|
UPDATE:
"Beauty and the Beast"
Mrs. Rachel Klinger of Wise, VA
and the 450-pound Russian boar she harvested with one
shot using an Extreme Shock 32 H&R 60-grain bullet
at 1210 fps.
|
These days, shooters have it better than ever
when it comes to ammo selection for their favorite weapons. I
remember a time when, to get really high performance ammo, you
had to roll your own. Today, there are several ammunition makers
who specialize in making ammo that rides the cutting edge of
performance. One such company with which I have recently became
familiar is Extreme Shock Munitions of Clintwood,
Virginia. I was contacted by the PR folks for Extreme Shock, and
was sent some ammo to try out. Subsequently, I was invited to go
on a wild boar hunt in East Tennessee with Jeff Mullins,
the head honcho at Extreme Shock. More on the hog hunt later.
Extreme Shock makes some very interesting and
unusual cartridges, for rifle, pistol, and shotgun. Some are
tailored for hunting, while others are very specialized
anti-personnel rounds, which are in use world-wide by military
types and civilian contractors doing anti-terrorist operations.
The criteria for the Extreme Shock ammo is to offer very
specific penetration for the job at hand, along with extreme
soft tissue disruption. Most of the Extreme Shock ammo is made
from a base of powdered tungsten metal, which is very dense, and
very tough. This tungsten core is swaged into a conventional
bullet jacket. The whole thing is lead free, offers a lowered
chance of a ricochet, and seldom exits a target. Extreme Shock
makes several different mission-specific rounds. Some offer more
penetration, some less. Some are built to offer high performance
in a subsonic rifle round, and others are built for a very low
chance of hard target penetration, for use in airplanes and
such.
Our boar hunt was to take place at Caryonah
Hunting Lodge near Crossville, Tennessee. Caryonah has hogs
with a lot of European wild boar blood, and some are mixed with
Razorback and other bloodlines. A couple of weeks before the
hunt, Jeff Mullins sent to me some 9mm ammo to bring on the
hunt. See, I was thinking of bringing my Freedom
Arms .500 Wyoming Express, .480
Puma levergun, or at least my trusted old .45 Ruger Blackhawk,
but he wanted me to use a 9mm pistol! Sure, hogs have been
killed with lesser cartridges, but usually under slaughter house
conditions, and not in the wooded steep hills. However, in the
interest of science, to better inform our readers, and being one
to never let good judgment get in the way, I agreed. The pistol
would be my Smith & Wesson M&P
9mm, which I have come to trust. It holds eighteen
cartridges, and I told Jeff that in the event of a big boar
getting really mad at me for shooting him with a 9mm, I would
save the last round for myself, and the one before that for him.
From the Smith’s barrel, the 9mm EPR round clocked 1279
feet-per-second velocity.
I met up with Jeff at the Cracker Barrel
restaurant just outside of Crossville for some lip-smacking
biscuits and gravy before heading out a few miles to Caryonah
for the hunt. My Cracker Barrel gravy addiction is one of
my character flaws. I have been known to eat it with a spoon. A
dash of habanero sauce really brings that stuff to life!
Arriving at the lodge, we loaded into a well-used Chevy
(it is rude to refer to a man’s truck as "beat up")
and headed back into the woods. Like much of Tennessee,
the area around Crossville is steep and rocky. I believe that if
Tennessee was mashed out flat that it just might be the biggest
state in the union. After our guide dropped us off somewhere in
the deep woods, it didn’t take long for us to realize that a
lighter breakfast would have been better idea. From the tracks
and other sign, Caryonah has plenty of hogs, but the brush is
pretty thick in places, and finding a track that still has a hog
standing in it is a bit harder to do. Within the first hour of
hunting, we spotted a few hogs, but they were on the move, and
getting close took some work. Several times I would try to work
around a ridge to get in front of some good hogs, but they would
spot me before I could get through the brush for a decent shot.
Running through the woods, jumping logs and
streams, I could get within range of a shot, but the hogs
offered nothing but a rear raking shot. I wanted to shoot
through the shoulder on a big boar, as I was there to test the
penetration and power of Extreme Shock’s 9mm EPR round. I
didn’t want to shoot one between the eyes, and I
didn’t want to slip one in at an angle from behind the
shoulder. Both would have certainly been lethal, but I wanted to
see if that 9mm could really break down a boar’s shoulder
after traveling through that thick coarse hair, tough
hide, and shoulder muscle. Jeff Mullins assured me that it
would, but I wanted to prove it to myself before I would believe
it. It proved to be an interesting morning. I ran a lot more
than I thought that I could pursuing hogs, and fell flat on my
face once when my legs just gave out. Thankfully, nobody
was there to witness that sight. Spotting several hogs at the
edge of a small pond (that is a "tank" to you Texas
types), I eased down through the brush to get into position for
a possible shot. They spotted me and headed off up a
ridge. While wondering what I could do to work my way above
them, from my left comes a lone Russian cross boar heading
towards a small opening in the brush. Waiting for him to present
a shot, he finally offered me a piece of shoulder through an
opening. He was only about thirty yards away, but I was above
him, and shot lower than I had intended. He didn’t fall,
but was definitely hit. He started off up the ridge, and I
slowly followed, hoping that he would lay down. I thought that
the shot was good, and wanted to do the job with one shot if I
could. However, I decided to give him another. That second shot
hit a small sapling that jumped between me and the boar.
Saplings tend to do that in Tennessee. The next shot hit
the shoulder, and the hog went down hard. During the autopsy, it
was apparent that the first shot had entered forward of the
shoulder and traversed about thirteen inches of meat, shredding
the jugular in the process. Had I left him alone, he would
have soon expired from that first shot, but you never know.
We found a small piece of bullet jacket poking through the hair.
The rest of the bullet disintegrated in the boar. The shot
to the shoulder broke the shoulder bone. Boning out the boar at
home, the shoulder bone looked as if it had been hit with a
bullet from a high-powered rifle, yet the shoulder was not
ruined as it would have been with a high velocity rifle round. I
was impressed. I could poke my finger through the shoulder
blade. The bone was not merely cracked, but the bone in the
bullet’s path had simply disappeared.
The boar proved to be a tasty one, as have the
other wild boars that I have killed. Unlike domestic hogs, these
Russian-blood hogs have huge thick meaty ribs. There is less fat
than on a farm-raised hog, but there was plenty present to make
some very good bratwurst. The guide estimated the boar to go a
bit over 300 pounds, and after packaging up the ribs and loins,
I had a lot of boned-out meat to grind.
This was my first experience with Extreme Shock
ammo, but I plan to do a lot of testing in the future, of both
their pistol and rifle cartridges. They also have a very unique
shotgun slug cartridge that promises low recoil and excellent
performance, called their CTJ round, which stands for "Come
to Jesus".
Extreme Shock ammunition is not cheap, but for
the performance offered, is a good value. I never scrimp on ammo
for my carry guns, and try to use the very best available. If
ever in a situation where you might need your defensive weapon,
you will most certainly need it quickly, and any handgun is a
compromise. It should be loaded with the best ammunition that
you can find. Your life depends upon it.
Check out the full line of Extreme Shock ammo
at: www.extremeshockusa.net/.
While this was my first hunt at Caryonah Lodge,
it won’t be my last. They have a first class operation, and
offer a real hunt and great service. Check them out at www.caryonah.com.
Jeff Quinn
Got something to say about this article? Want to agree (or
disagree) with it? Click the following link to go to the GUNBlast Feedback Page.
