Not wanting to distract from the other pigs post, I was wondering if anyone here had ever hunted feral pigs in Texas or one of the other Southern States? Texas is the closest to me here in Colorado, so I've been researching it first. I'm hearing that further south is better (ie. down around Houston verses the Panhandle) but I'm trying to do this on a shoestring budget. Any insight into how one might do this would be greatly appreciated. FWIW: I'm not interested in big, we just want to fill a few coolers with some pork.

For what its worth Lloyd, go to the butcher shop to buy your pork. Pork is whatever a pig's been feeding on; wild hogs eat ANYTHING. Just saying...Geo

Wild hog beats Chinese pork any day of the week.

This trip serves many purposes. It give a 70+year old hunter a mid-winter trip down out of cold Northern Minnesota to visit family and to use his rifle yet one more time. It is also an adventure into new country at a time when most folks are housebound by inclement weather. I'll take Houston over International Falls at almost any time during the January/February time-frame. I also hear that there are a few pheasants to be shot down there during mid-winter?

My son and I killed and caught 73 in one 12 month period out of one end of a 50 acre peanut field of mine. Speaking as a landowner with a hog problem, we want them gone, absolutely. But, turning folks loose to come and go to kill them can be as bad, or worse, than the hogs. You are probably a responsible fellow, or you wouldn't be on here asking how, you'd just ride with a light and shoot them anywhere you saw them, like a lot of bast--ds do.

What you need to do is work at making contacts with landowners through their current friends, people they trust and whom they feel they can believe about a stranger.

Good luck, hogs are not just a "problem", they are an epidemic.

SRH

Stan:

I have some brother-in-laws down in Austin, but they're not hunters (or country folks) and they don't seem to be producing any good leads. As you surmised, we're not interested in jack-lighting. We want to do this right or we just won't go. This is supposed to be fun.

have a pig killing friend who lives outside of dallas...he says, wild texas hog don't taste so good.

Wild California hog tastes great, but finding private land to hunt is tough because the good stuff is leased by guides. There are a couple of military bases on the Central Coast that have allowed hog hunting in the past, so check with Camp Roberts if you are interested. The Tejon Ranch in the Tehachapis is productive for hogs, but it's pay-to-play and they have gotten expensive.

Shot a couple two years ago South of Dallas, we quartered them and smoked them (mesquite) then pulled the meat, tasted great. Rancher recommended shooting the ones the weighed around #175 or less, which we did.

Delete duplicate post.

Lots of them on our ranch outside of Lubbock but they're sort of a hit and miss proposition. Days can go by without seeing them and then all of a suddenlink a whole herd shows up. Suggest central Texas for something more reliable.

I hope to hunt pigs soon with a friend that has hog dogs. I have a lease South of Clarendon. Last year my landlord brought in a helicopter with gunner to try to slow them down. 800 hogs off of 165,000 acres in three days are the stats I heard. (I only have the hunting leased on a tiny portion).

The serious hog hunters down here don't shoot our piney woods rooters; they employ catch dogs along with hounds to grab the hog by the back end or by the snout and hold them. The hunter jumps into the fray and ties the hog's jaws then the legs, sort of hogtied.

The hog is carried off to a pen and fed corn and kitchen scraps for long enough to be judged fit to eat. Then the hog is killed and butchered like any domestic animal...Geo

I killed a wild hog once when he walked up to me on a game trail I was sitting in. Big old boar, probably 250 lbs. or more. I hung him in a tree in my back yard skinned him with GREAT effort (you have to strip skin the big ones because they have an inch thick layer of gristle between the skin and the shoulder meat)and cut him up like a deer. I had all the meat made into ground sausage. I'd defrost a pound or so at a time and make patties for frying. The stuff would not make its own grease so I had to melt butter in the pan before I could cook. Probably because of the butter it was actually pretty good...Geo

George you've got to add domestic pork fat to get good sausage.

Here's one I stuck in a Mississippi swamp.



Truth is you've not really hunted till you kill something with a knife.

