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Interbond Bullet performance on tough game

JJHACK

New member
Joined
Jun 21, 2001
Messages
302
Location
Rural Wa. State/ Ellisras South Africa
I have hunted a lot of different animals in my life but none have the skin thickness and rubber like body structure that the wild hogs do. At least not until you get into the bigger thick skinned African game. I cannot think of any animal that has thicker more difficult to penetrate hide then a wild boar in North America.

I was invited to hunt at a mountain lodge in Tennesse last week for hogs. I was fortunate enough to shoot two of them and I was using the 30/06 with the standard 165 grain Hornady Interbond that I have written about here in the past. They match so well with my rifle and have such massive penetration that I have really come to like them. This is also due to their perfect and consistant accuracy in my rifle.

Back to the Issue! I hunted quite a while before finding a hog I wanted and then I had a 75 yard running shot on him. He was steeply quartering away and I had to sink one of the 165's into his hind quarter or just in front of it. I recovered the bullet in his neck meat.

That pig was given a second shot because when I hit with the first him he actually ran on his back hoofs for about 20 yards. When he dropped back down to all four and remained upright I put another one in him. At that Distance and running you just never know how the shot was delivered and I was not about to take a chance.

The first hog I shot was at 157 yards laser ranged. He was also shot slightly quartering away. There were several hogs together and I did not want to kill one and hit another with the exit. As it turned out that bullet was in the 1.25" thick hide on the exit side after breaking the bones on the exit side front leg. Here are a few photo's, I did not weigh the billets yet but from looking at them I would guess they are near 90% or greater weight retention. Just look at the one bullet which almost turned completely inside out. It had the perfect long penetration from hind quarter to the neck meat.

I don't think you can get better then this,.......you can only equal it.

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This bullet was taken from a Bull Elk that scored 361 and weighed about 1100 pounds, the same 30/06 165 grain Hornady Interbond bullet.
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Awesome hog! I see why you like those bullets too. I got a big one a few weeks ago with the 30-06 Hornady LM 180 grain BTSP, is that the interbond also?

Hey, are you calling that Russian boar? It looks pretty Russian, its record book, I'm betting, too! Congratulations JJ!
 
I have a True Russian Boar skull here and nothing from the USA is even close to the size and shape. I think there is a real lack of education on what is a true "russian or european" hog when the average American talks about this.

The other real issue is that it's awfully rare to have a pig make it past a few years old in the USA and a true wild hog will not reach full maturity until it's about 5 years old or more.
True european hogs have a lot of long hair and you will not see skin through the fur anyplace. the nose is extremely long compared to the feral or other American wild hogs.

Most hogs shot in the USA are very young.
Wild hogs still have juvenile molars at 4 years old. One of the best ways to identify a wild hog with a strong blood line to Europe is the slope of the head. If you put a straight edge on the top of the skull from the back edge to the tip of the nose and there is less then 3/4" air space it's got strong russian/european genetics. If the space is 3/4" or greater then it's has a bloodline with domestic hogs in it's background.

The Skull I have from Russia is from a 340kg Boar which was approx 9 years old. It's easily 30% bigger then the next biggest wild hog I have seen form the USA with the 3/4" rule used. I own www.customosteo.com we handle about 75 wild hog skulls from the USA and abroad each year in our business. I'm basing this information on known specimens and 15 years of seeing them come into the shop.

Is the one I shot "Russian"? Well back in it's genetic make up there was certainly some influence but it's far too small for it's age to be a "true" Russian boar. When the skull is cleaned I will put the Russian skull and the this ones skull right next to each other and take a picture for this site. Then you can see how much difference there is for yourself.

As far as Record book I'm an official registered measurer for SCI but I have never entered a skull of my own. I suppose once I can pull the teeth and score them I might enter it, if it's big enough just so I can cliam a "record book" hog entry!

I have been tinkering with a wild hog article for a while now. Maybe it's time I get that project completed and make it a good reference document.
 
I will be surprised if this hog doesn't have a straight skull. The skull will be straighter than it appears in this picture, I think, based on my experience. It can be aged from the teeth, so that will be neat too. This hog looks very "Russian" to me, so I can't wait to see how it matches up to your big skull from Russia. Straighness and age. Animals with the same genetics age differently in different areas, there's big ones and little ones, and they are both the same age. Size for age doesn't determine if its Russian or not, right?
That hog, in the picture, looks like it has lots of hair. I'm looking forward to the skull and tooth picture. He's a great hog!

