Gentlemen,

I have reacently got the idea of going hog hunting. I have all the resources available to me to be able to do this but I just don't know how.

First I will give you some background information. My family has a deacent size ranch in the Mills County / Goldthwaite area of Texas. From my understnading of hog populations in Texas they should be there. The ranch has several areas with stock ponds and large creek beds and is covered in Pecan trees as well as being home to lots of goats and cattle.

I have tried in the past to look for tracks or signs of hogs but honestly it's hard because we have so many goats and so many deer out there it's like looking for a needle in a stack of needles.

My family members who run the ranch are really not of much use to helping me find them as they don't work on the ranch as much as they have in the past. The ranch hands out there are also not of much help as I think they just like to hear the sound of their own voice more than anything else. I wouldn't trust most of them as far as I could throw them. So as it stands i'm pretty much alone on this one.

I have heard there are hogs out there, they claim to have shot 3 last year but that was a former ranch hand who is now gone. As I said before I haven't seen any evidence but i'm not down there as much like I used to be.

I've gotten some tips about soaking deer corn in beer or water for a week and then taking a post hole digger and digging out areas next to water and depositing the corn in there. Apparently the hogs like sour corn? I know to do this but I was wondering how long I have to bait the area prior to seeing any potential hogs?

How long should I bait the areas before trying to hunt them?

What time of day should I be watching the areas I bait?

Also do you field dress them like deer?

Any help would be GREATLY appreicated

quote:

I've gotten some tips about soaking deer corn in beer or water for a week and then taking a post hole digger and digging out areas next to water and depositing the corn in there. Apparently the hogs like sour corn? I know to do this but I was wondering how long I have to bait the area prior to seeing any potential hogs?

that sounds like a great idea i would be checking early morning and late afternoon.
if you can and do find them dont shoot them! watch there activitys where you will not be detected for a while and get a feel for where they are comming from and going to what attracts them to the area. you will learn alot and this will help you later. i took 4 trips to a now good spot b4 i took my first pig there to study the layout and work out there activitys.
there sight is so so but there hearing is quite good. they react to unusual sounds so try not to clinck bullets, tap the gun against things, talk, anything that will make a sound that is not normal in the bush.
rather than looking for tracks look for diggings where the pig roots up the ground that will be a more distinct sign of there presence.
if you need further help i will gladly offer my services........... you just pay my way over and i would be glad to assist
make sure and let us know how you went, greg

Waffen,

Wow! I should have such a problem....access to a Texas Ranch and no one seems to know what's hapening with the Piggies? Sounds to me like the ranch hands don't want to let a distant relative in on a good thing!



Firstly, you should invite me to come to Texas (I'm good for the plane ticket!) and research you Ranch Hog issue for you. If they're there (funny, no one has seen them around?) I'll have you bashing pigs in no time!



I know of no better Porker lure than corn - if there's something else that work's as good or better, please advise asap.....

Can't say what the rules are for baiting in Texas but yes, here in the Fatherland we use a 50 gal. plastic container filled 1/3 with cracked corn and fill to 2/3's with water and add a 5 lb. sack of sugar. Stir well, cover TIGHTLY, place in a winter garden (hot house) in direct sun light and wait about a month (you'll know when the sour mash starts to work 'cause the the container will begin to swell). Never had one go boom on us but it will work it's magic. I don't know if you have to register such a set-up in the States with the Department of Alcohol, Explosives & Tobacco.....but here that's not an issue.



Initially, just strategically place the Corn in areas that have potential; and you've mentioned them all above. Place a coupla good handfulls in a small hollowed out spot and cover with rocks (small, not boulders!) broken-off pieces of tree limb, whatever's handy that resembles nature and such until the spot becomes frequented. You can do whatever you want but we find that these locations should have NOT have direct access to domestic animals, cows, cattle, horses, sheep, goats, etc.

Another variation of this theme is to use a ground stake, 4'-6' piece of chain attatched to PVC pipe with end covers and drill corn-sized holes in the tube so that the Piggies have to roll and shove the thing around to get the corn out. Makes 'em work at it a while so there's no rushing off right away. Makes lots of noise, distracts the Piggies and gives you, the Nimrod copious time to wake-up, select the appropriate victim, align the crosshairs and execute a well-placed shot.