Feral hogs are a nuisance. Fortunately the feral hogs in my neck of the woods aren't descedent from European wild hogs which are bird dog killers and more aggressive than we have around here. Despite that, I had an unpleasant encounter woodcocking last winter when a sow bluff charged my dog and me.
I had put my gun down to leash my Britt and get the heck out of dodge. Abby had bayed the hog in a dense cane brake and for once, she came when I whistled. The sow was probably with piglets. I was on one knee leashing her when the hog charged and I got up and ran, hollering, towards the hog reflexively. The hog spun on her heels at 5 yards and skedaddled. I called it a day after that. When we hunt certain areas, she now wears a kevlar cut vest designed for baying hog dogs
We shared a lease on ricefields with a hog outfitter. We hunted ducks and he brought sports in to hunt "wild" hogs. I recall one hunt when we came out of the fields and spoke with his assistant who had his truck backed up to the dike with a large "kennel" crate in the back of the truck. He had just released a hog into the marsh ahead of the "sports" and the dogs. "Put and take" pork.

You can't kill all the hogs out by hunting, day or night. Night hunting them here is legal as long as you abide by the DNR rules. Running them with dogs and catching them does more to run the hogs out of an area than all the hunting could ever do. We tie their legs but not their jaws. After turning the dogs out a couple times in a 500 acre cypress swamp we hunt, the time the hogs hear those dogs now they light out for parts unknown. I've known of them to run several miles before stopping. The endurance of a 150# pig has to be seen to be believed. They are NOT game animals. They are giant vermin that ruin the landscape with their rooting.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/2007/05/26/...-than-hogzilla/

You don't call this kind a pig. It's a full blown hog. These can hurt you and your dogs bad.

SRH

Some chopper hunting like Mike said

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx66ys4JG5o

To be truthful, all I was hoping for was a nice break from winter, walking some different country with a rifle. If we happen to get some shooting, I really don't want anything too-big. The plan was to fill some coolers with backstraps and hams and let my father-in-law take them back north with him to fill his freezer. If these animals are indeed invasive pests, why does Texas require a $40 permit to hunt them?

This thread probably belongs in the 'Misfires' section.

Suggest that you contact Texas Parks & Wildlife and ask them for their recommendations and to put you in touch with a game warden in the county or counties you wish to hunt. They will know who is working as an outfitter or guiding hog hunts in their jusidictions. Another approach is contacting the Chamber of Commerce in those counties for the same services. Most property here is private & leased and to come down for a short hunt you will do much better with a guide for what you have in mind.

FWIW, I've found that feral hogs taste very good [better than a lot of the commercially grown stock] when properly field dressed and cared for. I think shoats are the best, but sows eat well enough too. I do not think you can ever completely cook the 'taste' out of a feral boar, though you might mask it in sausage. Most all feral hogs are lean compared to domestic stock.

Go here for a war & peace treatise on their hunting and habits:

http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=449721

Stan, you ever make any progress on the remote controlled hog catching pen? The only way to wipe them out it is to catch the entire sounder. Otherwise, with the gestation period not much longer than a rat, they are back in destructive business in no time.Gil

I have hunted and killed a lot of hogs in South Texas. I even have some rooting and tearing up ground in my back area south of Austin.
They are generally nocturnal or early in the morning and have no set routine as deer do. Baiting them with fermented corn(flavored with strawberry Jello) has worked well.
A couple of picts below of my past pigs.
[img:left][/img]
[img:left][/img]
[img:left][/img]

Stallones, how many flavors of Jello did you try until deciding on strawberry ?

This post has certainly been an education.
I had thought that pig hunting was less sophisticated than it now appears to be. I'll likely take TWs suggestion and contact Texas Parks & Wildlife for a guided hunt somewhere. I'd hate to drive all the way down there and just waste my time. I'm also not sure we're really equipped to pursue an animal that is mostly nocternal.

A guided hunt will not depend on night hunting. Dogs will find them. Hog hunting specialists are skilled at what they do and many carry staple guns and antibiotics to give first aid to their dogs after the hunt. They'll run bay dogs to "bay" the hogs and then send in the catch dogs to pin them down. If the hogs aren't "hog-tied" and carried out alive, they are often dispatched with either a lance or a long knife. It ain't for the faint of heart.
An old time hog hunter that I know used to routinely "catch" hogs like Geo mentioned above and bring them home and feed them before slaughter. If the pig was young enough, he'd castrate them. Vince was built and looked like Hoss Cartwright. Once he was tying a small hog when he got charged by a big sow. He was stuck in the marsh mud and all he could do was punch the sow in the snoot as hard as he could when she charged. He cold-cocked her, knocking her out. This story was told by folks with him who saw it happen.