I know Records of Exotics has a Russian boar category and a wild boar category and they just base it on a picture. I don't know what the categories are for SCI on hogs, do they have only one hog category for the US or more than one?
 
There are two different SCI catagories for wild boar in North America. The one for "Wild Boar" lists all entries. The other is called Pure bred wild boar and 100% of the entries are from Nova Scotia. That should confirm there is a significant difference when not a single entry for pure bred wild boar is from the USA.

Size is not always a determinimg factor of genetics. However a big skull that is young has soft bones and is easily seen. An old heavy skull which is small would certainly indicate a different subspecies. On my Custom Osteo website the photo of the pure Russian right from Russia can be seen. Look at just how flat that skull is. It is tough to find a skull that large and perfectly flat from within the USA.
 
That's a nice big skull, too bad it was sawed through the back, Do you have the jaw so it can sit on a shelf complete? It's certainly a nice flat skull which makes it more like a wild boar not a feral hog. Just as with most wild boar in the USA you have to wonder how far back the bloodlines or genitic's go to know for sure what it's heratige is.

Consider this, in the 1800's in Tennessee there were a few hundred Russian European, and German wild hogs stocked on a fenced game farm. They escaped during the first hunt and for many years were breeding and running free in the mountians. Today the offspring of those hogs still run in the mountians of the SE USA. During that same era many farmers had pigs which they did not fence but let them hang around their farm houses. These domestic pigs and the true boars imported from Russia interbred freely. This is what was refered to as the "razor back" hog. These domestic pigs lacked the long hair of the body but gained the ridge of long hair down thier backs, and the longer snout.

In New Hampshire another business man at about the same time brought in a ship load of wild Russian boars and many from the black forest of Germany. These were stocked on a game farm for hunters. Those boar also escaped the fence from time to time and have allowed free range hunting to this day. The northern farmers were much more fence savy and the domestic swine was not a crossbreeding issue. Today the wild swine in NH are still considered an almost pure strain.

In Florida, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, and many other states with early inhabitants from Spain pigs were a staple food source which could be kept alive on ships without the need of refrigeration for meat for the trip across the ocean. The wild hogs actually were more resistant to illness then the spanish domestic swine so they captured as many wild hogs as possible to stock the ships food banks with. These spanish people kept pigs for years as a food source in the USA. During this time they were let loose as fencing was too expensive and pigs (especially the wild ones)are difficult to contain anyway. These original wild/domestic hogs from europe are the core source of european wild hogs today.

When compined with the free range farm swine most southern farms had during these early years, the European wild hogs and the more domesticated wild hogs have had a lot of interbreeding going on for several hundred years now. There have been a few introductions of the more pronounced features of the "russian boars" over the years but certainly not in enough numbers to change the genetics of all southern wild boars into "russian boar"

It seems today that any dark colored well furred swine are called russian boars. It sure can be a throwback to the old genitics from original stock but on the whole there are darn few free roaming wild hogs in the USA that can be considered "russian boars".

Put another way as an example. The brown bear of pacific coast is a very large bear getting to 1000 pounds. The interior grizzly is a much smaller bear which will average about 600 pounds. These two bears are identical species. The only difference is the history of their diet and habitat.

The major difference is the size which has much to do with the amount of winter sleep they have, and the unlimited food source of the brown bears. The wild areas they live in also allow them to get much older on average and also have much less tooth wear because of the soft easy foods they have. Compared to a mountain grizzly.

When you see a brown bear skull and compare it to a Grizzly bear skull the difference is usually quite easy to see. A 24" brown bear is usually a young bear with clearly visible bone sutures and a softer bone. A 24" mountain grizzly will usually have well worn teeth, no visible bone sutures and it just looks like a massive old skull. There is no mistaking them as different.

The same can be seen in most wild hog skulls. The Russian pure wild hogs are just plain bigger and more massive. The animals are much bigger. I have not seen a photo yet of a true wild boar with the long thick hair and big tusks that weighs over 500 pounds. Yet this is the size of a true Russian boar in Russia. To get a 500 pound wild hog in the USA it would certainly be farm raised for size, or crossed with a domestic hog to get it to grow as fast as a domestic pig does. What game farm is going to put 8-9 years of investment into growing a single giant pure russian boar to it's maximum size?