Once we've got 'em coming to a specific spot; then we do the Full-Court Press routine. We use @ 2 1/2 -3' length of 12-15" diameter tree stump, level one side so it won't roll around, cut in half lengthwise and hollow out this insides. Makes a nice trough that is stable and heavy enough that it won't walk off by itself and the "lid" heavy enough that Deer can't get to the goodies and the cover keeps the birds, unwanted & undesireables from availing themselves of your treat. We've had 'em hit the first night we put one out and it's also taken up to a week or so for the Piggies to locate the Diner and decide to come around regularly. Once they seem to know the Diner is open they come pretty regularly but shooting too much from one spot will definately shy them off, if nothing else the more experienced Porkers either circle first or send the young & unititiated into the killing zone (clearings) initially to get whacked. The nice thing about this set-up is that you can actually sleep in the Seat, Chair, Blind, High Seat or whatever 'cause they make so much commotion getting the Corn Trough apart when they do arrive that it'll wake any mortal up out of a sound sleep. We set these up normally about 60-80 yards away from a High Seat.

We use forest clearings and the egdes of fields (in an attempt to keep them out of the farmer's Corn & Grain - Ha-Ha) and if there's water they can access in the area all the better 'cause the European Wild Boar like to take a good "waller" while they're getting grain-fed too! They'll come to such a set-up any time but we do the night-time routine here so availing yourself of a decent spot with a light background and enough overhead opening to use moon light for accurate shooting is our standard routine.

Hope this answered some of your concerns.....

Sorry, got so wrapped up in the Sour Mash routine I forgot to answer all the mail.....if you can unzip a Deer then a Piggie presents no additional challange, except that if you puncture the Gall Bladder (attatched to the liver) while unzipping then you're gonna spoil any meat that comes into contact with the fluid. This is actually true of all Cloven-hoofed game but in a Pig it's double trouble.

I'm going to be diplomatic here, or at least as diplomatic as I can be. First of all, the ranch hands absolutely know if there are any hogs on the ranch. If they don't, they should be fired. Second, I strongly suspect you're coming on to them in some kind of superior, owner/college kid manner and they resent it and don't want to help you. Your lack of trust and respect for their work is going to be picked up on by them and returned in spades. If you treated them with respect, showed interest in what they know and have to say, your hog finding quest would likely be shortened considerably. Drinking a beer or three with them, your treat, around a campfire would be a good start. As my Daddy told me when I was just a kid, "Son, everyone knows something you don't know, you might need to listen to his story."

To answer your multitude of other questions briefly. Corn is as good a bait as any. If there are deer feeders on the ranch, then if there are hogs on the ranch, they're absolutely coming to those feeders. If not, then put a "scatter" timed feeder up(unless you're there, get one with at least a 30 gallon barrel) in a location near a wet water course or a pond. BTW, you could and probably do have javelina on the ranch, but they are not the subject of this reply.

Check all the wet areas on the ranch for wallows or tracks. If you can't tell the difference between a goat track and a hog track, then you need to stay near the ranch headquarters, but to give you a hint, hog tracks, as opposed to goat tracks, are much bigger, and rounder in appearance than both goat and deer tracks. Sometimes medium or small hog tracks are hard to tell from deer but bigger ones are easy. Remember deer tracks tend to be somewhat heart shaped, hog tracks are rounder.

Normally, hogs move most in the late evening or night but you can see them at any time of the day or night. I always tell people, keep a gun with you, hogs will surprise you. Half moons are a good time to hunt them if you know where they're feeding. For some reason, I rarely see them under a full moon. Sometimes you can catch them returning from feeding in the early morning, but I'd say the evening is at least 4 times more likely to have huntable hog movements. And it may be VERY Late in the evening, as in dark or nearly dark, especially if they've been hunted.

Cleaning: Two knives are helpful, one to skin with (hogs are notoriously tough on knife edgeds because of the hair and their penchant for rolling in and being covered in mud/dirt) and one to cut/quarter with. ESPECIALLY if its warm, as it usually is in that area, it is essential to gut/field dress the hog as soon as possible, certainly within an hour and 5 minutes or less is better. They field dress just like a deer, but I find them to be a bit more "connected" inside. It is easier to do hanging but it is much more important to do it quickly if you're not close to the cleaning tree or similar. Like any game, the key to good meat is good handling of the carcass (not to mention not gut shooting them). On bigger hogs, I split the hide down the back, makes it much easier to skin. I find almost all hogs, boars included to be edible. Many uninformed people will tell you that big boars are not good to eat. This is usually not correct. As a friend who introduced me to hog hunting said, "If you walk up to him and he smells like a pig (all hogs have an odor which is not especially pleasant but not "whoa, step back, jack" bad) then he's good to eat, if he stinks just a little, then he's good for sausage, if he stinks to where you don't want to touch him, then leave him." So far, out of at least a couple of hundred dead hogs, we've never had one that met the third criterion, and only one that was close to the second.

