Pig hunting – The ExhaustNotes Blog

El Puerco Times Two: Part 2

By Joe Berk

An upfront warning: If you’re squeamish, you should skip this blog.

It rained hard after Tom, John, and I returned from our first day’s hunt, but that was okay. The Dunton Ranch has nice accommodations. Heat, hot water, cooking gear, refrigerator, shower, comfortable bunks, and more. Just bring food and ammo. It’s a gentlemanly way to hunt, and if nothing else, John and I are gentlemen. No more pitching tents and sleeping on the ground for us.

Subaru Outbacks, parked in front of our Dunton Ranch cabin. John and I are both Subie fans.

When Tom picked us up the next morning, he told me my hog weighed 219 pounds, and that he recovered the bullet. It had come to rest just inside the hog’s hide on the opposite side of where I shot it. I was very interested in seeing that bullet. Tom had prepped the hog and two sides of pork were hanging in the Ranch’s freezer. Tom told us he had stood outside in the rain the previous night skinning and dressing it. My pig weighed 219 pounds.

Tom showed me the bullet. My hog was a clean kill, but the bullet had failed. Its lead core separated from the cupper cup. Not that it made any difference to the pig.

My bullet, post impact. The copper jacket should the bullet had mushroomed nicely (which is what you want), but when I turned it over, I was disappointed (see below).

My bullet’s copper jacket. The jacket peeled back nicely. The lead core was gone. It should have still been in the jacket. John’s bullet would behave the way it was supposed to, but mine had not.

Tom told me the bullet had cleanly impacted the hog’s spine and taken out a fist-sized chunk of it. The hog was dead before it hit the ground, but the bullet had separated. It bothered me enough that I called Hornady when I returned home, and I’ll tell you about that later in this blog.

Tom, our guide, and Baja John checking the zero on John’s .25 06 Browning. The zero was exactly where it needed to be. We were good to go.

John’s rifle is a beautiful curly maple Browning A-Bolt chambered in .25 06. That’s a cartridge I had never owned, but not because I didn’t like it. Everything I’ve ever read about the .25 06 has been positive. Flat shooting, accurate, easy to find ammo and brass for…it has all the right things going for it and it rings all the bells. And I love A-Bolt Brownings. John’s rifle is all stainless steel, it has an octagonal barrel, and it wears a Nikon 3×9 telescopic sight finished in silver to match the rest of the rifle. It’s a beautiful firearm.

When John first bought his Browning several years ago, he visited us and we spent some time at the West End Gun Club zeroing it. John hadn’t shot the rifle too much since then, and he wanted to check the rifle’s zero before we hunted. Tom took us to a place where we could do so by firing at a pile of large boulders he knew to be a hundred yards away. John fired two shots and both hit exactly where he intended.

I took my Ruger with me again, but I already had my pig. I didn’t intend to shoot my rifle again unless we encountered a Russian boar.

Yakkety Yak! Yaks on the Dunton Ranch. Shooting a yak is not something that’s made my bucket list. Your mileage may vary.

Although we had seen several Ossabaw hogs yesterday, none were around that second morning. Tom said he had been out earlier (before retrieving us) and he hadn’t seen any pigs, either. He said the previous night’s downpour most likely had driven them away. We did see several yaks and a bison. Dunton keeps a lot of game on his ranch. Neither John nor I had any desire to shoot one of these large animals.

A Dunton Ranch bison. These are too cool to shoot, in my opinion. Your opinion may be different. I respect your right to be wrong.

After riding around in the truck and walking most of the morning, we finally spotted several hogs. Tom scoped them and put the distance at 77 yards. It was John’s turn at bat and he took but a single swing. Just as had occurred the day before, all it took was one shot and it was game over. The .25 06 did its job.

John and his Ossabaw. We both had our pigs for this trip. Our hunt was a success.

When we walked up to the pig, we grabbed a few more photos, including the one of John and I posing behind his pig. It’s the photo you see at the top of this blog.

Tom asked if we’d like to go to one of the blinds and sit around waiting for a Russian to possibly stroll by while he dressed John’s pig. I asked if they would enter this part of the ranch with the Ossabaws present. “Yep, they will,” Tom said. “They’ll mate with the female Ossabaws.”

“I guess they’re not too particular,” I said. John, Tom, and I had a good laugh.

John said he’d like to go back and watch Tom dress his hog. Neither of us had seen that before. I realized I wanted to see it, too. We went back to the ranch proper, and wow, we really had our eyes opened. It’s not like you see meat at the supermarket, all neatly packaged and ready to go.

