Best caliber for head shots on small pigs?

[Nomadic Pirate 66]

Last I checked the boar shot with the .177 at 17 FPE went to sleap immediately,...a .50 cal at 800 FPE would not have done a better job.

Last I checket the boar shot full frontal with the .22 at 20 FPE went to sleap immediately,....a .50 cal at 800 FPE would not have done a better job.


Do you know why ?....because they worked to perfection


All this people that like to talk so much I'm prepared to bet have no comparable experiance in the field yet they think their opinion matters

 

[Zebra13]

Last I checked the boar shot with the .177 at 17 FPE went to sleap immediately,...a .50 cal at 800 FPE would not have done a better job.

Last I checket the boar shot full frontal with the .22 at 20 FPE went to sleap immediately,....a .50 cal at 800 FPE would not have done a better job.


Do you know why ?....because they worked to perfection


All this people that like to talk so much I'm prepared to bet have no comparable experiance in the field yet they think their opinion matters

If that was directed at me, just how much are you prepared to bet?

Justin

 

[qball]

This thread is getting boring so why don't all you people who like to boast your penetrating capability put up or shut up.

Take your said caliber and power and shoot a standard hardware store pine 2x4 at 20 yards. Take pictures and measure your penetration, then we can talk.

 

[Dr. Kralenstein]

This thread is getting boring so why don't all you people who like to boast your penetrating capability put up or shut up.

Take your said caliber and power and shoot a standard hardware store pine 2x4 at 20 yards. Take pictures and measure your penetration, then we can talk.

Let their women come on here and tell us about their penetrating capabilities so we get the real answers!

 

[Lingdinger.22]

I’ve had possums get up and walk away after being shot between the eye and ear with my .177 making 20FPE… I’ve never had that happen with my .25cal making 60 FPE. Rather have more energy than a better penetrating caliber. More FPE means more hemorrhaging of organs and what not.

 

[Dr. Kralenstein]

I’ve had possums get up and walk away after being shot between the eye and ear with my .177 making 20FPE… I’ve never had that happen with my .25cal making 60 FPE. Rather have more energy than a better penetrating caliber. More FPE means more hemorrhaging of organs and what not.

At what distance was the possum shot? I used to kill them when I was a teenager only using a crosman pumpmaster and steel BBs out to 15-20 yards at my parents house. That thing was maybe doing 8 fpe. I'd never do that nowadays since I understand things a bit better, at 13 years old your brain isn't fully developed!

 

[Lingdinger.22]

At what distance was the possum shot? I used to kill them when I was a teenager only using a crosman pumpmaster and steel BBs out to 15-20 yards at my parents house. That thing was maybe doing 8 fpe. I'd never do that nowadays since I understand things a bit better, at 13 years old your brain isn't fully developed!

25 yards. Passed through like a laser. That’s almost shocking a steel bb at 8fpe could even pierce the skull of a possum . I’ve shot them with a shotgun in the face and had to hit them in the head with a shovel. Things are like zombie. I don’t like killing, but they are destructive to my business.

 

[Dr. Kralenstein]

25 yards. Passed through like a laser. That’s almost shocking a steel bb at 8fpe could even pierce the skull of a possum . I’ve shot them with a shotgun in the face and had to hit them in the head with a shovel. Things are like zombie. I don’t like killing, but they are destructive to my business.

These were suburbia possums so not too big, but some did take a follow up shot. They used to get into my mom's garden and decimate her tomato plates. She said do what you gotta do and she wasn't fond of me killing things. I usually aimed for the eye on them and that's a fast track to the brain, the eye sockets are very thin in the back.

 

[Lingdinger.22]

These were suburbia possums so not too big, but some did take a follow up shot. They used to get into my mom's garden and decimate her tomato plates. She said do what you gotta do and she wasn't fond of me killing things. I usually aimed for the eye on them and that's a fast track to the brain, the eye sockets are very thin in the back.

That explains it. The ones are massive on my property. I literally hit one in the head with a shovel full force and it did nothing to the skull. I could see .177 killing the young ones just fine.

 

[Nomadic Pirate 66]

This thread is getting boring so why don't all you people who like to boast your penetrating capability put up or shut up.

Take your said caliber and power and shoot a standard hardware store pine 2x4 at 20 yards. Take pictures and measure your penetration, then we can talk.

In the past when I was doing a lot of testing to see when and with what I could get appropriate penetration I used dry Phonebooks, clamp them down so there is no movement and they will behave the same consistently.