Most people don't "do" their own meat, but hogs are as easy as deer. I usually cut the feet off with a meat saw, hacksaw, or machete (WATCH those fingers!!) before I take the hide off. Then we skin them as above, then I take the front legs off, dropping them into an ice chest, ice on bottom and then put a thin layer over them, if I'm going to transport them for any length of time. Then, I take the back straps and tenderloins out (normally, unless you're going to do some type of crown roast or other different method of preparation). (This is an added comment to my original post....on my ranch we hang hogs and deer by the neck to clean them....just the way I learned.....but on hogs I think it is better since you can discard the pelvis without having to split them (saves time and work, we often do the same with deer) and the weight of the shields hanging down helps with the skinning) On my ranch, we often don't split the pelvis, we just cut the hind quarters off when the hog is hanging (can be done on the ground or in the back of a truck but is not as easy). Trim any chile meat off and cut the pelvis off with a meat saw (hacksaw will do) or machete (know how to use one or keep your hands well back and watch that you don't have someone in the swing radius, it is easy to "lose" the handle if your hands are covered in blood/pig fat).
We save the ribs for BBQ, cutting them off with a meat saw or similar. Using the ribs for sausage or pig burger trimmings is criminal in my opinion. After this all your're left with is the neck, we cut that off close to the head and it is good for stew or hamburger/sausage. So now you've got 2 shoulders, 2 hams, 2 backstraps, 2 tenderloins, 2 rib sides and one neck (we normally discard the backbone at this point after trimming off any usable hunks of meat) covered with ice in an ice chest (unless you've got a walkin freezer handy). Depending on your tastes, you might save the heart and liver for eating or sausage.

PS, if you're alone, if the hog is too big to handle by yourself, then dragging the hog behind a 4 wheeler or truck to the camp where you hopefully have something to hang him on is acceptable, won't hurt the meat if you get there reasonably quickly, obviously not field dressed. I keep a piece of stout nylon rope in all my 4 wheelers for such occassions. Just to state the obvious if he is too big for you to handle by yourself, then once you've got him to wherever you plan on skinning him, then put a rope around his neck and pull him up to a good working level with your truck or 4 wheeler. All this assumes you don't have some kind of more professional hanging arranagement. Many ranches have them for deer, work just as well for hogs. Hope this helped and good hunting.

PS: This has been discussed in here many times, but hogs need to be shot either RIGHT behind the front shoulders on thru them, and don't hit them too high unless you spine them. Head shots and neck shots are even better if you are capable of making that kind of shot under the conditions. The heart is low and directly behind the front legs about 3 inches above the body line on a big hog. Hogs don't always cooperate and are usually moving a bit, even when feeding. If you hit a hog just a bit high or too far back then you're almost certainly going to lose that hog. Almost any caliber will kill a hog with the right shot and placement, but if you're specifically going after hogs, I recommend a premium bullet on the order of a Nosler Partition, not because you need it for ONE hog, but you can often kill two with one shot if you line them up. To repeat, while anything will kill a hog with a good shot, I'd recommend something on the order of a 7mm/.308 size bullet. I find the standard .308 winchester to be as good as any for hogs, easy to shoot and quick to get on for a second shot due to lower recoil than some cartridges others would recommend. They're not hard to kill if you shoot them in the right spot. If you lose one, don't despair, any dead hog is a good hog.

if you realy want some help with this pm me ill gladly give my time to people who want to learn

Waffen,
I'm from not too far from that area (Brownwood). One thing you have to keep in mind is that it is extremely dry right now. Hogs are generally gonna stick close to water, ie: rivers etc.
In that particular part of Texas hogs will move around a lot looking for the next meal or better place to wallow. In this heat you arent going to see too much of them in the day time. You may be infested with hogs for a while and suddenly not have any for a while. It can depend on weather, food supply, water supply etc.
Hogs are not necessarily in all places all the time, they can "range" so to speak over large areas.
You might consider using dogs to see if you can find hogs on your place but the fact may be that you simply do not have any at this time.

