I whole heartily agree about the two holes. I have experienced, and again I don’t have a whole bunch, if a hog doesn’t go down in sight or within 100 yards then the tracking job can get really difficult really fast in thick cover and recovering the animal will become darn near impossible if the animal isn’t bleeding good.
I shot a hog last year and got a great double lung, pass through hit and the boar went 135 yards before tipping over. The crazy part was he hardly bled because the fat and the beginnings of what would have been his shield sealed the wound shut tight. The blood spots I was finding were small (about 1/8” diameter) droplets and they were spaced quite a ways apart from one another. What I was finding more of then blood was a clear liquid, which I presume was saliva.
I too have to remind myself to shoot forward. I have a boar 3D target setup in some brush and it always looks like I’ve shot the animal in the neck when I shoot it, but when the arrows are pulled they are sticking right in the boiler room. After so much effort in conditioning ourselves to shoot the proper location on deer, the kill shot for hogs seems so unnatural.
This is a good thread. I’m enjoying it. I find hogs to be fascinating creatures to chase.