The first thing Tom showed us was my hog, all dressed out, with both sides hanging in the refrigerator. Tom pointed to where my bullet had hit the hog’s spine. The damage was staggering.

We went back outside and Tom used a Bobcat tractor to lift John’s hog out of the trailer. The hooks had a scale attached, and John’s hog came in at 225 pounds. He outdid me by 6 pounds (not that we were competing).

John and his Ossabaw. The little thing on the chain (it looks like an iPhone) is a digital scale.

Tom went to work on the pig and what followed was amazing. I had no idea dressing out a hog was so labor intensive. It took Tom a good hour and a half, maybe more, to complete the job. It probably would have taken Tom less time if John and I hadn’t asked so many questions and taken so many pictures. All the while, chickens wandered into the area and were eating bits and pieces that fell off the hog as Tom worked on it. They’re carnivores, you know. There were turkeys strutting around, too, but they kept their distance (but not their silence). It was hard not to laugh as the turkeys gobbled up a storm at each other. It reminded me of what passes for political discussion these days.

Speaking of storms, while Tom worked on John’s hog it started raining again. Hard. John and I stepped into the metal building and watched Tom work from under cover. When the rain turned to hail, Tom took a break and joined us in there.

I looked around inside the metal building and realized again that the Dunton Ranch offers all kinds of hunting. It really is an impressive operation. I felt lucky being able to experience it.

The dressing room. Not the kind of dressing room I’d been in before.

Tom finished up his chores on John’s hog and as he neared completion, he found John’s .25-caliber bullet. John used Federal factory ammo with 120-grain jacketed softpoint bullets. Unlike my Hornady bullet, the Federal bullet performed exactly as it was supposed to, mushrooming in a manner worthy of a bullet ad. It was located just under the skin on the opposite side of the hog.

The bottom side of John’s .25-caliber bullet. Note how the copper jacket had flowered out, and the lead adhered to the jacket petals.

The business end of the John’s .25 06 bullet. It mushroomed to more than twice its original diamter and remained intact. This is stellar bullet performance.

That night (which was only the second day we’d been on the Dunton Ranch), John and I decided to head into Kingman for dinner. We could have cooked in our cabin, but we were reveling in our pig-hunting success and we wanted to celebrate. Tom recommended a Mexican restaurant in town (El Palacio) and his recommendation was a home run.

My Mexican plate at El Palacio. It was great!

On Interstate 40, headed back to California, just west of Kingman. It was clear sailing all the way home.

The ride home was enjoyable. It rained hard all night Tuesday and it rained as I was leaving Wednesday morning, but as soon as I passed Kingman I could see the skies clearing. It was an easy ride back to California. I stopped at Del Taco in Barstow and had a taco (they’re the best Del Taco anywhere).

Once I was home, I unpacked, ran a patch soaked in Patch-Out (my preferred rifle solvent) through the No. 1’s barrel, and then I called Hornady. I spoke with a nice guy there and told him what happened with my .30 06 bullet. “It happens,” he said. It’s more likely to happen, he went on, if the bullet is traveling at extremely high velocities or if the game was too close (before the bullet had a chance to slow). I explained that my .30 06 load’s muzzle velocity was just below 2900 feet per second (I knew this because I had chronographed the load, I explained) and the hog was a measured 117 yards away (and I knew this because our guide had a rangefinder). The Hornady man was impressed that I knew all that, and then mentioned that if a bullet strikes bone, it is also more likely to separate. Ding ding ding! That was exactly what happened on my hog.

The Hornady engineer told me that one way to avoid cup and core separation is to use a monolithic bullet (they are made of solid copper, with no lead core). He was almost apologetic when he explained that monolithic bullets are more expensive than lead bullets because copper costs more than lead. That may be my next step at some point in the future.

We are not allowed to hunt with lead bullets in California (the folks in our legislature are afraid that we might kill an animal, leave it, and then a California condor might eat it and get lead poisoning). You know, the California Condor, the super rare endangered species (that there are almost none of) might ingest an animal carcass with the remnants of a lead bullet fragment in it and die of lead poisoning. I’m serious; that’s what our politicians here in California are worried about. I shouldn’t be too hard on them, I suppose, because we have something in common. I and the rest of the TDS loonies here in California can both make this statement: None of us ever found any Russians. For the TDS-afflicted, it is imaginary secret agents in Moscow. For me, it is a Russian boar. My Russians are real, though, and on one of these trips, I’ll get one.

Anyway, it might be time to start experimenting with monolithic bullets. Maybe it’s a good thing we have that no lead law here in LooneyLand.

