There is no animal that is tougher than any other.

[Laelkhunter]

Most delicate thing I have found is a cottontail rabbit. I have seen them drop dead with just one piece of #6 shot in them. Running in front of beagles, they cartwheel when shot and it seems they just die of fright and they are only hit with one or two shotgun pellets.

 

[ElPollo]

Sounds like the study of ballistics ( particularly terminal) which each shooter figures out for themselves-lol.

I would suggest it was everyone “figuring it out for themselves” that got us here in the first place.

 

[Felix40]

Hogs are tough but pound for pound imho nothing is tougher than a squirel

If squirrels were 300 pounds they would be very hard to kill. Lol

I was thinking squirrels too. Compared to a rabbit its night and day different.

Bears seem pretty easy to kill too. I haven’t seen one go more than 20 yards.

 

[Trumpkin The Dwarf]

Coons, squirrels, and pigs are some tough critters in my experience. As mentioned above, pigs are built like miniature tanks... They might die the same as a deer, given a proportional disruption of tissue and blood loss, but inflicting that damage takes more doing.

 

[mitchellmountain]

Most delicate thing I have found is a cottontail rabbit. I have seen them drop dead with just one piece of #6 shot in them. Running in front of beagles, they cartwheel when shot and it seems they just die of fright and they are only hit with one or two shotgun pellets.

When I owned beagles I would see that regularly. Skinning them out and finding a pellet or two and being amazed they piled up. Nature's original snack food.

 

[mitchellmountain]

Worst killing experience I ever had, not a big game species, was a snapping turtle. They straight up won't die for hours. Cut the head off it will still bite you. Cut the legs off after an hour without a head and it will try to scratch you like it can see your hands. I felt like a sadistic torturer by the time I was done, and haven't done one since.

 

[EastHumboldt]

Never shot a squirrel, but I tried to live trap one last week. Checked the trap about 10 am and went to run the dogs for an hour or two. Got back about 1 pm and the squirrel (California ground squirrel) had died in the trap. He had a cut on his nose, so I don’t know if he cold cocked himself in his panic. Also he was very fat so maybe had a heart attack?

 

[rookieforever33]

Coyotes have quite the will to live sometimes. I shot one Sunday through the chest facing me and the bullet didnt exit. It laid there about 5 minutes then stuck its head up, looked around, and got up and walked off. I found it about 20 yards away laying down and when it noticed me it got up again and tried walking away. A quick shot and it was done finally.

 

[Oldffemt]

I‘m always a fan of the 243 as a plinker/trainer/loaner and we’ve taken plenty of deer and antelope to 450 yards with a 100 Nosler Partition - it usually works well enough, except for a cow elk double lunged off a haystack that ran 300-400 yards. Same bullet same velocity as a number of the antelope and mulies, but a much different result. In my book that makes an elk tougher to kill - at least I don’t know how to correlate blood volume to deer volume to distance ran.

Interesting, one of the biggest rodeos I’ve ever seen was another hunter hit an antelope in the gut with a 7mm mag. He emptied his magazine at it and then gave up and drove away. I shot that buck 4 times in the chest with an 06. He laid down but after 20 minutes laying there still wouldn’t put his head down and die. My brother finished him off with a 17hmr to the head. I’ve never had an elk take more than a couple steps after getting hit with a 06 or a 243. Make the first shot count. Game animals are like anything else, once the adrenaline starts flowing it’s hard to finish them off.

 

[Dos Perros]

I didn't read the thread, but I can reference my experience that a rooster pheasant is much tougher than any sage grouse, despite being smaller.

 

[NRA4LIFE]

Rabbits for sure. I smoke them with my pellet gun in the yard and if you don't miss, they die immediately. Squirrels can be tough hombres. Last fall I shot a WT buck through the heart and the damned thing still ran 100 yards or better, leaking mass quantities of fluid the whole way. Of course, I barely got my hands dirty gutting him.