SOuth Carolina Hog hunting Question

[Cmalone1]

Short version of the story is my Mother and Father-in-law are going to be moving to South Carolina here in the next few months and I said hey...what a better thing to do than kill some HOGS!! I killed my first two hogs back in feb down in GA and now I'm addicted to trying to find some more hogs to shoot...so What I'm asking from you guys (and gals) is does SC have some good public places to kill some hogs...I know most states now consider the a nuisance so they want them gone!!

They will be moving to Greeneville, SC so anywhere around that area within an hour or so would be ideal...and also what's the regulations on hunting hogs on a WMA?

Thanks for the help guys!!

[Duckbutt]

Greenville is what we consider the upstate.  You'll have about a 2 hour drive to get to hog country.  Midlands and lowcountry (lower half of the state) has the hog populations.  There is a distribution map on the DNR website somewhere that should point you in the right direction.

[Interseptor]

I live in Greenville County and this is what I know.  Duckbutt is right, for the most part you will have to drive.  But there are some pockets of pig populations starting to develop in the upstate.  The Starr/Iva (Anderson County) has a few and up in the mountain areas around Wahalla you might find some.  Pigs are also starting to show up around the eatsern portion of Spartanburg County in the Camp Croft area.  Not a lot of animals but its a start.  The best bet for the upstate is to find an area along the Saluda River to hunt.  The farmers that have land on the river just below Lake Greenwood are having problems with the pigs destroying crops. But I have had hunting budies tell me that they are starting to show up along the river as far north as Greenville County.

[Cmalone1]

Thanks for the input guys...from everything I've read it's like TN that you can only hunt them on WMAs when it's regular hunting season but you can hunt them year round if your on private land...so now I was wondering if it's hard to get farmers to let you shoot them...I would just want to hunt hogs not anything else and I figured it would be doing them a favor...

[Flint Head]

I'll tell ya what I know about hog hunting in SC...

1) Hogs are where they're at.
2) Hogs will move from where they're at.
3) 50lb sacks of corn are heavy.
4) It's VERY hot and humid in SC.
5) If a redneck in SC finds a critter he can screw with... he will! See example 2
6) Hogs will only move at night... this is what happens sortly after example 5 and right before example 2.
7) Hogs are super smart and nearly unkillable if they realize their being hunted... this starts with example 5, then example 6 happens... then, you guessed it, example 2.

We have a ton of hogs where I'm at... the way I approach them is to go deer hunting and if a hog happens by in bow range thats great.

[Cmalone1]

So your saying that hog hunting in SC isn't very good?

[Rob DiStefano]

hog hunting in south carolina is SUPER GREAT!

[Ray Hammond]

I was going to comment, but then I looked at Flint Head's post-

What's left to say?

"I mean, wherever you go, there you are" is about all I can come up with.

 

[Cmalone1]

So I'm kinda confused guys...lol...I know that there's tons of hunters and might run them out and all but I'm just wondering what are some good places around greeneville and if it's hard to get private land to hunt on...

[TimZeigler]

If you look thru the DNR rules and regs, there are alot of WMA lands that have opened for special hog hunts thru out the summer.  I'd be looking for any area along the coast from Myrtle Beach to the Ga. state line, and east of I-95.  Francis Marion state park stretches all the way from the coast to Monks Corner and is chocked full of hogs if your willing to get in there.

Bring comfortable snake boots, a thermacel, and lots of refills.

[Flint Head]

In all seriousness, hogs that are not pressured and are on a natural food source are very killable. You just don't want to let them know they are being hunted... you'll need to be on stand at three in the morning to kill them then. Ray has access to some good rooter hunting on the Savannah.

This is one of my stands that I played with for a while this spring... this was one of only a couple of times that they came out in shooting light. Of course I was not there.    

 

[Cmalone1]

I just love hunting hogs now...Are they stalkable or do you have to hunt them on feeders

[Benjy]

It's not easy to find private land to hunt hogs. They are very "nomadic" and go where the food is and the pressure is not. Flint Head is correct on what he posted on most of the land in SC because most of it is leased by hunting clubs and the general rule is to shoot every pig you see.

To have good Hog hunting you need to go to some place that keeps the food out and the pressure off.

Ray is doing things right and is why he has great success. You would be better off in the long run, to go to Rays a couple of times a year. That would be your best chance to kill a hog.

Maybe you will get lucky and your in-laws will have a connection with someone with pig property. If you find a place in the Columbia area to hunt pigs, I can hook you up on a place to stay as long as there is room for me to go hunting with you  

As always this is JMHO

Benjy

[MCNSC]

You do hear of a few pigs in lower Greenville county have heard of a couple being killed and a couple other folks seeing pigs. In this area they are scattered and here today gone tomorrow. From my limited experence, hogs will move around a lot even where there are good populations.

[Looper]

A friend of mine shot a huge boar near Jocassee this last fall.  He said it was over 400#.  I couldn't tell by the picture, but it was huge.  I'd be more inclined to think it was around 250-300.  It did take six pretty good sized fellows to drag it out. They had a pic of it hung up next to a couple of does and a decent buck.  It dwarfed the deer. And when I say dwarfed, I mean it. It looked like you could have put one of the doe's inside the gut cavity of that hog.

Twenty years ago there used to be a pretty healthy population of hogs around Jocassee.  They are really hard to hunt, though.  You definitely need a partner or two.  It's pretty rugged terrain.