To get back on topic: Our hunt was a rousing success. The Dunton Ranch showed us a great time, and John and I each got our pigs. I can’t wait to do it again.

Missed Part 1 of the El Puerco story? It’s right here.

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The Rifleman’s rifle…

This is a cool story that goes like this…several years ago I decided I wanted to hunt pigs. I had last chased hogs in the woods about 30 years earlier, but I never got one. That was a character flaw I wanted to correct. It was just something I needed to do, but there were consulting gigs overseas, lots of travel, a few epic motorcycle rides, and, well, you know how it goes. Pig hunting stayed tucked away in my mind but I hadn’t acted on it. Then another thing happened: I stopped in a gunshop in northern California and saw a rifle I just had to have. It’s the one at the top of this blog. Specifically, a Supergrade Model 70 Winchester in God’s caliber, the mighty .30 06.

Okay, back to the pig thing. Back in the 1910s folks imported Russian boar into California so rich guys could hunt them without having to spring for a boat ticket to Russia. I guess that worked out okay, but what happened next surprised everybody. The Russian boars loved it over here and I guess they felt right at home. They bred like rabbits. Then, being pigs, they crossbred with domestic hogs. The bottom line? Today, the US has a runaway wild pig problem. If you think you don’t have wild pigs, you either just don’t know it (the more likely case), or you don’t have them in your neighborhood yet (the less likely case, but if you don’t have them yet, you will). Wild pigs are everywhere and they’re destructive. Farmers know they’ll tear up an acre every night looking for food. That’s a problem that guys like me and my good friend Paul are only too happy to help solve.

Here piggy, piggy, piggy... — Here piggy, piggy, piggy…

So who’s Paul? Well, I’ve known Paul all my life. We were next-door neighbors back in rural New Jersey in the days when you could set up a range and shoot in your back yard. And we did. We fooled around with guns, we hunted, we fished, we rode bikes…we did the kinds of things kids did 60 or 70 years ago, before they invented ADHD drugs, safe spaces, cell phones, computers, social media, and all the stuff kids today get to struggle with. Rural New Jersey in the 1950s was a good time and a good place to grow up.

There’s more to the story: Our fathers were outdoorsmen, so Paul and I were, too. Both of our fathers were competitive shooters and hunters. Paul’s Dad had a Model 70 in .270 Winchester and my Dad had a Model 70 in .243. In their day, those two cartridges were the hottest and best things going. There have been newer cartridges and newer rifles since, but both the .270 and the .243 are still dynamite chamberings. And the Model 70 Winchester was (and I still think still is) the ultimate rifle. It’s been called the Rifleman’s Rifle. It’s that good. And it’s what our fathers shot.

So when I saw that new maple Model 70, I bought it. Just like that. I knew I would hunt pigs with it. It’s one of the finest rifles I’ve ever handled.

I suggested a pig hunt to Paul, and hey, who could turn down an offer like that? I took the Model 70 you see above, and Paul had his magnificent pre-’64 Model 70 in .270 Winchester. Paul’s Model 70 has a real pedigree: It was handed down to Paul by his father, and this particular Model 70 is rifle royalty. It doesn’t get any better than Paul’s pre-’64 Model 70, and the .270 Winchester cartridge is the quintessential chambering for it. Google Jack O’Connor, the guy who put the Model 70 and the .270 Winchester cartridge on the map, and you’ll see what I mean. O’Connor wrote a book (The Rifle), in which he explains his reasons for the .270’s superiority. I have O’Connor’s book and it’s a great read. That said, I just like the .30 06, but they’re both great cartridges.

Paul’s particular Model 70 (this very rifle, the one Paul used on our hunt) was my first exposure to high-powered, long-distance marksmanship a cool 60 years ago. Paul’s Dad used to fire that rifle across the fields behind our homes in the 1950s. We lived in a rural part of the state, and you could do that in those days. Before Paul’s Dad would send rounds downrange, though, little Pauly would always knock on our door to tell us all hell was about to break loose. That was mighty neighborly, as an unexpected bark from a .270 Winchester would have scared the bejesus out of us (I’m not sure what bejesus is, but I like the word so I’m using it here).