=Daryl Hallquist]Stallones, how many flavors of Jello did you try until deciding on strawberry ?

Several flavors, but actually we settled on Raspberry,but I did not want to get too technical.

Here is an "exciting" hog-dog hunt n a Ranch that I hunted on close to Laredo.
Then the ranchhand would go in with a knife and kill the hog. Whew !
[img:left][/img]

Nowhere near as gent`ile as bird hunting, no doubt. I had visions of spooking through scrubby cover at dawn and getting shooting at iron-sight distance with rifles. Something a bit more solitary and low-key.

The knife is the way they hunt hogs on Maui. They do not like the table fare very much as the hogs are covered with ticks.

stallones: do you really enjoy watching a pack of dogs tear apart another animal?

my cuzin ernie used to luv hit...sorta turned me off. still does.

A few years ago, my son, who lives in the Phoenix area took me to where he thought some quail might be, and letting me out, said to me: "If you see a hog, shoot it." I had a trusty 16 gauge with bird shot.
I asked him recently if he meant the little peccaries or these big old hogs I have started to see in pictures: He said "No, the big ones."
Jeez......I'da drove a half track with quad .50's if I would have known how damn big those things are.
Sam Ogle, Lincoln, NE

When I hunted them in Turkey, the Turks used lights, but to drive them. We would take a stand on the side of the field the pigs were expected to run to and Ramet would shine a light across the field.The pigs had learned after a short while that lights mean getting shot at.The moral of the story is that you also can't kill them out by jacklighting.
Mike

ed why don't you go over to the BBS where the rest of the PETA members hang out and post your anti-hunting drivel there for awhile. You can condemn hunting and there will be many there that will support you.

Bit of advice though: Don't mention that you sell hunting guns or guns to hunters. They will be mean to you if you do.

there you go again mikie...making erroneous assumptions and accusations. just because seeing an animal torn apart by a pack of dogs turns me off, does not mean that I am anti hunting nor do I condemn hunting as your claim...

why are you allowed continue to trash threads with your obsessive compulsive behavior?

Ed, no dog ever "tore apart" a hog, not even dead, their skin is that tough. They can worry them, distract them, that's all. Ever see the gristle shield on the side of their shoulder? The newest method to skin them is to take a box cutter, cut narrow strips all over the animal and pull them off with a pair of visegrips. Quickest way I know of. Hogs don't need much pity. Steve

One of the things that my wonderful Father taught me was --
"Do not play with the pigs in the mud,
You get dirty
and the pigs like it."

I haven't been able to get them to stay in one place long enough to use it. It is still sitting under the shelter where I unloaded it. If I knew how good the dogs were at getting them to leave an area I would have never bought it. My duck hunting buddy from Dublin hunts hogs with dogs year 'round and will come whenever I call him. May have a big issue with them next year, tho'. I'm due to plant peanuts by the big 500 acre wet weather pond.

SRH

If you do catch one (my relatives make drop-gate traps with chain link fencing and heavy iron at the bottoms to prevent rooting under, but by whatever means...) then while feeding it clean, also put some wormer in their water trough 2 or 3 times--they'll drink it all no problems.
If you are wiping out as many as possible, say with a 12 man drive through a section of land, take the plug out of your shotgun and declare war. But you won't be able to escape the whang taste of any boars that way...Steve

BTW, here's a story on how smart a hog can be: Fellow had an electric fence hooked up straight to 110 volts. Hogs were still tearing up his garden, so he sat up to watch how. There was a slight downward slope leading to the garden, and at dark-thirty here came the small herd at a run. They knew the wire was hot, but it was worth it to slide under with the wire rubbing them all the way, then get up, shake and start eating. He neglected to carry a gun, so continued to observe them get a running start at departure time, only to run/slide under the fence again. Stubborn critters. Steve

I am sitting here eating wild hog my 11 year old killed on Saturday. It is delicious. We are selective about the ones we keep to eat, and have yet to have a bad one. The 300 plus pound boar I killed a couple of days before is feeding the buzzards. Arkansas regulations do not require we keep the meat of wild hogs, as they are nuisance animals, and we can leave them where they lay if we wish.