With Phonebooks is easy then to peal off pages and record exactly at what page certain pellets/guns got to for easy comparison once all the various data is in.

I've never gone into the wood to attempt a certain kill without extensive testing.

Back in the day when I first started in airgunning Hog hunting was only done with Big bores so my first Airgun where a Career ULTRA .357 and then a Sam Yang .45, I eventually shortly after got an Evanix Rainstorm I in .22 ( back then you only had .177 and .22 )

I immediately realised that the Rainstorm shooting the 28gr EunJin had way mor power then I expected so I started extensive testing to see what it was actually capable of, and I actually got my first 2 Pigs with the .22.

After that I was sold and took a boatload of big hogs with small calibers, of course I got a bunch with big caliber too but to overlook powerful small caliber airguns shooting a hard pellet to Brain shoot Hogs is foolish,....because they work ( of course the hunter needs to do his part and put that pellet in the righ place )



Biggest failure I had Brainshooting a hog was with a 200 FPE .357,....light was dwindling so I rushed it and tried a shot that was indeed straigh to the brain but was where the skull curves from the side to the forehead above the eye, I figured the power and caliber would bail me out well I was sorely mistaken as the bullet totally bounced of the skull, the Hog ( that wasn't all that big either ) did a 180 and just took off with a squeel not even stunned.

 

[qball]

Opinions are like a$$holes, everyones got one! Data and physics are facts. Penetration power of the same material hardness projectile is directly related to amount of force per surface area or square inch.

Here is a simple math table of penetration power of regular pellet guns:

Caliber	surface area	FPE	FPE per Squar Inch
177	0.0243	20	822.10
22	0.0380	40	1052.27
25	0.0491	50	1018.60
50	0.1964	150	763.94

So the lowly 177 pellets at field target limit have only 20% less penetrating power compared to a 25 cal pellet at 2.5x the energy? Juice up the 177 to 25 FPE(easy) the 177 pellet will have more penetrating power compared to 25 cal at 2x the power.

Here is the table at currently normal high power slug gun level:

Caliber	surface area	FPE	FPE per Squar Inch
177	0.0243	35	1438.67
22	0.0380	70	1841.48
25	0.0491	85	1731.62
50	0.1964	200	1018.59

In both cases the lowly 177 can out penetrate a 50 cal canon ball. Funny that aligns with the best penetrating/armor piercing tank rounds are the mere 1.5 inch discarding sabot round over a huge 16 inch navel cannon ball, weird isn't it?

 

[Nomadic Pirate 66]

In todays PCP world where power is abound and you can get 20gr .177 bullets .........get them to shoot in the 1000 fps range
( 45 FPE) and you will have a solid brain shooting machine.

 

[qball]

In todays PCP world where power is abound and you can get 20gr .177 bullets .........get them to shoot in the 1000 fps range
( 45 FPE) and you will have a solid brain shooting machine.

Admittedly it is extremely hard to push a 20 grain 177 slugs at 1000 fps, Panthera has that potential. But even at 35 FPE, 177 projectiles are extremely Lethal especially when the projectile hardness is a little higher.

 

[Nomadic Pirate 66]

A 16gr Baracuda traveling at 1000 fps would be a 36 FPE round,....killer brain spike.

 

[orangeokie]

Here is a video of a decent young boar taken with a Disco .177 at 17 FPE shooting the Baracuda 10.5gr at 859 fps

That's super messed up. People should not promote that kind of thing. You glorify a lucky .177 shot, and then other people try it.

Think McFly, THINK!

Seems to me the shooter proved he can use the .177 effectively on hogs at that range. What other hunters do is on them personally.

 

[JimD]

Opinions are like a$$holes, everyones got one! Data and physics are facts. Penetration power of the same material hardness projectile is directly related to amount of force per surface area or square inch.

Here is a simple math table of penetration power of regular pellet guns:

Caliber	surface area	FPE	FPE per Squar Inch
177	0.0243	20	822.10
22	0.0380	40	1052.27
25	0.0491	50	1018.60
50	0.1964	150	763.94

So the lowly 177 pellets at field target limit have only 20% less penetrating power compared to a 25 cal pellet at 2.5x the energy? Juice up the 177 to 25 FPE(easy) the 177 pellet will have more penetrating power compared to 25 cal at 2x the power.

Here is the table at currently normal high power slug gun level:

Caliber	surface area	FPE	FPE per Squar Inch
177	0.0243	35	1438.67
22	0.0380	70	1841.48
25	0.0491	85	1731.62
50	0.1964	200	1018.59

In both cases the lowly 177 can out penetrate a 50 cal canon ball. Funny that aligns with the best penetrating/armor piercing tank rounds are the mere 1.5 inch discarding sabot round over a huge 16 inch navel cannon ball, weird isn't it?

