When I saw him he was 125 yards from me, my initial thought is to always close the distance. I looked down at the ground and it was solid dried live oak leaves. Despite the 20 MPH crosswind and distance, I took one step and he heard me and turned to face me. He could not see me and definitely could not smell me because of the wind so after a few seconds he turned back broadside and went back to rooting. I thought, oh well, and shot him offhand from a standing position. The rifle is sighted in at 100-yards so I just held the elevation on his heart and put about 2" into his shoulder and sent the Prvi Partizan 123-grain Round Nose Soft Point on its way. Honestly, I wasn't quite sure how much the crosswind would drift the bullet but you darn sure don't want into the shoulder of this type of hog with anything. The report of the 7.62x39 is pretty low but there was no doubt I hit the boar as the bullet smack was very loud! The hog immediately hit the brush and I could tell that he was hit solid. Within seconds, I heard him go down hard. I waited about 30 minutes as I've been rolled three times by hogs this size and there isn't much you can do about it. You just wait until THEY get tired. Better to wait it out in the clear! He died 15 yards from where he was standing at the shot.
The bullet did not exit but it did what it needed to do. I came back to the house and ran all the ballistics with the wind and the ammo performed spot on with the bullet drifting the appropriate distance. When I bought the ammo, I went ahead and treated it like I would my cast bullets to include determining an actual BC shot across two chronographs 100 yards apart. I will include my ballistic stuff at the bottom of this post.
I know there are those that think this cartridge is under-powered but I disagree. I think it is a unique cartridge that performs well for the same reasons that other unique cartridges like the 30-30 Win, 32 Win Spl, 35 Rem, etc. do. All of these cartridges define the bullet that will be used and because of that, jacket thickness and other properties can be tailored to its specific terminal needs. None of these cartridges have to share their projectiles with any other cartridges. The more generic a design is the more compromised it's design is because of the range of velocities the projectile must accommodate.
I actually have my TLC313-115-RF load work ready for testing in this rifle with H4227, just need the weather to settle down to check it out.
I am really happy that I put the effort into finding this rare Rossi offering. It is absolute joy to shoot and is going to see a lot of deer and hogs hit the dirt down here in South Texas.
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) and I need to put the bullet between the front legs and half way to the base of the neck. That was the case this year at over 90 yards.