Clearly you need someone to go out there with you, scope it out, and generally give you a hand with it. I am sure that I will be available as soon as the weather cools off.

Typically if you have a lot of hogs and are feeding any corn for deer you will see the hogs. You may also see where they have rooted up the pasture feeding.

I would feed the roads or trails in the area where they can get water and then look for them early or late in the day. If you can't identify thed tracks you may be able to identify the droppings. If they have not been hunted hard you can ease along in the pre-dawn or dusk and should be able to sneak up on them with a bit of cover.



Good luck!

Waffen,
If you have a friend or acquaintance that you are comfortable with, by all means have him get you started. Depending whether your a downhome kind of guy that can relate to the ranch hands you may not be able to acquire their help.
If no-one can or will give you definite info on whether there are hogs on your land you will have to find out for yourself.

The amount of time and money you want to invest also makes a diffence.
If you have plenty of time,but little money you could find a water hole or wallow,preferably with hog sign, put out some corn. Hogs are also attracted to corn soaked in diesel and corn w/ hog wild attractant. Soak a bag of corn in diesel in a 5 gallon bucket, or buy a bag of hog wild and mix it w/ a bag of corn. Dig a hole pour the corn in and cover it with a light covering of dirt or a rock to slow the piggies down a bit. Hunt early morning from about 5:30 AM to 9:AM and again in the evening from about 6:30PM till dead dark. This is a hit or miss proposition if you can't hunt daily.

If you have more money than time you can let a camera do your scouting. Dig a hole and add your corn, build a hog pipe or set up a spin cast feeder. Set up your game camera approx 5' to 10 ' from your hole/hog pipe/feeder and come back in a week/two weeks/month to determine results.

Moultrie is selling a 3.1 megapixel digital game camera that will hold up to a 1 gig san disk in the $129 to $150 range. Thats approximatley 4400 pics on a 1 gig disk. It will take pix one minute apart and record the time. Buy a cheap solar panel and a rechargable battery and your good to go. I have one of these units and have been using it for several months w/ no problems. Usually get over 2000 pix per month. Take my laptop to the lease and view pix right there.
Natchez shooters supply has the moultee unit on for $129 now.

Spin Cast feeders can be purchased for as little as $50 for a 5 gallon bucket with a cheap timer unit. A good quality jack up feeder w/ 55 gallon drum and timer mechanism will be in the $400 to $500 range.

A hog pipe can be built out of a piece of 4" or 6" pvc pipe 4' to 6' long. Get two pipe caps or a pipe cap, collar and plug. Permantly close one end. Make the other end where you can fill with corn or other attractant on a regular basis. You will need to put an eyebolt through the cap or wire rope through the pipe/ cap in order to attach a wire rope cable or chain to keep the hogs from rolling the pipe away off. Drill some 3/8" holes in the pipe so the corn to fall out of the pipe when the hogs roll it around. Fasten your wire rope or chain to a tree or stout fence post and let er rip.

If you want more info I can give it here or send me a PM and I'll be glad to discuss it w/you. I'll edit this message shortly and include some game pix.
GWB

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Geedubya:
Waffen,
If you have a friend or acquaintance that you are comfortable with, by all means have him get you started. Depending whether your a downhome kind of guy that can relate to the ranch hands you may not be able to acquire their help.
If no-one can or will give you definite info on whether there are hogs on your land you will have to find out for yourself.

The amount of time and money you want to invest also makes a diffence.
If you have plenty of time,but little money you could find a water hole or wallow,preferably with hog sign, put out some corn. Hogs are also attracted to corn soaked in diesel and corn w/ hog wild attractant. Soak a bag of corn in diesel in a 5 gallon bucket, or buy a bag of hog wild and mix it w/ a bag of corn. Dig a hole pour the corn in and cover it with a light covering of dirt or a rock to slow the piggies down a bit. Hunt early morning from about 5:30 AM to 9:AM and again in the evening from about 6:30PM till dead dark. This is a hit or miss proposition if you can't hunt daily.

If you have more money than time you can let a camera do your scouting. Dig a hole and add your corn, build a hog pipe or set up a spin cast feeder. Set up your game camera approx 5' to 10 ' from your hole/hog pipe/feeder and come back in a week/two weeks/month to determine results.