This was Nathan's first pig, a 150 lb gilt sow that was actually killed on public land. It was quite an exciting hunt, we almost got run over by a 250 lb boar as he angrily exited his sleeping spot. The pigs are in there right now, so we will return to visit soon.

I know folks who do just that. Some public lands don't allow dogs and hogs are still hunted or walked up. They are easier to stalk than deer.

Sorry. Ed, I thought I had you on ignore. BUT. , the dogs "don't tear them to pieces". One dog grabs the snout and another the tail or testicles which immobilizes the hog.then the hunter shoots or knifes the hog.

Boy,
I'd think going out pig hunting would be fantastic fun.
I had heard that there were some wild pigs up here in NH.
A google confirmed this just now.
Anyone know about NH wild pigs?....I will look into this.
Shooting a round ball..I wonder what's the best boar,..10 or 12 perhaps ?
I'm sure it's no fun to have them so numerous as to be a pest, but it sure sounds like exotic fun from here...Sooeeiyyy
franc

stallones: oh, well then that makes it ok...cept for the grabbin of the testicles part...

Why don't you go post that on the PETA BBS. And while you are over there you can take some of that money you have made selling guns to the members of this BBS and other hunters and make a donation to PETA. Maybe it will salve your conscience. I know you must feel horrible about all those hunters out killing game birds with the guns you sold them.

GLS - Thank you for that. Are they hunting in Georgia or can this be done in Texas as well? I loved still-hunting for deer in the "Old Country" (Pennsylvania) and still do it on occasion here in the West (with an old 1886 in .33 Winchester).

The dog stuff sounds exciting but....it's not what I had in mind.

It's a lot more likely to be the other way around, with your dogs getting cut up and sometimes killed.

We don't use dogs. It's pretty much spot-and-stalk, with lots of glassing from the hillsides. This one took the first shot in his right shoulder from a .300 Win Mag at about 225 yards. He got up and shook it off. Follow-up shots were .300 Win Mag and .25-06, eight shots total (all hits) and not a single bullet penetrated to the vitals. Tough SOB. He weighed 265 and the cutters were 4"+. Some guys around here hunt these with handguns, but not this kid. Reasonably big by CA Central Coast standards, and still good eating.

The big hogs have a thick gristle
Plate over thr shoulder area
So a lot of energy cartridge is needed. The big one hanging I shot behind the ear at about 90 yds which is the preferred place if you have the proper shot

Still working on the pic for the previous post, but I had to shoot this one on the move before he got into cover. Needed to lead him like a dove at that range and figured the boiler room was the best shot location.

Look on the internet for Big Woods on the Trinity (East Texas) they specialize in hog hunts and have some outstanding timber duck hunting.

Stallones,
Our Turkish guide(also friend)Ramet had to use a shotgun(not allowed to own a rifle) and loaded it with buckshot. He said he usually shot for the guts, to avoid that plate.He killed a lot of them; I suspect he was hitting them in the liver( liver shot does kill quickly).
Mike

A hunter in Georgia was attacked and severely injured by a wounded wild hog. I believe this was mentioned in a thread sometime ago. Stan knows the man who was hurt. Lloyd, how bad do you want to hunt hogs?
http://www.thetruecitizen.com/news/2009-07-08/front_page/002.html

Wow Gil. That is an eye-opener. Also makes me value the reliability and usability of my double barrel double trigger guns even more.

Thanks for posting it.

Gil: It's not news that these animals can be agressive. I had a cat encounter about 20-years ago while hunting elk on the Wyoming border with Colorado. When hunting in certain parts of Colorado, I still carry an old Ruger flat-top .44 Magnum loaded with 300-grain pills (a favorite Montana bear load of a physician friend of mine). I assume that the Ruger would be as effective on pigs. Not wanting to pick nits, but wasn't your story about a fellow in South Carolina?

