Super Duper Hog info thread

[Littlefeather]

Nice pig Lee! Let me ask you a few questions about him. You said he had been running with some herd hogs when you were originally seeing him.

Where in the herd was he located as they traveled. Front, middle, or dead last? If you would have shot a hog as soon as you saw the group would you have had a shot at the Boar? What was your set-up as far as Hunt location(tree stand, ground blind, etc) and what was your gear selection(broadhead, arrow material and weight, bow draw weight). What was your thoughts about gear selection after the shot? Thanks!

Mark, I'm going to have to come up and check your hog problem myself.    I just don't feel good about sharing right now!  :D   Seriously, I'd like to take a shot in the dark on how to get him since you are probably going to go after him soon anyway. Back in a bit! Got some chili cookin right now. CK

[Horne's Archery]

Great Curtis,it's time to feed I'll be back.

Mark

[trashwood]

this is the night for a taking a head count.  ya call your rancher, call the sheriff, and call your game warden (invite him along).  about mid-night a drive along your back roads keeping track of the miles at a walking speed.  with serach lights ya count the pig eyes ya see.  if you are smart ya will mark it on your map   .  I have got the calculations somewhere (i'll find 'em) that the game department uses to turn the number of eyes and miles into a head count estimate.

in some states it might be not so legal ??   .  Bruce and I have always include the gamewarden.  at least in some parts of Texas this is how get your doe tags.  it is a real good way to check on your real pig population.

i'll find the calculation or maybe some of ya game warden folks all ready know it.

ya be surprised where ya find pigs bedding down in the cold and freezing rain  

rusty

[Lee in S.C.]

He always came in last. My experience is that the little pigs will rush in first, then the young sows, then the older sows, and if there is a boar he will hold back and come in once he's checked things out. And when he moves in he takes over.
 The boar in the pic was solitary, he never mixed with the other hogs. All of the better boars I've killed have been that way.I shot him with a 53# Jeffery recurve, 2216 xx75 tipped with a woodsman. The arrow passed through except for the fletch and he bent the shaft when he fell on it.  I shot him from a loc on in a creek bottom at the edge of an overgrown clearcut that was holding water due to beavers. I knew I had hit him well and heard him thrashing and gurgling about 50-75 yds out in the cut. Never any doubts about my gear selection, I knew it would do the job. Ive killed hogs with longbows recurves and selfbows from 45-65 lbs using carbon, aluminum and wood. Ive shot muzzy 3 blades, woodsmans, snuffers, and magnus 2 blades and stingers, razorheads, and a ribtec. They ALL worked when I put them in the right place.

[beachbowhunter]

Lee, that resume puts you on the Hog Killer BOARd of Directors!   :D

[Littlefeather]

Is it just me or does it look like Lee might have been sandbaggin us all along. Good info Lee. I see a pattern.

Mark, I hate to give you advice. I already know you are pig smart. Let me go ahead and have a wack at it though. The Boar is running the caretaker in the barn for no apparent reason you say. Dang, My kind of hog. I like it when they come beggin for it.  :D   I think you need to take that boar out. Here's the deal, you think you have a Sow in heat in the herd running there. That is going to make the boar unpredictable as far as hunting dominant hogs goes(using info we;ve shared already). With a Sow in heat running round the area, I do believe I'd hunt the herd for a few hunts and see if he's running behind the pack. If he is, Id just hunt the herd hogs and refrain from shooting anything but the big feller. You say you're setting up some bait sites so you are half way to the herd hogs already. Probably ought to concentrate the efforts there for now. If that doesn't work, I think easing into the wind down that ridge you speak on in the AM, doing "one" grunt every 50 yards or so as you travel may locate him. Those big hogs will respond to a singular grunt every time. The reason, I didn't advise going straight for his bedding location first is that sometime if you jump a dominant boar out of his lair he'll discontinue use of that particular bedding area. He knows you've found him and they most often won't lay there again any time soon. No need to push him if you can bait him into the open with Natures best bait, a Sow n heat! CK

[wingnut]

Curtis,

how about you come up and we'll soak ya in some sow in heat scent?  Then you could crawl around making soft grunts while we keep an eye out for the big fellar.

Sound like a plan?

LOL

Mike

I could never get my bear hunting partners to do it either.

[Littlefeather]

Oh, I think it's a little early in the morning to ask me to do that. Ask me again this afternoon after I've had a few beers.   :D

[wingnut]

Yep I think that would be one of them "Hey Bubba!!  Watch this"  things that happen before something real bad.

Mike

[Van/TX]

Oh, I think it's a little early in the morning to ask me to do that. Ask me again this afternoon after I've had a few beers. [/b]

In south Texas (at least by my rules) it's OK to drink beer after 0945 hrs.  For you non-military types that 9:45 AM    ....Van

[Charlie Lamb]

and for all you Marines out there...the little hand is on the 9 and...  :D

[swampbiologist]

Well, I'm back from the Hog Marsh and the only thing I have to report are sightings of 1-200# class Boar on Saturday and two sows with piglets. I wanted to post a couple of pictures of what the coastal Habitat looks like.
IMG]http://i17.photobucket
Hog bedding area in Sedge Grass
 
Rootings
 
Willow ridge
[IMG]http://i17.photobucket.com/albums
Hog / Deer Trail
Easy to walk but hogs found in very thick areas.

