Boar Fighting Pads

By Ken Payne

While hunting with different SSAA members, the subject of the size of a projectile for pigs has often come up; but even people who have shot a number of pigs haven’t known about or considered a pig’s ‘shoulder pads’. 

Next time you get a good-sized boar, try pressing your knife straight into the shoulder. You will find lots of resistance; the reason is that boars have very dense cartilage that can be up to 30mm thick or more, which they use to protect themselves from sharp tusks while fighting other boars. This, as well as the mud packed on their skin, which can be up to another 30mm thick on their shoulder, can slow down or stop bullets that are not well constructed or heavy enough to punch through these mediums. This is one of the reasons we recommend heavy projectiles, as many times we are also shooting running pigs in heavy cover and cannot always put the round in exactly the right spot every time. 

One of the attached photos is of a boar showing the mud almost up to the middle joint of my finger; the second is the shoulder pad of a small 50kg boar.