I did not check it but your math looks OK. But what you are calculating is not equivalent to penetration in MDF, I'd have to look at my results more to know if it correlates to penetration in wet paper. My 19 fpe 177 goes through 1 and not 2 pieces of 1/4 MDF in a test block I built to test penetration. My 42 fpe 25 goes through 3. I'll look for the wet paper data and add it when I find it. I'm not saying your fpe/in2 value is meaningless or even that it might not equate to penetration in hog skulls but it doesn't correlate to my tests of penetration in MDF.

Doesn't work for wet paper either. I calculated the FPE/in2 for my 3 example guns, a 19 fpe 177, a 32 fpe 22, and a 42 fpe 25 as 782, 842, and 855. So the 22 is 7.7% higher than the 177 and the 25 is 9.3% greater. But the penetration in wet magazines was 34.6% higher for the 22 and 26% higher for the 25. The 25 caliber test block was different but the 177 and 22 were shot into the same block of wet magazines. The 25 is also a softer FX pellet, the 22 and 177 are H&N Baracudas.

So for both a hard material, mdf, meant to be a rough bone equivalent and wet paper, a muscle tissue equivalent, the FPE/in2 overstates the penetration of the 177 by quite a bit. It's an interesting table but I think penetration is more complicated than a simple energy per square inch factor.

 

[N2 Shooter]

I have some thoughts, but I must preface them with the fact that I've never hunted piggies, so keep that in mind while you read my post.

As many know, I've become fond of using.30 cal FX Hybrid Slugs being shot out of my FX Maverick VP at 85 fpe for taking out groundhogs with head and bodyshots. One thing this exercise revealed to me, is none of the headshots resulted in full passthroughs with the Hybrid Slugs.

Why?

Well, I'm giving a sneak peek into my next Ballistics Gel Testing video, but I believe this is valuable info.

Here is a .30 cal Hybrid Slug pulled from Ballistics Gel.

Here is the base of the slug:

And here is the front/top of the slug that detached from the slug base:

Many have talked about caliber and energy requirements to ethically dispatch game, but the conversation must also include the ammo design.

Hybrid Slugs would not be my ammo choice if I had to get deeper penetration after defeating the skeletal system of game or pest.

Look for more, in my .30 cal Ballistic Gel Testing video!

 

[qball]

I did not check it but your math looks OK. But what you are calculating is not equivalent to penetration in MDF, I'd have to look at my results more to know if it correlates to penetration in wet paper. My 19 fpe 177 goes through 1 and not 2 pieces of 1/4 MDF in a test block I built to test penetration. My 42 fpe 25 goes through 3. I'll look for the wet paper data and add it when I find it. I'm not saying your fpe/in2 value is meaningless or even that it might not equate to penetration in hog skulls but it doesn't correlate to my tests of penetration in MDF.

Doesn't work for wet paper either. I calculated the FPE/in2 for my 3 example guns, a 19 fpe 177, a 32 fpe 22, and a 42 fpe 25 as 782, 842, and 855. So the 22 is 7.7% higher than the 177 and the 25 is 9.3% greater. But the penetration in wet magazines was 34.6% higher for the 22 and 26% higher for the 25. The 25 caliber test block was different but the 177 and 22 were shot into the same block of wet magazines. The 25 is also a softer FX pellet, the 22 and 177 are H&N Baracudas.

So for both a hard material, mdf, meant to be a rough bone equivalent and wet paper, a muscle tissue equivalent, the FPE/in2 overstates the penetration of the 177 by quite a bit. It's an interesting table but I think penetration is more complicated than a simple energy per square inch factor.

Would love to see the results. Force or given energy per specific area has direct affect on penetration capability, this is assuming the projectiles have same density or hardness or same lead compound. Denser or more difficult to displace the material is the smaller you want the projectile to be to displace less material. A sharp pointed steel rod will penetrate wood or dirt much easier than a sledge hammer.

 

[Mthesi]

Personally I like the .25

 

[Deadeye Dick]

Here is a video of a decent young boar taken with a Disco .177 at 17 FPE shooting the Baracuda 10.5gr at 859 fps

That was quite the takedown for a .177. I take it the Disco you're referring to is a Benjamin Discovery?
Forgive me, I'm not up to speed on all the airgun jargon.