So, back to the more recent past. In preparation for our pig hunt, I worked up a load for my Model 70 and I found the Holy Grail..a load that was both hard-hitting and accurate. Two of them, actually. Here’s how it worked out…

Model 70 magic... — 100-yard Model 70 magic…

The deal on reloading and these cartridge development efforts is that you experiment with different powders, primers, bullets, and propellant charge weights to find an individual rifle’s sweet spot, and like I said, I found two. Over the course of two days, I fired all of the above loads (at 100 yards), and the bottom one in yellow is the one I used for our hunt. That load uses a 150-grain Winchester jacketed soft point bullet with 48.0 grains of IMR 4320 propellant. I bought a bunch of the 150 grain jacketed Winchester bullets about 10 years ago when it looked liked reloading components might dry up altogether (shooting-gear-related shortages are cyclical, always coinciding with whoever has just moved into public housing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue). After I settled on my preferred load, I’ve shot even tighter groups with it. I once shot a 0.244-inch 3-shot group with my Model 70 with the same load. For the targets we would be shooting (hogs, which get big), that’s good enough for government work.

While I was doing all of the above, Paul had a similar load development effort underway with his .270 Winchester. I found the secret sauce for my Model 70, and Paul found the right recipe for his. We were ready.

My Model 70 is a current production rifle and it’s awesome. The Supergrade Model 70s are glass-bedded and free-floated from the factory, the bluing is deeply polished, and the fiddleback maple figure on mine is exhibition grade. It’s not the kind of a rifle you would ordinarily take on a hunt and some folks have told me it’s too pretty to shoot, but I didn’t buy it just to look at the thing. It’s a shooter and it’s very, very accurate. I actually think the quality of the modern Model 70 rifles is better than the pre-’64 rifles (which are generally regarded as Winchester’s best ever), but don’t tell that to Paul.

Our happy hunting grounds at dusk, east of Kingman, Arizona.

So how did we do? Well, it was one of the best weekends ever. We rolled out to a hilly desert area east of Kingman, Arizona (we were well out in the boonies) and our hunt was hugely successful. Paul got a monster hog the first night out, and I nailed one a bit smaller the next morning. I have great photos of Paul and me posing with our pigs, but if I posted them here it would generate the inevitable comments from folks whose BVDs contract into tight knots over such things. You know, the folks who hate guns and hunting…people who assume their hamburgers come from suicidal cows or whatever. So you’ll have to use your imagination. But they are great photos.

Paul and I both ate pork for a year after that. Roast pork. Barbequed pork. Pork chili. Pork meatballs (pretty good, actually). Pork sandwiches. Pork breakfast sausage (also very good). A special pork/wild mushroom/barley casserole (my favorite). But no bacon. Bacon comes from belly fat and wild hogs are lean, so there is no belly fat. Yep, we had over a hundred pounds of dressed-out pork after our hunt. I came home with a whole cooler full, and I had the little pig. When we figured the cost of the rifles, the ammo, our travel, and the hunt, that pork worked out to about $34 per pound. And it was worth every cent. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

Want more Tales of the Gun? Just click here!

The Rimfire Series: A tale of two Springfields…

Good buddy Greg admiring my M1922 Springfield on the range this past weekend. This rifle is about as old as Greg is, but it looks like it left the factory last week. It’s super collectible.

So, what’s this all about? A tale of two Springfields? Well, the topic is Springfield rifles, and specifically, the 1903 Springfield and its variants. I own two, and I think they are two of the finest firearms ever made. One is a 1903A1 with a scant stock (more on that in a bit). It’s a recent acquisition of a century-old rifle, and mine is essentially in as-new condition. It was gunsmithed from selected components so it’s not an original rifle, but I don’t care. I bought it to shoot it, and that’s what I’m doing. My other Springfield is an M1922, a special number chambered in .22 Long Rifle. It’s a magnificent rifle, it’s one I inherited from my father, and it is an amazing firearm. It’s in pristine condition, and boy oh boy, can it shoot!

The challenge here is to keep this blog short. There’s just so much to tell when the topic is the 1903 Springfield rifle and its variants. I’ll do my best to keep it manageable.

The M1903A1 Springfield, chambered in the mighty .30 06 cartridge.

The M1922 Springfield, which shoots the much smaller .22 Long Rifle cartridge.

The Reader’s Digest version of the story goes like this…although we won the Spanish American War (and its Battle of San Juan Hill probably put Teddy Roosevelt in the White House), we very nearly got our butts kicked by the Spaniards. We were armed with antiquated, big-bore, rainbow-trajectory, single-shot rifles. The Spaniards had modern 7mm Mauser bolt action rifles, which were flatter shooting, faster (both in terms of reloading time and bullet velocity), and far more accurate. It was a dicey victory for us, and shortly after, the US Army incorporated the 1898 Krag rifle. We had to keep up with the Spanish Joneses.

