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hog rifle noun A muzzle-loading hunting rifle, often home-made, with a single long barrel. See especially 1995 citation.

1913 Kephart Our Sthn High 69 There is a class of woodsloafers, very common here, that ranges the forest at all seasons with single-barrel shotguns or "hog rifles," killing bearing females as well as legitimate game. 1917 Kephart Word-List 413 = a squirrel rifle. The stress falls on rifle. 1939 FWP Guide TN 132 A unique sport ... is the "turkey shoots" of the mountain people stemming from the rifle contests of pioneer times. Scorning modern breech loaders, the contestants use long-barreled cap and ball "hog" rifles, patterned after the famous guns of the frontiersmen. 1954 Waynesville Mountaineer Aug 2 Ancient Muzzleloaders Cocked and Primed for Cataloochee Beef Shoot [headline] ... immediate target a piece of charred wood, and their ultimate goal a quarter of beef. The shoot is open to "mountaineers" and "furriners" alike, but the "shooting-iron" must be a long-barrelled muzzleloader ... Many of the rifles are prized family heirlooms, some made in the Cataloochee area. Others are the famous "Lancasters" from Pennsylvania. Locally they are all called "hawg rifles." 1995 Alexander Mt Fever 120-21 Mostly their armament would consist of .22-caliber rifles or single-shot shotguns, but sometimes one of the older men would be seen carrying an ancient muzzle-loading rifle, the long, graceful weapon of the type used by Daniel Boone and the frontier fighters of the American Revolution. These shoot homemade round lead balls, much larger than a .22 bullet, and possess greater killing power for dispatching large animals such as bear or deer. Compared to a modern high-powered rifle cartridge, the lead and black-powder ammunition costs almost nothing, so muzzle-loaders were frequently used to shoot pigs at hog-killing time and are still known throughout the mountains as "hog rifles." Most old families still had one or two, however rusted or in disrepair.