Well, I don't think a tusk is any match to a super-sonic projectile that can penetrate through a body like it was a spear either, but since when was it about good sportsmanship?
See, this is where I'm having trouble understanding the idea of it being "humane". Does anyone think that a bullet traveling at that kind of velocity through a body is painless? Even if you get an animal in the heart, the only thing saving it from horrible pain is shock. I'm not a biologist, but I'm fairly sure that with wounds the size of those on the hogs, they were in shock and running completely on adrenaline and had a very similar death in regards to pain as they would to a bullet to the chest cavity. The difference is that a bullet immediately destroys their vital organs, and takes them down "faster" by actually debilitating them. There's less of a struggle, and so it seems more humane.
I believe someone mentioned reforming the way to execute our prisoner's to that of China. I'm not really in favor of the Chinese, but I have always thought that a bullet through the brain is much more "humane" than a gas chamber or lethal injection. It's gruesome and gory though, and so people see it as "cruel" or "bizarre". Yet some how suffocating a man with gas, or stopping their vital organs individually with chemicals is better in their eyes. The idea that it's "painless"; I'm pretty sure your nervous system cannot work fast enough for you to feel pain when a slug rips through your head at several thousand feet per second. On the other hand, what if that chemical they gave you to knock you out before they stop your lungs doesn't work, and you sit there conscious while suffocating?
Anyway, I'm diverging from my point. People think the gas or lethal injection is "humane" because it's uneventful, it's not gory, and it's not offensive to the people doing the killing. You shoot someone in the head, they're likely going to squirm around on the ground a bit as their nervous system has just been significantly altered, and it's a very disturbing sight; same thing when you kill any animal in any violent way to any other vital organ--the body will react. On the other hand though, when you watch someone breathe in a gas and then suddenly they're dead without so much as a peep, it all the sudden seems "painless" and "humane". To whom? The person being executed, or the people watching? How do you know that the entire time they're suffocating they're not aware of it? In the case of lethal injection, the body wouldn't even be able to go into shock for the person to cope.