You asked Gil I know, Lloyd, but since I know Doc Jackson personally I'll clarify it. This took place well into GA, near Louisville, at the old plantation called Old Town. Doc J. is partners with my personal primary care physician. We all shoot doves together from time to time at the place the attack occurred.

People just under-estimate the speed and aggressiveness of a hog as small as that. It's the ones you least expect that hurt you. They are just so darn quick.

SRH

P.S. I know it is easy to armchair quarterback, but Doc used too small a gun, IMO, which COULD have contributed to the non-fatal shot that led to the attack. He shot the hog with a .243, and eventually killed him with it, as the story indicates. Our mutual friend told him he was using too little a gun for them. Doc replied that he tried to match the caliber to the size of the game, to which our friend replied, "Doc, you can't get a hog too dead". Doc now uses a bigger gun on them. I like my .45-70 with 350 grain hollow point flat noses at about 2100 fps, and am waiting on a build price on a .458 SOCOM, which can use up to 600 grain bullets, on an AR platform.

Stan & Gil: My error, I misread the map attached to the story. Yea, a .243 seems a bit light to me as well. On anything that can run both ways I tend to use bigger rather than smaller.

Seven or so years ago I was bobwhite hunting. A big boar chased my erstwhile best dog Beau up a steep hill and over the ridge. I ran up the hill, shouting all the way. Before I got halfway up Beau came back over the ridge by himself. I was out of breath from running up hill and shouting and stopped to catch my breath. Then my puppy Molly chased a 50 pound pig out of plumb thicket. The pig came straight at me. I raised my gun when he was about five yards from me as I thought he was attacking me. Then he saw me and diverted. As he ran by I shot him in the side of the head with 7/8oz of 7-1/2s and he fell dead. He was about ten feet away when I pulled the trigger. It was a mistake to shoot that pig. To this day Molly still "hunts" hogs.

You folks in the South seem to have a number of challanges added to your bird hunts that we Northerners don't generally have to consider. I've never really appreciated that before now. I'll bet it keeps things exciting?

When the hogs first started showing up I carried a revolver but that got heavy and ungainly. Then two triple-ought buckshot cartridges in my hip pocket. Now I don't do either and just try to stay out of their way and keep the dogs called off of them when we do come across them.

Glock 20 loaded with Underwood 180gr slugs in Bladetech holster is very is very good insurance for those who can handle it....."pussies" should get their meat at the supermarket.

If you think hogs can be interesting in the daytime while bird hunting you ought to wade into a big bunch of them deep in the swamp, in a waist high canebrake, while coon hunting at night, with nothing but maybe a .22. When my son took it up, at about age 14, I bought him a set of Kevlar chaps. He came home talking about the wild hogs running in all directions in the dark, down on Tuckahoe. A bit unnerving, to say the least.

SRH

For night use recommended additions to G20 are Trijicon HD night sights and Surefire X300Ultra battle light. I have high profile sights that way I can push slide back against appropriate hard object with one handed if I had to.

Snakes and gators are problems that I try to avoid by hunting in cool temps. Not for me, but for my dog. I know more than a handful of folks who have lost dogs to both.

I have never had a dog snake bit during season but I have seen rattlesnakes out during season. I have had three dogs bitten by rattlesnakes during the offseason. In all three bite incidents I was just exercising them.

I can't imagine watching my dog get taken by a 'gator. Fortunately we don't have them in this part of Texas.

We have a bit of a different philosophy about up close hog guns, PJ. While I don't question your ability to use your favored piece, my experience in killing a whole lot of hogs under differing conditions leads me to favor something entirely different. About the most dangerous place I hunt them is in irrigated corn. We plant it in 38" rows and the seed is spaced at about 4 3/8" apart in the row. When it gets head high and above you have an almost impenetrable mass of vegetation. Hogs love it, and lay up in the fields while the center pivots water overhead, cooling them and creating wallows for them. They knock corn down and eat at will. I go in after them by walking the narrow circular trails created by the irrigation systems tires. My choice to do this is a Beretta 390, 24" barrel, cylinder choke screwed in, gorged with 3" magnum loads of 00 buck. You will encounter these hogs at 15 ft. or less usually, because you can't see them any farther away than that. What is done must be done quick and sure. That load gives me 15 buckshot at about 53.8 gr. each, for a payload of 807 grains, and about a 5-6" pattern at 15 ft.

