Rossi Rifleman

Well, maybe not, but my 92 goes with me every time I go out on a tractor or the Mule since the last six months. Our farm is near Paris, TX which is up near the Red River. All the counties along the river have been reporting hog damage for years, but somehow our little place has been spared up until recently.





Haven't had a shot at one yet, but they are mostly nocturnal, so no big surprise I haven't seen one other than on game cams, or the evidence("plowed" ground). I have a few other rifle choices(30-30, 300blk, 5.56)but the 92 loaded with .357 is my usual choice. Hard to leave the lever gun at home.

Jeff

Nice I mean sorry about the hog infestation but glad to see your going to put the lever gun to work.

No major damage to complain about so far, in fact it's kind of strange...I've anticipated their arrival so long it's a bit underwhelming. They seem to come through maybe one night every six weeks or so.

Mm, mouths watering at the prospect of bagging 50+lbs of free pork!

Good luck out there, and have a few chops for me

Whatre you keeping it loaded with? I tgink a 158gr JSP would be a good bacon-maker

Down in my part of Texas, we have our fair share of them. They have been inactive as of late, but I try to kill everyone I run across. I have one boar working in the back, but he is cutting across my place between 10 at night and 1 in the morning. If the weather clears up and I have some moon illumination, I will go out to incept him this week.

As to you question, honestly, it is not my favorite of the 92 choices. Years ago, for my cast bullet mold business, I came up with a 175-grain whitetail bullet for 357 Mag rifles, but when I applied that to hogs, I wished I had something even heavier. What I ended up doing was using a 190-grain, 35 Rem bullet of my design, and the additional 15-grains of weight made a big difference. I'm using hard cast bullets with a 72% meplat, so I depend on velocity coupled with the flat nose to accomplish three things; knock them off their feet, cut a 3/4" hole through them, and exit. Only because of my location and interest in doing it, I've killed thousands of hogs, and if you want to recover them, I've learned those are the keys to success. So, if the 357 Mag is what it is, use something that produces results across those points.

I have a topic about my work on this but what I have to do with my 190-grain bullet and its long nose is to load it in a 38 Spl case. That works out very well as the crimp groove against the case mouth works out perfectly. I do load the case to 357 Mag pressures using a volatile powder, Lil' Gun, for maximum velocities.

Here are three topics from back in 2015 when I was asking myself if the 357 Mag was a good hog gun.

Rethinking my 357 Mag as a hog rifle?

357 Mag on the road to redemption as a hog rifle!

Testing the R92 357 Mag & 190-Grain Bullet

I'm going to move this topic to the " Field/Hunting Stories, Tales, & Topics" forum.

Greetings
If I ever get the opportunity to get to Texas and wack a few rooters I plan on using the 50 Alaskan or a 375-06. I am getting to lazy to be chasing critters about I want to knaw on.

I have a NOE .360 I size to .358 and with grease and gas check weigh 186-ish. They'll just load short enough to fit in my Blackhawk and SRC. I'd guess they'd work well with a big load of H110, 2400, or ..... another powder I got but haven't tried (escapes me right now).

Thanks RD for the interesting read on your hog hunting experience. Lots of hogs under your belt. Even though it sounds like the.357 will get the job done, you've given me an excuse to get another Rossi lever gun in .44 mag. :-)

Jeff

GRV01 wrote:
Whatre you keeping it loaded with? I tgink a 158gr JSP would be a good bacon-maker

I load it with JHP 158gr from Freedom munitions. The rifle seems to like cycling their rounded profile better than FP. After reading RD's research & ballistic work it looks like my "off the shelf" loads won't have enough velocity to do the job.

Jeff