[swampbiologist]

Here's the Hog / DeerTrail

 
Here's the sedge grass that they love to lay up in and I love to stalk in.

[swampbiologist]

I jumped the Boar from the sedge grass by himself. I had stalked pass him by no more than 20 yards down wind and he spooked when I circled upwind to double back through the center of the grass. I also jumped two sows that were layed up in the thick briar areas of the willow ridge. I've tried several times to work th edownwind side of this ridge but the walking gets soft and almost always noisy. This ridge is an area I'm thinking of setting a feeder up on and hunting it in the evenings til dark. The areas where the hogs root up will no longer support your weight. They will turn it into a muddy mess.

[Marvin M.]

Great Info guys!!!  Keep it comeing for us Wannabes!

[Littlefeather]

Nice pics! Couple of questions? Have you seen deer on these trails? Reason I ask is really not important to pigs hunting. I just never see deer on pig trails. The deer generally parallel the trails out to the sides but won't step in the actual trails. It's just something I see around here.
What is the distance from where the defined trail starts to fan out. They generally start fanning out and getting much wider as they get closer to feeding areas. This is where I think I'd place the feeder and not right along the water. The hogs are quite obviously feeding on Sedge tubers. It happens here all the time. I really think you can use the cover of the standing sedge as a natural blind in which to hunt from. The sedge should afford you ability to move around as the wind changes the direction. Just hunker low in the grass and enjoy the day. I love that set-up. I shot two hogs 45 minutes appart in the exact type of location last Febuary. Good luck. CK

[swampbiologist]

If you notice in the pictures, the ridge is pretty narrow. I have seen deer travel the inside edge along the marsh but believe it's easier to travel and windcheck the ridge. I did see both deer and hog tracks. In some parts of the ridge, there are two distinct trails. maybe the hogs don't mind walking where the deer have passed. I do notice that you don't see deer where you see hogs and vice-versa. They don't generally buddy-up. It seems that they will use the ridge as one of the few places to get dry. One other thing that I have noticed, the boar that I jumpped was alone and the sows with "little" pigs tend to segregate themselves from the large group.
There is also a large amount of Cattail grass there and this time of year, they have a maze of trails through it. It can be tough walking through some of these areas which makes locating them tough. When you do find them in this stuff, you can get right on top of them for one of those long 4 yard shots!

[Ted]

Thanks guys.

Swampbio's last post raises a question that has had me thinking for a couple weeks.  A couple weeks ago, I got back from only my second hog hunting trip.  This one was in South Carolina.  I have heard that Deer and Hogs don't enjoy one another's company, but I saw some counter evidence on this trip.

I was hunting a corned road.  I heard something around the bend.  As I eased around, I heard/saw several deer blow and vacate.  I looked further up the trail and about 20 yards beyond where the deer were there was what looked to my inexperienced eyes to be a pretty big pig feeding on the trail.  It was completely dark and I was on my way back to camp.  I could only see by the light of the nearly full moon.  The situation raised a couple questions that I thought the experts could address:

1) One of the take-homes I got out of this situation was that it may not be true that hogs and deer don't mix.  What's the concensus about this?  Certainly possible that the hog just showed up and the deer where leaving anyways, but my sense was that they were both happilly feeding before I came along.

2) The deer blew several times as they left and one stood there stomping for a few seconds before taking off.  I figured that like deer and turkeys, that the hog would pick up on the warning from the deer, but the hog seemed relatively unphased by the spooked deer.  Is this odd to the experts or expected?

3) Also, being new to this game, I have no experience to help me understand a hog's body language (this was only the fourth feral hog I had ever seen), but the thought did cross my mind that I may not be in a very safe situation.  Given that is was dark and I may have been able to see him better than he could see me, I had the wind and I was pretty quite,  I thought maybe he knew something was there and just didn't care.  From what I could see he would feed away from me for about 5-10 yards, then turn and move pretty quickly in my direction for about 10 yards (I thought this perhaps could have been like a warning charge of sorts).  I remember hearing some noise, but I didn't interpret it as threatening. This went on for about 3 minutes or so.  I was able to get an arrow on the string and drop my pack, so I did move a bit.  He was about 40 yards away when this went down and the whole thing lasted probably 3-4 minutes before he decided to take off (the opposite direction as the deer).  What do you guys make of this behavior?

If there isn't much here for others to learn from feel free to ignore these questions, but if possible I would like to learn as much as possible from this experience so I am that much better on my next trip down.

Thanks for anything you can share,

Ted

[JasonV]

I have seen game-camera video of hogs and deer feeding together - don't know if thats the norm, but they seemed pretty comfortable with each other's presence....

(this was nocturnal feeding from a timed feeder)

[swampbiologist]

I would think that it depends on the scarcity of the food supply. Animals become very tolerant when times are tough even towards humans. Even to come into peoples yards and eat their shrubs with the people standing near by. The rigors of winter take their toll.
Some hogs are more aggressive than others. Some run off and others stand their ground. Hogs out produce and out compete deer for such important foods as acorns.
Just the fact that the deer blew at the hog says that the deer did not approve of the hogs presence and then the deer left. I would say that under normal circumstances, they don't associate much. As most hunters know, deer are courious animals. Who knows how they interact under unusual situatuions.