Comparing the hogs in the USA to Russian wild boar is much like comparing a Grizzly to a Brown bear. They may look the same and they may have the same general shape of the skull. However the size is not even close. There are way to many factors involved in killing a "true Russian boar" in the USA. SO many infact that there is not a single Pure Russian boar entered into the SCI record book from the USA. The only North American "Pure wild boar" trophies listed are from Roberts Island Nova scotia. This population is contained on an island.
 
That's a good explanation of the differences and the crossbreeding issue. It doesn't mean, that a young and small Russian boar is not a Russian boar though. Its just not a fully mature, 500 lb Russian boar. Requiring it has to be 500 lbs to be called a Russian boar, is going to far.

I see the pureness of the island restriction, no crossbreeding issue there, SCI doesn't even call that Russian though, they just call it pure.

A friend and I got that boar with the straight skull. I'm glad I retrieved the skull, he didn't want to save it. I think less than an inch was cut off of the back. I have the lower jaw. It has the cross breed little tooth that Texas Boars says means they are cross breeds, but so does your Russian boar from Russia. I don't think the Russian boar is pure anything, except hog. Eurasian, some call them, they've roamed from Europe to Asia. Its not the only "pureness" issue with species that SCI seems pretty controversial on. They have categories, that's fine. I guess pure wild boars means no domestic crossbreeding, recently. It could have occured hundreds of years ago and now, they've been isolated on that island, so SCI decided to call them pure wild.
I think of it, as recent times, pure wild.

Can you refer to genetic studies in your article, that would be good? I've heard of them, but never cared enough to look them up and go over the details.
 
Ok your confused too much with the size issue, re-read the comparison between the bears it might make more sense then?
Regardless of size the maturity of the Skull will reflct the genetics in swine just as it does in grizzly and brown bears.

Anyhow the small tooth in the lower jaw does not mean the boar is a "cross breed" it means it's not a domestic or wild domestic/feral hog. Only pure wild boar and Cross bred wild boar have this tooth. That little tooth is in ALL pure wild hogs, it's not in ANY domestic hogs. It's also in ALL( so they say for now) cross bred hogs. That page is good but the text is somewhat misleading in the way it's written. I Guarantee you, that skull I have is direct from the deep forests of the Soviet Union and it's never been anyplace near a domestic hog to breed with. That skull is without question the purest form of Russian Boar that is possible and it has the little tooth! Many very old hogs will be missing this tooth because it breaks off or falls out. Only after cleaning the skull can you actually see the healed over bone where it was once at.

Most California wild hogs also have this tooth. They are definately not domestic hogs gone wild but rather wild hogs introduced by the spanish hundreds of years ago. They also have had hogs released on the mainland from Catalina Island which was a hunting preserve many years ago(50+?). That Island had some kind of wild Asian hogs which have since bred with the original wild hogs the Spaniards brought over. The majority of really wild hogs in Califorina have a high degree of true wild boar but are not "Russian or European" They are just really strong genetic background of wild hogs from Asia and the ones the Spaniards brought over. people still frequently hear the locals and many visitors refer the the black wild boar in Califorina as a "Russian" even though there is no history of Russian boar ever being released in Califorina.

The bottom line here is that there are no fences between the countries in Europe so the hogs called Russian/German/turkish/czek/ etc. are all about the same with some regional differences based on food availability and climate. None of that strong 100's of years of developement is going to change the way North American WIld hogs develope in our lifetime. It takes a very long time for crossbreeding to develope into a functional new species. Until that time we will have various versions of wild boar with varying levels of European/Asian heratige in thier bloodlines. In the dog world these would be refered to as "mutts"! Although as we know once a Mutt has been around a long time in a consistant configuration it can become an AKC registered and offical Pure bred dog.
 
http://texnat.tamu.edu/symposia/feral/feral-7.htm

is a good reference on the multiple measures used to try and distinguish Russian or Eurasian, hybrids and domestic varieties. There is overlap, even using 9 measurements to try and distinguish them. It would be neat, if you have skulls in each of those groups to show how they look different. Put that in your article and give this scientific reference.


"These two bears are identical species. The only difference is the history of their diet and habitat."

Also, I've seen references to Russian hogs in Ca being released in 1925. Have you seen that?

"mutt" ... "it can become an AKC registered and offical Pure bred dog."
 
