If your gun will shoot the bullet accurately, use it. The hide and shoulder blade on boar are thick and tough, and you need the added mass to make a clean one shot kill. Most shots are going to be at short range. Wild Board tend to stay in forests, or in heavy brush. I have seen 10 boars shot, 7 with muzzle loaders. In all the cases where PRB were used, regardless of caliber( Ranges from .50 to .75) , a second shot was needed. I know of only one case were a boar was killed with just one shot from a .62 cal rifle, and the shooter was reloaded and aiming at the boar when it dropped and died. His first shot had taken out lung, and heart, pierced the liver, traveled through the intestined and lodge in the ham of the opposite side leg.
On my first hunt, I used a .50; a second hunter used a .54, and a third, a .75 Brown Bess. I felt badly having to use more than one shot, because my first failed to break its back when I had to take a short ranged spine shot to avoid hitting a dog. Then I met back up with my two friends and found out they had both made solid hits at short yardage with their larger caliber guns, and still had to put a second ball in the boar to kill it. We did thorough autopsies on all three boar, and had to conclude that any of our first shots, if taken on a deer, would have resulted in near instant kills. On the Boar, obviously, they were not enough.
On my second hunt, a fellow hunter used a T/C .54 with maxiballs, and had a one shot kill with a frontal chest shot. Dropped in its tracks. Of the seven boars killed on that hunt, we had three boars charge either the shooter, or an observer. Use the heavier slugs for safety. This is a case where the bigger the animal is, the tougher it is going to be to kill. Oh, we did have a one shot kill with a bow and arrow on that hunt, but that boar is the one that charged an observer trying to take pictures. The boar died and slid to a stop only about 6 feet from the photographer!