Sorry, 180 gr. in a handgun just ain't enough for me. If it gets really personal, I can always try to use the end of the barrel as a "holdoff" between me and the hog. I don't want him close enough to shove a pistol in his snout. YMMV.

SRH

Although some use this gun with 6" barrel (Glock offers it as hunting barrel) plus small electro-optical sight in rear dovetail for hunting I do not. It's simply wonderful choice as defensive wilderness pistol when hunting upland game or camping. It is in .41magnum territory and that is respectable stopping power in light handgun package. One must remember the G20 is light weapon and one does not need to load 15 round magazine to full capacity. For HD one simply switches to 180gr JHPs at around 1100fps (the so called FBI .40S&W load).

Oh by the way for those who want to carry few round of BK shot in pocket while carrying light 12ga game gun Federal Premium Law Enforcement 00BK is your "friend". Very nice 1145fps load with Flitecontrol wad and only $4.99 per 5 at LGS.

Mike, didn't one of your dogs die from the bite? A man I know owned a big tract of land in the low country on a peninsular surrounded by two rivers. He watched one of his Britts get taken down swimming in the river. Another Britt went in the marsh and never returned and was presumed lost to a gator. One of his Jack Russells was killed by an Eastern Diamondback. It had survived several copperhead bites, but the EDB was too much. Another man was putting his duck boat in the river when his lab wondered off. He jacklighted the river and saw him in a gator's mouth, heading down river. Pretty horrible to see. Gil

Plenty of gators down here. If it is warm enough for them to be active my Lab stays home. Too many three legged dogs around here already...Geo

Lucky to get out with just losing a leg. I once heard a discussion among vets on the radio and the consensus was that a dog was a three legged animal with an extra leg. No dogs partook or were consulted in the discussion, however. Gil

Louisiana hunting Hogs with Drones. Fox news this morning

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/12/04/louisiana-company-uses-drones-to-hunt-feral-pigs/

Stallones - Cool!

Gil I lost my Brie dog to a rattlesnake bit about four years ago.

Some of the guys I shoot SC's with have been hunting hogs at night with LE grade night vision optics. They've set up a processing station and have killed a bunch. Tasty!

Ken, apparently in OK there's a Eurasian strain of hog which is a mean sob. Gil

Ok, I can see how domesticated animals might escape and turn feral, but what is the story on these Eurasian or Russian variants? Somebody has had to deliberately add them to the mix somewhere.

In California, the feral hogs include a strain of European boar that came over with the Spanish missionaries. Been breeding with the local hogs for 400+ years, probably the same in Florida. I'll try to post a profile pic of my mount that shows the Euro boar influence. Doesn't look anything like a domestic pig.

Our "Piny Woods Rooters" in the Southeast began with escaped swine brought along by Hernando DeSoto on his 16th century trek from what's now Florida through Georgia and out to the Mississippi River. Five centuries of free range stock raising down here have added to and combined with the feral Spanish hogs and resulted in our present stock.

In historic times truly wild European (Russian)Boar have been stocked in various places including the Smokey Mountains and elsewhere. Since they're all pretty much the same animals crosses have taken place.

I'm not sure what GLS was addressing with his post about Eurasian stock. The are lots of different native members of the swine family throughout Asia, Europe, Africa and India/Southeast Asia I believe. A close encounter with a wild hog can be a dangerous situation to be in...Geo

http://oklahomainvasivespecies.okstate.edu/wild_boar.html

Gee with all those hogs running rampant some of you boys should visit local Academy Sports and pick up them Ithaca 37 Hogslayers. It's long magazine tube gun with rifled barrel and hi visibility iron sights. I mean unlike them little birds you keep chasing hogs have lots of meat on them. As HJ said the meat is healthier then stuff you get at local supermarket. Remember our cultured British friends are fond of rook pies so there is no shame in eating wild pork.

Cross reference:

http://www.looduskalender.ee/en/node/18526

...Geo

I think I'd prefer to take them with my Casull or my 29 Smith. That is if I could get close enough. My .405 '95 Winny could be fun too!