some neck tissue to go along with it.

A shot at the 'base of the skull' or occipital joint would surely put the hog down for good.

In any case....good experience for the Lad and a stark warning for the hog (if not already dead).

If you fail to do major CNS damage, either directly or indirectly, expect the hog to run. There is actually a lot of non-vital tissue at the base of the skull. Next time, tell him to shoot it in the brain and I bet he has some better luck.

I have recovered two hogs, similarly shot, that lived long enough for their wounds to all but completely heal.

Some years ago I had a shot at a large hog. Distance was about 120 yards and all I had was the 220 Swift. The hog was heading away from me, so I decided to shoot him in the back of the head. The result was a rather large and easily seen dust cloud, and the hog never broke stride. They must have thick skulls.

You posted a pic some time back that showed an amazing (healed over) wound in an area that you would expect to drop a hog. But apparently the projectile created a mostly surface wound OR took a path upon impact that was not lethal. I remember being dumbfounded at the wound size (scarring left).

You know they really don't (have thick skulls).

With the exception of the very crest of the skull, most of it (upper) is not very thick most places.

The 'Brain Pan' itself and Brain are not a large target and the reason I don't advocate taking head shots unless nothing else is presented.

There are a lot of what I call 'chambers' (Brian will know all the correct terms) in the upper skull, especially in the olfactory system. From the nose up to the brain pan is actually very thin. Even the bone surrounding the brain is not as solid....as one might think.

Below is a skull I Bisected to illustrate the anatomy. Remember too that 'living' bone is NOT hard like the dried out skull you might laying on the ground.

Here is the first hog I killed with such a wound. This is the exit side. It was still weepy (clear fluid) draining from it, but otherwise, it was healed nicely. The entry wound was a nothing scar. You can see where the bullet also damaged the ear with a long scar across the back of the ear.



Building on flint's pics, what should be pointed out is that there is really very little bone around the brain. It is mostly a couple of layers of thin bone, gapped by sinus cavities (chambers) that are hollow or potentially containing soft tissue, mucus, etc.

The occiput (back of the head) has the most bone. So you have a thin outer table, followed by cancelous or spongy bone (which only looks like a sponge) and then an inner table and the makeup isn't much different than the head of a humerus. Hunters shoot through the humerus head quite frequently with no worries of bullets bouncing off or being stopped by the ball head and spongy bone and going through the head of a humerus is a greater distance than going through the back of a hog's skull to the brain.