I don't understand either. It's depended on as a manstopper and does quite well.

I have a 1911 45 ACP that I have shot a few hogs with. The farthest was a little under 40yds. I have used remington golden saber HP's but I am going to swap to FMJ's. The last hog I shot was so fat that the HP's opened up before they penetrated deep enough to hit the vitals. Most of the hogs with that round dropped like a ton of bricks. Personally I feel if you shot a deer with a 45 ACP you would take it down as long as you were within close range.

When I was a kid, I shot a few deer with a .22, all head shots, all DRT. That sure doesn't mean that the .22 is an acceptable - much less, good - deer cartridge, even if it was legal.

By the same token, I have no doubt that deer can be killed with a .45. After all, it transfers a boatload more energy to the target than a .22. That said, unless it's all a person has to hunt with, I think it would be a mistake to consciously choose the .45 for hunting deer when there are so many better alternatives that don't run as great a risk of wounding a deer & losing it.

Just for the record, my kills with a .22 weren't sport kills. I was a kid spending summers & weekdays during deer season alone on a big lease, needing camp meat, and had gotten really tired of armadillo and squirrel. Game warden caught me once, but he knew me & the landowner really well, and didn't bust me. Matter of fact, he showed me some field dressing tricks.

Garrr! There again, WHY? Why not use a .45 ACP. Within distance limitations, it is a very accurate and capable weapon. We're not talking about hunting with a .380, we're talking about a round that is ballistically capable of making a quick, clean kill on any deer walking in Texas. As long as you confined yourself to bowhunting ranges (35-40 yards max) and were comfortable with your weapon, why not? Deer are made of the same things you, me, hogs, and every other mammal are, tissue and bone. We consider the .45 ACP to be the paragon of defensive cartridges, a combat proven round, but for some reason a 75 lb whitetail doe will shake a round to the lungs off with impugnity.

KC is right, you can't deny the 45 unless you rule out archery and all handgun rounds, within range and common sense limitations...

Took one with a 9mm (RIP).... it was just as dead as the one with anything else...

I love .45ACP but there are a few factors that make it NOT a hog round for me.

I've seen the divots in the skull (no penetration) from a charging hog. All great shots, all skidded off the skull using FMJ.

If you make a bad shot with your pistol (easy to do) you may be using that same pistol to stop a wounded hog from either getting away or trying to get you. Refer back to my above observation.

The scenario I mention above was a time when a buddy shot a pig with his 7mag in heavy brush, then 'went in' after it using only his 1911. The pig turned out to be a lactating sow that had piglets with her. Bad medicine. Two magazines shot, 8 rounds hit, 5 straight on in the head to no effect, 3 to various parts of the body. My buddy was literally having to play ring around the rosy with trees and boulders.

So. For ME, if I'm using a pistol that means I'll be in close, it means I stand a chance of not making the perfect shot, and that therefore means that I want a big caliber.

Will .45acp kill a hog? Absolutely, just as dead as a .22LR will with the right shot. Are you always gonna get the right shot?

Thanks Vern. It baffles me when folks will start talking about which calibers will and won't work for deer, yet they couldn't even begin to tell you bullet weight, velocity, bullet construction, etc.

The 45acp is ballistically similar to the 45LC. The 45LC is usually throwing moderately heavier bullets. In the late 1800's, it was developed for the calvary to stop horses. It worked, quite well. How many deer does it take to equal a horse?

It's that layer of kevlar that deer grow between their skin and muscles that gets me every time. My pet load of 9.2 grs of Unique under a 200 gr RNFP does 1020 fps out of my Ruger Blackhawk, and it has killed NINE hogs in the last 2 months ranging from 50-300 lbs, and every single one of them dropped in their tracks with at least one (usually two) broken shoulders. You could not tell the difference between my load and any decent factory .45 ACP load...

for hogs, I will stick with a 44 and hardcast
I KNOW I can penetrate through both shoulders or a straight on head shot with a 250g Keith Style hardcast at 1250 FPS

I have a very nice 1911 I LOVE to shoot, but going out after hogs I am going to go with the 44, especially at night like I will be tonight.

Brandon i kinda see where hes coming from and also your style of hog hunting.We kinda got into the disscussion before about running up on hogs.I hunt around here and if they hear you fart they are headed to the woods.lol.That would be fun shooting with the 9mm.Question i was wondering about.Do they stick pretty close to the cattle feeders to busy eating and not worried about anything but eating?Can you hunt like that other places where their arent feeders?Just trying to figure why they dont leave hearing the utv.Just like the creep feed i guess.