I have not heard of anyone importing hogs from Russia and releasing them in Ca. I think they might have had hogs "called Russians" released but noplace have I ever heard of any formal documented release of real Pure strain Russian boar in CA.
Regading the Mutt comment:
Blue tick hounds were a mixed breed of various hunting hounds for about 50 years. Then somebody got the idea that they were so good they should be their own breed. In about 1945 a group of dog owners/hunters/blue tick lovers, applied for registration to the AKC and shortly after that they were granted the status of an official Breed. I know this because I raised Blue ticks for my hunting hounds, and had the papers on one male which went back to the original pair that was granted breed papers.

Funny story about this was that my Male dogs paper trail goes all the way back to a female walker hound in Arkansas, not a pure blue tick hound.

That is a great informative document which shows much of the info I shared with the skull measuremnts previously.

An interesting omission is that little tooth theory. If anyone would have seen that as a defining characteristic I suspect these guys would have!

[ 03-23-2004, 15:43: Message edited by: JJHACK ]
 
Here's some sort of official looking thing for the Monterey county, CA. In the recreational section of the report, it makes a statement that "Russian boars were introduced into the area in 1923."

http://www.co.monterey.ca.us/gpu/Reports/Existing%20Plans/1cachagua_ap.html

It doesn't say what its based on, but it sounds like there may be a reference for it, its so specific.

I guess I'll print that document out and see if I can figure where my straight skull fits into their data. There are areas of their figures where their is no overlap of the three groups of hogs, if I can get the measurements still?

We got that hog in the 90s and I've read of releases of Russian boar as late as the 40s specific to that part of Bexar county, TX.
 
Maybe some business man bought and introduced Pure Russian hogs? Maybe they just called black colored wild hogs Russians? Maybe these were the ones they released from Catalina island? It's too bad that the name Russian Boar has taken on this magical terminolgy which really detracts from the importance of the few really pure Russian hogs we have.

I just put my Boar skull into the beetle colony. It's a darn big skull and quite flat. It's not nearly as flat as the true Russian but it's a long narrow skull with great teeth. It's without a doubt the best looking Skull I have seen in many years now. It will certainly rank in the top five I have ever done.

Pure Russian? I don't think that can be proven 100%. Is it comprised of a strong "european" genetic makeup.
For sure it is!
What do we call it?

I suppose it's got to be called an American Wild boar, can't be really named or listed as anything else the way I see it. It's clearly not a feral hog. So it must be called a wild boar plain and simple.

I think my personal hangup with the general hunting population calling every dark colored boar a "Russian Boar" is that the percent of actual European genetics in an American wild hog/boar is so little and unrealistic that they should be called wild boar when they have a flat skull and feral hog when they have a dished skull. I'm just not gonna believe that any hogs in this country have such a high percentage of european makeup they deserve the name "Russian boar"

To me that is like claiming that a Texas Dall Sheep is actually some portion of a Real Dall sheep! That is some funky exotic name for a farm sheep that a hunting club wants to sell to an unsuspecting city boy with more money then sense!

When somebody says it's a "true or Pure" Russian Hog I want to see the papers that prove this one single hog from out of the bush has remained geneticlly pure since the introductions about 100 years ago or so. I would not buy into this line of BS anymore then an AKC breeder would take the word of a stranger that he would breed his dog with.

From a purly logistical stand point, if you release 100 pure Russian hogs, Heck even a 1000 into the breeding population of Texas how quick would the pure strain be depleted with the 100's of thousands of wild hogs in Texas? You would be lucky to even see a change. If you were doing this with a game farm captive population that is much different. But think about just how quick the gene pool would be spread around. Some hogs might look really "Russian" others might have some visual potential and others would be mutants of some sort. With 2-3 litters a year the Russian strain would be depleted so fast it would disapear over a short time.

One other thing to consider is that a True Pure strain Russian boar with papers will cost about 800 bucks each today. That would be a hella big investment to turn loose in the bush!
 
The hog issue is not like the Texas Dall name at all, that name was picked because they're white, like the dall. Nobody claims any other resemblence to the Dall sheep. Trophy Game Records (TGR) of the World calls the Texas Dall (name in Records of Exotics, ROE) a white Corsican, you'd like that name better maybe, so you could use whichever suits you better. I don't remember what SCI calls them?

You mean they have papers, true pure strain Russian boar, there's papers, really?