While the Krag was a bolt-action rifle, it was not without problems, and we quickly developed a new rifle based on a modernized Mauser action initially chambered in a round called the .30 03. It fired a .308-inch diameter bullet (which is where the .30 part of the .30 03 name came from) and it was adopted in 1903 (which is where the 03 came from). We then improved the cartridge a bit in 1906 and it became the .30 06, or simply, the ’06. The ’06 is one of the world’s premier hunting cartridges, and many folks think is the best all-around cartridge on the planet. I’m one of them, but I digress. One more photo, and then back to the story.

A modern Winchester Model 70, chambered in the 102-year-old .30 06 cartridge. That wild boar, late of Arizona, fed us for a year!

Like I said, the original Springfield rifle was cambered for the .30 03 and the rifle was designed as the Model 1903. The .30 03 only lasted a short time and all of the 1903 rifles chambered for it were recut for the improved .30 06, but the rifle’s name remained the Model 1903. These early ones were cool, with straight grip stocks and elegant (but complex) rear sights. Then the rifle got a pistol grip stock, which I think looked cooler, and they became the 1903A1 rifles. Then they were made with stocks that were supposed to be straight grip stocks, but the Army wanted the pistol grip and the arsenal’s walnut blanks did not have enough meat to allow for a full pistol grip. The solution was to get as close as possible to a pistol grip from a straight grip walnut blank, which resulted in a shallow pistol grip; these became the “scant” stocks (presumably so named because the wood was too scant to allow a full pistol grip).

The 1903A1 “scant” stock. Note the relaxed pistol grip aft of the trigger, and on this particular rifle, the crisp Springfield Armory cartouche stamped into the walnut.

Check out the 1903’s early, complex, adjustable rear sight. There’s was a lot of machine time and money there. The Army needed something less expensive.

Load development for the 1903A1. These were cast bullets loaded with IMR 3031 powder. This particular rifle prefers jacked bullets with IMR4320 powder.

Later, the Army realized that the 1903’s fancy rear sight and other features were overly-expensive for a standard-issue battle rifle, so the ’03 was “value engineered” to make it less costly to manufacture. These became the Model 1903A3 rifles, often referred to simply as the ‘03A3.

Somewhere while all this was going on, the Army introduced versions of this rifle chambered in .22 Long Rifle. They were intended to be trainers, but they proved to be exceptionally accurate and the Army’s shooting teams (and others) competed with them.

The .22 Long Rifle cartridge (fired in the M1922 rifle), and the .30 06 Springfield cartridge (fired in the Model 1903).

The M1922s are phenomenal rifles, they are rare, and they are expensive in those rare instances they come on the market. My Dad bought one released through the Civilian Marksmanship Program 60 years ago for $25. Today, when one changes hands, you can bet the price is somewhere around $3,000. They’re that rare, and they’re that good.

The starboard side of the M1922. It is an elegant rifle.

Lyman competition aperture sights on the M1922.

The M1922’s Lyman aperture front sight. This rifle has “peep-to-peep” sights; both the rear and the front sights have holes to allow “peeping” at the target. They work very, very well.

You might be wondering: How do these rifles shoot?

Very well, thank you.

The M1922’s results at 50 yards. On the first bullseye on the left, the lone shot out of the black (at the 12:30 position) was the first shot of the day, fired from a cold and wet barrel.

Targets shot with the Model 1903A1. The one on the left was terrible; I shot it with cast bullets at velocities too high for the bullet (the lead smeared in the barrel and the bullets wouldn’t group). The remaining four were shot with one of my favorite .30 06 loads (a 130 grain Hornady jacketed soft point bullet and 52.0 grains of IMR 4320 powder).

So, what happened to the 1903 as a military rifle? It served in World War I (although we couldn’t make them fast enough, so another rifle, the Model 1917, accounted for more than half the US battle rifles during the Great War). By the 1930s, we were already hard at work developing the Garand (that rifle fired the same .30 06 cartridge, and it was a semi-auto). The Garand became the US Army’s standard rifle in World War II. Interestingly, the US Marines stuck with the 1903 going into World War II, but they, too, soon switched to the Garand. The 1903 evolved into a specialty item. It was still recognized as phenomenally accurate and it became our sniper rifle in World War II (with a telescopic sight, it became the 1903A4).

Like I said, all of the above is the Reader’s Digest version of the story behind the Model 1903 rifle. The definitive reference on the 1903-series Springfield rifles is Joe Poyer’s The Model 1903 Springfield Rifle and Its Variations, and if you have a deeper interest in these historic and fine rifles, it is a book you should own. You can find it on Amazon.