I shot a hog last night with a glock 17 fmj bullet. The shot was further than what most would take. It broke the hog down and then I had to shoot him in the facccce. But the 9mm works fine. .45 would be better, but I like having 17 bullets

This past December I was standing under my feeder talking on the phone with my brother while standing over a big pig I had just killed when I looked up and I had a grey pig coming right at me. No doubt in my mind he could hear me talking, but he kept on coming. One shot from my Glock 357 Sig ended his life though.

I guess sometimes they just throw caution to the wind when it comes to hearing things if they have food on thier mind. Kinda like a buck in rut.

well, they usually start leaving once im about 100yrds in and they see me, sometimes they dont. but yes, they sometimes seem to be so into eating that they dont pay attention, not to mention that hogs are semi use to vehicles, it is when vehicles stop or come right at them that thy get nervous. Another reason they may not scatter as quickly is because they are in a feeder pen. However, we have come up on a whole lot of hogs that were just out in the middle of a field. they usually dont run until u get really close. Sure u can do it anywhere! like i said, we have killed them away from the creep feeders plenty times, its just that we dont find them away from the feeders as much.

hogs arent as skiddish as u might think. and one good thing is that we usually know where they will be so we are already goin fast in there general direction, then they spot us and take off, but we are already on there butts.

usually just hearing something wont make a hog run, and this is hogs ina lot of places not just one. ive hunted lots of pieces of land in 5 different counties like this, so its not just "my hogs" but once they see that RTV up close, they usually bolt. then u just chase and fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire. dead hog.

I could see the deer they have a good excuse the females but hogs must just be hungry to keep eating with danger approaching.lol.

i dont think they realize that they are in danger until it is too late. do they get attacked everytime a truck drives by?? of course not. in fact, a truck puts the feed out lol. but i don tthink they have made that connection yet.

I think your "bafflement" is the result of your having made a couple of bad assumptions there, KC. First of all, I never said a .45 wouldn't work for deer; only that it wasn't really a good choice unless you had nothing else to use. Second, your assumption that anyone who doesn't think a .45 is a viable deer cartridge is ignorant as to .45 bullet configuration & performance is based upon what??

There's really no need to get defensive here. I carried a .45 through 2 tours, am very familiar with what it can do to a body, and have great respect for the round. None of these factors makes it a good deer caliber, however. Perhaps at very short range, but even then, there are lots of better choices.

For those who defend the .45 as a deer cartridge because it is such an effective man-stopper, it should be noted that deer typically react quite differently to being shot than do humans. A deer, operating purely on instinct, will generally jump up and run when hit if it is at all capable of doing so, even if the exertion hastens its demise. Humans, on the other hand, have that extra layer of emotions (the, "Oh s**t, I'm hit!" factor) that most often inspires them to lay down in response to the tremendous trauma inflicted by a gunshot wound.

But would a moderate .44 Magnum load be a good choice, in your opinion?

If by "moderate loads," you mean equivalent ballistically to the .45, the answer is no. I've hunted hogs with factory .44 mag ammo and hot handloads (all run through a 10-1/2" barrel Super Blackhawk), and they worked fine. Sufficient power to compensate for imperfect shots (which, of course, none of us ever make!). :-)

I've been putting lots of hogs on the ground with loads ballistically identical to a .45 ACP here lately. I purposely make what most would call in "imperfect" shot, I am for the shoulders. Broke both shoulders of the last sow I shot. Plenty of power...

this shog was shot directly in the shoulder with a 9mm. she weighed around 250# i pierced a lung for sure. which means dead animal. that was with the cheapest 9mm ammo i could buy.

Personally price wise ill stick with my .22 magnum. Head shot even at 100yds will fold a pig! Ive seen it an done it.

Sigh... I'll try to make this as simple as I can. I never said you couldn't kill a pig or a deer with a .45. I just said that in my opinion, a .45 is not really a great deer caliber, which was the original point of this thread.

If it is your opinion that the .45ACP is a great deer round, great. We just disagree.

BTW - We humans do plenty of things "lots of times" that, if looked at objectively, are less than ideal, to put it mildly. Heck... look how many people continue to drive drunk! :-)

Sigh. Numbers. Ft/lbs of energy. Muzzle velocity. Bullet weight. Trajectory. Those things are simple. Those things speak to me. Opinions on the other hand, are like...

Who can tell me how to post videos ive got 3 to prove a pt. A buddy shot a sow in the head 2x with a smith m&p 45 with black talon ammo and it took about 2 min to die. I pulled out the ruger alaskan in 44 mag and it really pics them up off the ground and slams them to the earth. The first vid has three sows and the other one has 1 sow. The 44 does detromental dammage to an animal. jmo been there and done that have the video evidence to boot lol