Moultrie is selling a 3.1 megapixel digital game camera that will hold up to a 1 gig san disk in the $129 to $150 range. Thats approximatley 4400 pics on a 1 gig disk. It will take pix one minute apart and record the time. Buy a cheap solar panel and a rechargable battery and your good to go. I have one of these units and have been using it for several months w/ no problems. Usually get over 2000 pix per month. Take my laptop to the lease and view pix right there.
Natchez shooters supply has the moultee unit on for $129 now.

Spin Cast feeders can be purchased for as little as $50 for a 5 gallon bucket with a cheap timer unit. A good quality jack up feeder w/ 55 gallon drum and timer mechanism will be in the $400 to $500 range.

A hog pipe can be built out of a piece of 4" or 6" pvc pipe 4' to 6' long. Get two pipe caps or a pipe cap, collar and plug. Permantly close one end. Make the other end where you can fill with corn or other attractant on a regular basis. You will need to put an eyebolt through the cap or wire rope through the pipe/ cap in order to attach a wire rope cable or chain to keep the hogs from rolling the pipe away off. Drill some 3/8" holes in the pipe so the corn to fall out of the pipe when the hogs roll it around. Fasten your wire rope or chain to a tree or stout fence post and let er rip.

Here are several pix, two are at a spin cast feeder. Two are at a hog pipe







As to how long you wait. Sometimes they come to the corn within hours of you putting it out. If there is no hunting pressure they are not as wary of a snack. You can shoot them the first time you see them. However, typically when you do this its a while before they come back. I like to let them feed daily for a month or so until it becomes ingrained in their little heads that this is the place for food. At that point you can almost shoot them daily, as they keep coming back.

Hunt them early in the AM, late in the evening or at night w/ lights

As to skinning, their anatomy is similar to a deer. As said before a couple of knives are handy. I usually do not skin hogs this time of year. Usually skin hogs between November and April. After that I typically haul them off. A Wyoming knife or a good gut hook helps. You can also take the back straps and hindquarters and not open them up.

Also as said before on this thread, the heart is right under the front legs. Best to shoot them on a line between the shoulder and ear.

an example


If you want more info I can give it here or send me a PM and I'll be glad to discuss it w/you.
GWB

A HOG PIPE!!

I am going to make me one of those for sure.

Maybe even two.

Everything mentioned above is true. Not many posts in AR have all the replies correct. The only thing I would mention is strawberry koolaid added to the pvc pipe rig. For some reason they dearly love the odor or taste and it beats fooling with diesel oil.

Wow guys this is a wealth of information! I can't thank yall enough!

Let me start out by saying that I will probably head down there in the next month or so and start baiting some areas next to some creek bottoms and another area on a different property thats a spillway next to a stock pond. I don't think I'll have the cash for a game camera but possibly come bonus time.

I just got married and bought a house so i'm trying to do this on a poor mans budget. I won't have room with current finances to bulid a hog tube. I've seen them and they certianly look like they work, but I'm pinching my pennies right now.

I don't have any dogs to hunt them, but honestly the place is probably too big for dogs, it would be easy to have them run a couple miles away and not be able to keep up even on an ATV.

As for shooting them I think I have that part down. I plan on using my Remington 700 Sendero in .300 Ultra Mag so firepower is not an issue. I'm sure my buddy will bring his 338-378 when he gets it back from Shilen.

How many lbs of sour corn should I put in the ground at each location?


The problem with finding the tracks out there is they are SO MANY goats and they have llamas for herders so it's difficult to look at a watering hole that has thousands of goat tracks to distinguish a group of 5-10 hogs. I think i'll just bait a few places and see if I get any ground dammage as a way to gauge if there is any hog activity.


As for you're comments about the new ranch hand Gatogordo I don't think thats quite accurate. The last one who managed that place was stealing feed to sell to other ranchers for a little extra money on the side. The new one I have only met once, and honestly he was a complete ass when I met him. I went up to his house to introduce myself and let him know I would be on the property that night and ask if there was anything I could get for him in town, and he basically laughed me off as a "city boy" that couldn't handle it out there. He had just started working there 4 months prior. I've hunted this land for varmits like crazy. The past two years I had taken probably 4000 coons off the place and I can run that property at night lights off in a truck at balls to the wall speed if I need to. I know the land VERY well, I've been hunting it for 15 years. The time I introduced myself I ended up shooting about 60-70 coons out of the pecan trees right before harvest time, which does the ranch a deacent favor considering how many lbs they eat durring the harvest. I just didn't appreciate the way he brushed me off as a city boy without knowing anything about my history out there. I try to avoid him if at all possible.

