Boar Hunting with Pistols

The fastest way to start a fight amongst gun enthusiasts is to ask them, "which round is better, 9mm or .45?" Ask that one and you'll be sure to see sparks fly. If you google for "9mm stopping power" you will undoubtedly come upon articles claiming that 9mm isn't enough. There are old police reports of plugging a guy with 11 9mm bullets and him still standing. It goes on and on.

In my opinion, a caliber capable of taking down a deer or a wild boar is plenty to stop an aggressor. Now, contrary to what some would have you think, handguns are used in hunting in some circumstances. Oddly enough, wild boar hunting is one of them these days. I honestly would love to attempt this. First because of the challenge of getting close to a boar without getting mauled by it, and second because I love pork, and the idea of eating 'free range bacon' just appeals to me.

The guys over at Gunblast recently decided to go wild boar hunting, with a S&W MP in 9mm. At first glance, I would have said, "that's crazy, 9mm isn't enough for a wild boar." Well, they have proved me wrong. He managed to put down the animal in two shots. Go over and read the story if you get a chance, and check out their other reviews while you're at it.

The key is to bring along the right type of 9mm ammo. See, bullets come in all types of loads. These are various combinations of gunpowders with bullet shapes and designs. For practice, standard military 'full metal jacket' rounds will do fine, and they don't cost much. But for self defense, I always carry some variety of hollowpoint overpressure ammo (known as +P for short). A hollowpoint bullet will expand when it hits flesh, and the overpressure ammo gives the round more power behind it.

Still, were I to ever get the chance to go wild boar hunting, I'd still bring a semi-auto rifle in 7.62x39 or .308 to back me up if the pistol doesn't put the animal down.

One final note: the ammo used to hunt boar in that article came from ExtremeShock. If you have a change, check out these videos of them firing bullets into ballistic gelatin. Ballistic gelatin gives a pretty good guesstimate of what a bullet does when it hits flesh. To be an even better test, the gelatin should have something to simulate a rib cadge in it.