Me, I'm shooting a 6.5 Grendel, so a lot less diameter and energy than the OP's 30-06. I have 348 hogs down so far in 2018 and over 200 of those taken with a lightweight varmint bullet, a 90 gr. Speer TNT, several over 250 lbs and the largest being 300 and 330 lbs. I occasionally test new bullets or ammo for my Grendel and do necropsies to see how the bullets are performing inside. We are all looking for various types of performance and sometimes bullets give you what you want and sometimes they give you something different. The little TNT goes in, comes apart into a zillion pieces (but we usually give up counting after 10-15) and doing a lot of damage inside while still managing to over penetrate torso shots on hogs up to 180 lbs (probably only the base of the bullet) with some regularity. These are not hogs that I am eating and so I appreciate the little bullet coming apart and doing so much damage. If I was eating the hogs, I would chose something like a monolithic round or a well bonded expanding bullet that had a high retention rate. As I am often working around livestock, I really like the fact that the TNT rounds come apart and that which may overpenetrate will be small, irregular shaped fragments that will not carry ballistic energy for more than just short distances. The light recoil is appreciated for those times when dealing with multiple targets in a given field.
If I was getting a new caliber for pig hunting and needed bullets/ammo for it, I would not simply buy ammo off the shelf based on manufacturer's claimed performance. Sometimes it is spot on. Sometimes it turns out to be very different. Sometimes a given bullet model performs very differently between calibers despite being the same model of bullet. Now, it may still perform quite well, but not necessarily in the manner desired. Inquiring about choices like the OP has done here is great to gain insight. You really want caliber-specific insight is my point here.
As far as his request about "Animal Instinct," I had not heard of it before this thread. What struck me as interesting was that it was surprisingly expensive compared to other tried and true performers from 30-06. More over, in the 2 years or so that it has been out, there is a significant lack of information on its terminal performance that I can find. I find where lots of people chrono it and do accuracy tests, but not much information on how it performs on game in the field and nothing in my search revealed any good necropsy information relative to terminal performance. If I am the OP and am going on a big hog hunting trip, the one thing I really do not want to be doing is essentially beta testing ammo, particularly expensive ammo, but maybe money is no object for the OP like it is for me. A 30-06 on hogs is going to kill them well enough, even with ball ammo. So I can't really see any reason to go with Animal Instinct on this hunt unless you really just want to use this ammo for no other reason than you are a fan of the company and like their other products. It would be a real kick in the pants to find out that it doesn't do what you want it to do, particularly if it underperforms. My point is that you don't want to be on your special hunt with something untested and find out it doesn't work as you want. I am sure H&Hhunter can tell you all sorts of stories of people he has taken hunting that had the latest and greatest rifle/ammo/scope/caliber/clothing/whatever, or just something new to them and untested, that turned out to be a dud in the field. I have seen it happen several times with people who have traveled to hunt with me. Sometimes such failures are comical or interesting. Sometimes they ruin a hunt.