Another question I forgot to post!

If there currently is little hog activity on the land would I do more harm to the ranch than good by baiting the area to lure hogs, even if I shot a few?

I just want to shoot a few hogs for a poor mans big game hunt. I don't want to cause any harm to the place. In fact this should be my first and most important question.

quote:

Originally posted by Waffen:
Another question I forgot to post!

If there currently is little hog activity on the land would I do more harm to the ranch than good by baiting the area to lure hogs, even if I shot a few?

I just want to shoot a few hogs for a poor mans big game hunt. I don't want to cause any harm to the place. In fact this should be my first and most important question.

As a rancher in Ryan Campbels' neck of the woods (Brownwood, TX) I can tell you one thing.

If you don't have hogs -- YOU DONT WANT EM!!!
They will ruin fences and root up crops.

However, if you can 'lure them in' with corn, you already have em and you should try to KILL THEM ALL!

Unless you are getting paid for people to hunt them (or use them for recreation yourself), feral hogs have no redeeming qualities.

I love to hunt them... I just want to have to go to someone else's place.

So don't worry about baiting to see what shows up. If you have hogs, you will know it soon enough.

Great thread - interesting to hear the vast amounts of Piggie expertise out there! Ya just never stop learning......



Old Miss Guy......

I love it, definately gonna make a batch of Strawberry Sour Mash. Pun intended - Kool!

Waffen:

If I was wrong about you and your relationship with the ranch hands I apologize. The tone of your first post lead me to that conclusion.

While I am obviously speaking out of my azz here since I have zero knowledge of your ranch, based on your description, it sounds to me like it is grossly overstocked with cabrito on the hoof. Again, I don't know exactly where you are or how your family operation is run, but fewer goats equals more and better deer hunting. Good deer are worth more to the rancher in hunting fees than goats in most cases and are easier on the land especially in drought times such as these AND they don't require as much care..... meaning one less obnoxious ranch foreman. Again, not knowing anything about your situation and your "pull" in relation to who actually controls the property, I would recommend that you contact Tx Parks and Wildlife and consider getting on their "managed lands" program starting level "Lamps" if the ranch is not on it already and proceed from there in order to improve the quality of your deer herd, which in time will improve the QUANTITY of money your get from the ranch.

To repeat advice above, hogs WILL go to water and they almost always have wallows around the edges, easily detected. In addition, they are heavy feeders on pecans (hogs are directly competitive with deer for mast and in the long run will hurt your deer herd) in the fall and early winter (late winter too when times are tough). You should be able to find their rootings under the trees and on moonlit nights find them as well. Use either lighted crosshairs (on very dim) or heavy reticles.

Man, these guys have given you some excellent advice...

find WATER... and put a feeder within 200 yards of it...

if you have a 4weheeler, drive to the water and leave a trail of corn the the feeder...

clear an area about 25yard in diameter...

put a stand ~100 yards away, where it's NORMALLY down wind of the feeder and the water...

your goal is to be be able see the feeder and some trails coming to it, and be downwind of it, and the water...

jeffe

quote:

Originally posted by Gatogordo:
Use either lighted crosshairs (on very dim) or heavy reticles.

Hey -- sounds like my 9.3x62 w/illuminated dot reticle.

Be sure you call the game warden before you do any night hunting. Although you can legally hunt hogs at night you do not want them to confuse you with a poacher.

With all the hunting you have done at night on the ranch I would think you would have seen the hogs if there are a lot of them. In any event, if you have a few plus food and water (pecans would qualify) you will have more before too long.

I am sure there are plenty of guys on here who would be happy to look at the ranch with you and tell you where they would hunt, identify any sign they see (hairs on the fence where the hogs cross, droppings, rooting), and show you how they skin, clean, and quarter them.

waffen

If you do not see any pigs the first few times you hunt do not give up.

On my lease sometimes I will not see a hog for a weekend ot two, then there will be a weekend I will see them every time I go out to look for them.

Also, do not give in to the myths that big hogs, or stinky hogs are bad to eat.

I have eaten boars as big as 325 lbs and they were very good.
My favorite size is 225 to 275 lbs.
Boar or sow, I cannot tell a difference in flavor.