That book with the canonical variables to plot where the study shows overlapping areas and non overlapping areas of the three types of hogs is out of print. I'm going to get the library to find one, if possible, for more information. Right now, we can compute where a skull falls in those plots Mayer and Brisbin gave by using the canonical variables I and II in Table 2. Figure 1 shows how to obtain the measurements. Figure 2 shows the areas where different types of hogs lie. I'm going to do it for the flat skull I have.
People do release expensive animals in free ranging areas here all the time. For example, most of the Nilgai in the state are free ranging in south Texas, thousands of them.

[ 03-24-2004, 10:09: Message edited by: Tom ]
 
Canada is big into pure wild hogs. Do a web search on wild boar in Alberta or Sask. and you will see how serious these guys are about "pure" strain wild boar with a paper trail showing the bloodlines and origins. One outfit claims they have the papers from where they bought there hogs from the Sandiego Zoo.

Probably why Canada's hogs are the only ones in NA in the SCI record books for Pure blooded wild boar. However noplace do they say "Russian" boar. They are much smarter then to use a worn out, over used name Like Russian Boar which actually has led to a lowering of the standard because it is so frequently used for animals that are not of an actual Russian Bloodline.

I guess what I would question is this; Does anyone really believe that a hog they shoot in the wild bush of the USA is actually a hog that some how survived inbreeding over 200 years to be a legitimate "Russian boar"

Since all swine in the world originated from wild hogs then they are all European/ Asain wild hogs. By this standard measure they are "Russian" even if they are pink and have curly tail? The real issue is the percentage of the strain. Lots of guys will say " if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck then guess what? it's a duck.

That's fine with me if the uninformed masses wish to believe that they are shooting a Russian boar in the wilds of Tennessee or Texas or Califorina etc. But the reality is that the real percent of the bloodline is so badly diluted that it's like saying we still have chimp blood pumping through our hearts! At this point it's been a fun and educational conversation. However Until I'm shown some kind of genetic breakdown of the hogs killed in the USA which roam free and it proves they are of Russian decent and have a pure or majority pure strain of Russian heratage I cannot buy into this silly notion that any boar shot in the USA is a Russian boar!That is just pure non-sense to believe otherwise. The whole strain is so badly diluted the odds of finding a free ranging hog that is a Russian boar is not even remotely likely. Game farm stock with controlled breeding is another story all together.

If I wanted to claim that one I shot in the Smokey mountains was a Russian it would convince many people. It's huge, long hair, big teeth flat skull etc. But I know better than that. It certainly has the visual appearance but it's just not likely. There are frequently genetic throwbacks or odd things that popup now and then. I have a black friend in South Africa who's wife had a white Baby with green eyes. The features of the baby are not all white but it's obvious that at some point in her back ground there was a white interratial affair. They did DNA testing and the baby belongs to the couple no doubt about it. Nobody remembers any of their family being with a White man but it's clear somebody along the line was!

None of the other children of her sisters or brothers have any white or even light colored children. None have straight hair and all have brown eyes. Yet this black lady with her black husband gave birth to a visually white child with green eyes.

The point is the same thing happens with all animals and people. Somtimes the right genetic string pops up and you have what looks like a pure bred wild Russian hog.
 
Unless you find a genetic study improving on the descrimination in the Mayer and Brisbin article is the best we've got. Do those skull measurements, see what you get? I'm going to do them on the boar skull I've got.

You're making some pretty outlandish statements not supported by anything with the accusative remarks directed at others not even making those claims of pureness. The introduction of the Mayer and Brisbon paper, abstracted from their book, says clearly "Eurasian wild boar (often referred to as "Russian boar")". You're the only one concerned about pure and papers, that I know of. Your description of the pure wild boars put in SCI is a name which sounds equivalent to Novia Scotia island wild boar, correct? I'll search the Canadian Alb. and Sask. wild boars too and see what I get. I don't know much about Canadian boars.

If you do the skull measurements on your skull, I know how to do the canonical variable calculation. The units are mm in their reference.

I did two skull from my backyard. The one on the left came out in the feral hog category with CV1=-2.47 and CV2=0.43 in figure2 top. The one one the right came out Eurasian Wild Boar (or Russian) with CV1=2.18 and CV2=-3.08. I had to approx. some measurements because the skull is damaged, but its clearly plotted closest to the center (+) of the Eurasian wild boar, in the Mayer Brisbin study with results shown in their Figure2 (top). So, there's what the difference between skulls of a feral hog and a Russian boar look like. Basically, the Russian skull is longer.


skullpair.jpg


What's your Russian one and Tennesse one come out like?

[ 03-25-2004, 06:48: Message edited by: Tom ]
 
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