357 mag vs hog
This was sent to me a couple of days ago. Long but talks about the 357 and a big hog.
6-22-03 Brothers bring down 870-pound feral hog
By Matt Williams, Outdoors Writer
You're apt to see some strange things while traveling a busy highway. But the last thing 26-year old Candi Smith of Liberty City, Texas expected to see browsing along the fringes of Interstate 20 last Friday morning was an 870 feral hog.
Smith, six months pregnant and carting her 2-year-old son in a stroller, was taking a stroll down the highway service road when she spotted the big porker milling around in a pasture, about 200 yards from the roadside.
"My mother was with me, but neither of us knew what it was at first," recalled Smith. "At first, we thought it was a cow, because it was so big.
“Then it started to move closer. That's when we decided it was a big hog."
The women continued their walk, but not for long. It turned into a run once they noticed the hog was taking about 10 steps to their two.
"When it started trotting toward us, we took off running back to our house," Smith said. "It probably got 75 yards from us. I don't know if it was actually coming after us or not. But we weren't sticking around to find out. It was pretty crazy, running down the road, six months pregnant and pushing a stroller."
Smith went door-to-door knocking and called just about everyone she knew in hopes of finding someone to dispose of the hog. But she didn't have much luck. It was mid-morning and everyone was at work.
All was quiet around the Smith household until the following morning, when Corey Smith, Candi's 23-year old brother in-law, rolled into their driveway about 6 a.m. and saw the black/white giant standing in the middle of their three-acre pasture.
"It was huge," Corey said. "I'm six feet tall and I could tell by looking that it was at least 800 pounds. At its back, the hog stood taller than my waist."
Corey grabbed his .357 caliber rifle and stalked within 30 yards of the big hog before it tried to flee. He shot the animal four times in the shoulder, but the animal never showed any signs of being hit.
"It didn't phase him a bit," he said. "It just trotted off like it hadn't been hit. I couldn't believe it."
Rather than going after the hog by himself, Corey went back to get help from his older brother, Jeff. The two men trailed the hog into a patch of woods and eventually spotted it standing in the brush.
"It was still standing on all fours, like it wasn't hurt at all," Corey said. "Then it just took off running. We chased it for about 300 yards before we were finally able to put it down. It took four more shots to kill it."
The Smith's used a tractor to drag the hog home and roll it onto a flatbed trailer. Then they took it to Weatherford, Inc. in Kilgore and weighed it on scales used for torquing oil field tools.
Amazingly, the boar hog weighed in at a whopping 870 pounds! It measured seven feet, four inches from the tip of its nose to its hip, and five inches across the bridge of its snout.
Hogs that large aren't much good for tablefare; the meat is foul and way too tough.
But its 100-pound head - accented by three-inch tusks - has the makings for an interesting mount and lifetime of campfire tales.
The Smith brothers probably aren't the only ones with a good story to tell about the big pig, either.
The taxidermist who is mounting the head made an interesting discovery as he removed the skin for curing.
"He said buckshot pellets - 27 of them - fell out everywhere," Corey said. "Somebody else had shot the hog right in the face with a shotgun loaded with buckshot and we didn't even notice, because it was completely healed up. That was one tough hog."
Smith said the taxidermist is having a tough time finding a Styrofoam form to fit the massive cape.
