My grandfather died in 1952, and my father always laughed at two things he predicted:

The first was that someday an airplane would land at the farm and deliver or haul livestock to auction. We are still waiting on that one, to come true.

The other was, that someday everybody would have a 44 handy, either on them or where they could get to it, really quick. He thought this old sin cussed world so degenerate that we’d all go back to the pioneer days.

Well, last week over near Sedalia, my wife and I ate our diner at Bothwell State Park, and on the way out we saw a huge feral hog. He was about the size of a refrigerator laid over sideways.

I thought of my old grandfather.

You need that 44, but for a different reason.

https://imgur.com/gallery/YeNQsWF

Better use good, penetrating loads. Those things are tough!

tpy

I never killed one with a .44 special but I did kill one with a .44 magnum, well sort of! People kill a few pigs & that is what they think all feral hogs are like. Then they meet hogzilla! I didn't keep track of how many I have killed. I don't claim to be a great hog hunter or anything but I have killed two really big ones out of the several dozen I killed. My 30-30 was in the shop so I borrowed a .32 Win. from a friend. I was alone when I turned my pack of mostly untrained hounds loose in an abandoned rice field. I don't have a clue where the dogs went but a hour or so later, this big black boar came galloping across the rice field. I knocked him down 3 different times but he kept getting back up to run some more. All seven bullets, to the best of my knowledge, hit him in the heart/ lung area. The rifle was empty & the hog was gone but I had my Ruger .44. I caught up with him on the bank of the canal close to where I left the boat. I don't think I even had to shoot him as he was so near dead he would have dropped dead in a few minutes but I shot him in the head anyway. I don't know his weight but I had to cut poles to pry him into the boat & them pry him out of the boat. The other big one, I shot with a 45-70 through the lung cavity (450 gr. cast bullet @ 1650 +/-fps.) & he ran some 50 yards. Yea, a .44 will kill one but I recommend being really particular with bullet placement!

Wow, I didn't know feral hogs had worked their way as far north as Missouri.
Are there many wild hogs in the state?

Far more than anybody wants . . .

Officially, wildlife officials killed 10,000 in 2019.
https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/missouri-killed-a-record-number-of-feral-hogs-in-2019-and-it-might-not-be/article_e86f6d9a-ebbb-5c63-a6c8-e59e982b7f0f.html

It may come as a surprise to learn that the Conservation Department does not want people to hunt them . . .
https://mdc.mo.gov/wildlife/nuisance-problem-species/invasive-species/feral-hogs-missouri

Years ago, when I was married to a French Canadian, I got an invitation to go on a wild hog hunt in Canada. I never lived in Canada, She came here. My first thought was, wow, snow pigs! I didn't get to go but it wasn't a huge disappointment!

A few summers ago, some guy in L.A. (lower Alabama) had just come home from work and still had his .38 snub nose revolver in his pocket. He heard a commotion just outside the door and thought it might be a prowler. He stepped outside with his revolver in hand and came face to face with a massive 820 pound feral hog. BAM BAM BAM he shot it three times in the head at very close range and killed it!

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... -yard.html

Hogs are like trees. The older they get the bigger they get. I never would attempt to take a hog with a .38 but apparently, if you put the bullet in the brain it works. Unfortunately, because of the weight of the animal and the heat of the night he was not able to harvest any meat within a safe time limit.

Some Pig

That big fellow was traveling by himself on conservation lands. While feral hogs are unprotected off conservation lands, the current strategy of the MDC is to trap hogs.

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When hunters shoot feral hogs, it complicates efforts to remove these pests. Hogs are social animals that travel in groups called sounders. Shooting one or two hogs scatters the sounder and makes trapping efforts aimed at catching the entire group at once more difficult, because hogs become trap-shy and more wary of baited sites. With their high reproductive rate, removing one or two hogs does not help to reduce populations. Anyone who observes a feral hog or damage caused by feral hogs should report it to the Conservation Department rather than shooting the animal so we can work together towards eradication.

—

Growing up Old Alva used to tell us kids how the pioneer farmers used to trap hogs, and wild turkeys.

Seems they are doing that again, for hogs.

What does the MDC do once they’ve trapped the hogs? When the hogs are in government hands they probably can’t be killed. When I was a kid there was a bounty on coyotes. $25 if I recall at a time when a gallon of milk was less than a dollar. You didn’t have many song dogs giving you problems.
There are effective ways of dealing with pests but people don’t have the stomach for it.

No. They kill them.

Their theory is that hunting them causes the herd to scatter, disperse their range and prompt additional breeding. Trapping, they believe, is a more effective way to eradicate them.

Not surprisingly, they've received a lot of push back from landowners and good old boys who don't cotton to them college-boy wildlife management theories.

The answer as usual probably lies somewhere in between the old college try and the old fashioned way.

Oh he!!, Oklahoma is so full of them that our KsDWPT is helicopter shooting them at the border to try to keep from having to deal with them here, pretty much from the SE corner W to the OK Panhandle and N at least mid-state.

That is why, when I built a Hog Rifle 4 years or so ago, I built an SR25/LR308.

.308W and 25 rnds of Get The Whole Sounder.

YES! I’ve been trying to rationalize an AR-308/AR-10!

Any decent deer rifle will kill any hog with a well placed shot. I killed most of mine with a 30-30, which is not what I would call ideal & sometimes took several shots but it worked. I am a big fan of big bullets. If you are up in a tree stand, your deer rifle is all you need as you can wait for a good shot. Down on the ground where things can get up close & personal, I like my SXS 45-70 W/ 450 gr. cast bullets. That big sucker in the picture could cut you in half & disembowel you in less time than it takes to say it!

They're "dangerous game". Period. Treat them as such. Even the smaller ones can and will do you damage if they can. They are NOT flight animals like deer.

tp

I bet Elmer Keith would have no trouble with his Model 29

No doubt.

tp (Ruger SBH Bisley Hunter/310 grain cannon fodder)

The bottom line is that hunters are not stepping up and making a sufficient dent in the feral hog population. The reason is that wild hogs are nocturnal and most of us with day jobs just can't stay up all night staking out a field, even on the weekend.