If you shoot one in hot weather just get in on ice as soon as possible.

I process mine just like I do a deer. Skin it and remove the front shoulders, cut out the backstraps, split the ribs, then cut the other half off the backbone, cut out the tenderloins, and cut off the rear hams.

I usually bone out the rear hams and cut them into steak for the grill. The front shoulders make a great roast, as will the rear hams if you need to feed a lot of people.
I have a good recipe for roast pig. Let me know when you kill one.

N E 450 No2,

I haven't skinned a hog since april. I've shot fifteen or so since then. However the fleas have been so bad that I haven't wanted to get that close. I've heard that the lack of rain has dried up the wallows and the pigs can't roll in the mud to coat their hides and keep the fleas down. Last time I skinned a hog I took a bernzamatic torch and scorched the fur enough to kill the fleas and ticks before I skinned it. Are you experiencing lots of fleas and ticks on the hogs you kill.
GWB

I did not notice many on the last pig I shot on my lease, but our southern boundary is a river.

I did not skin the pig I shot at the DRSS, but they have a lot of water at Camp Cooley.

I have skinned some pigs that had fleas and ticks on them. T just spray my clothes before I start to work on them.

I have thought about getting some kind of spray to put on the pig and let him set for 20 min or so, and then washing it off.
We did not have running water at our lease till a few weeks ago, we installed a 1600 gal tank, so that might be an option now.

quote:

Originally posted by N E 450 No2:
waffen

I have a good recipe for roast pig. Let me know when you kill one.

Why wait? Post your recipes in the "Recipes for Hunters" forum here on AR.

BTW, as has been mentioned in passing above, pigs have incredibly acute noses, smell and then hearing are their first lines of defense. It is EXTREMELY important to be downwind of them, especially if they've been hunted much. Just like with any game, if you're stalking, stalk into the wind.

Lots of excellent information in this thread...

I would recommend you take as much liquid as possible with you if/when you put the soured corn out. The liquid will soak into the ground, and if you have hogs around they will return to the area repeatedly, trying to get to whatever is making the smell. But, like has been said before, the damage they do to the ground is considerable. So let your conscience be your guide...

I have on occasion sprayed hogs with pyrethrin prior to skinning, but usually don't see enough fleas to have to do that.

I would add that the "picnic ribs" found in a lot of stores are nothing more than the front shoulders run through a band saw. Have done this with ferals, and it works well.

And lastly, I shoot sows as much as possible, for a couple of reasons. Primarily because invariably when I have shot sows, they either had piglets with them or inside them (sometimes both). You have to keep killing the sows or you will literally be overrun with pigs in only a couple of years. And secondly, my experience with boars has been mixed at best, and I find I just can't predict how the sausage will come out. It may have been because someone else's pork was mixed with mine, but on two occasions I have gotten sausage back from a packing house and been unable to eat it. Both times what was sent in for processing was from boars...

Doubless
I guess I am lucky as all the pigs I have taken on my lease have tasted good. I am sure it depends on what they are eating.
I recommend 2 things.

First with any pig you take to be processed, eat a litle of it first. Even if you just cut a litle chunk off of it and pop it in a skillet.

Second be sure your prosessor does not mix meat from different people. None of them will say they do...... but...

Funny thing is, I did that with both of these animals... The first time, my parents and I actually seasoned and stuffed the sausages, and cooked some of the sausage meat in a skillet. It was fine. We got it back and the stuff stunk up the kitchen so bad you couldn't stay in the house with it. I wondered then, and do now, if the place we took it to smoked it with cedar!

The last batch was a year ago this December, and it was all from deer and pigs I processed myself. The backstraps and hams were fine, but what I got back in sausage ain't fit for a dog...

quote:

Another variation of this theme is to use a ground stake, 4'-6' piece of chain attatched to PVC pipe with end covers and drill corn-sized holes in the tube so that the Piggies have to roll and shove the thing around to get the corn out. Makes 'em work at it a while so there's no rushing off right away.

Another variation on the PVC device is what we call a pig roller--made from a small plastic barrel--20 gal or so. Same setup, with a rod through it attached to a chain to a ground stake. Drill 1/2" holes in the barrel--maybe 20 of them, and fill the barrel with corn. Hogs will roll it round and round and round until it is empty--unless they are able to get it off the stake and then who knows where you'll find it.