Well, they have found the trap and like the free corn--so I set the trap the day after this picture. This morning-nothing, but there is tomorrow!!

Now, that's interesting.

Please keep us updated.

I already have several questions.

One is about the construction of that corral trap. Gate latch, etc.?

The other is what do you plan to do with all those hogs when you catch them?

I talked with a local guy with knowledge yesterday about corral traps. He didn't express much interest. The main take-away I got from him was it's hard to give them away. Hardly anyone wants them - to butcher. So, what's left is to dispose of the carcasses.

It's a lot of work and money just to be left with carcass disposal.

IMO, a trap like that, a corral trap, is the only way to go if trapping is what you want. The problem is the expense - at least for me. In part, the reason I have such opinion is because I'm sure it's the best way to actually reduce numbers.

The farmers around here, close by, use night vision and drones and AR15 and they kill a lot of hogs, but they still keep coming back.

There was a professional org that got some State grant to trap hogs hereabouts a few years back, and they caught a bunch using corral traps. In some areas the bacteria in the creeks tested was way up there from feral hog shit, especially on a large tract owned by a lawyer who got some big settlement a few years ago and wouldn't allow hunting at all. He allowed the org with the corral traps on his property and reduced the numbers significantly.

But three or four years can change a lot, re hog population.

Trap was free to me---our county pays a bounty ($5/tail) for feral hogs, and I won the trap in a drawing. I have another that is larger. I may add a panel to enlarge this one later but appears won't be necessary.

I used to have several folks who would take pigs, but gradually they have stopped. There is one guy here in town who will pay to have them processed into ground pork and donates it to the local food bank. I keep an occasional small one to smoke whole, and backstraps out of large sows as well, but if no takers, they go to the buzzard buffet. I have heard there are folks who will buy them, but only 70 lbs and up. I don't have a trailer or gate to let me load them out of the trap, and won't get one.

I'll take pictures of the trigger mechanism next time I'm there--

Thanks for the info.

The old guy I mentioned who has many years of hog trapping, never used a corral trap to my knowledge. He caught a lot of hogs, and educated many, many more.

I went with him several times to check his traps, and got to witness/help with getting the hogs from the trap to a trailer for transport.

It's a bit tricky, and the larger the hog the trickier it can get. A big old boar is rare to trap. But to him they were worth a lot of money alive. He was illegally selling them to the pay to shoot fenced in places.

He had a trailer with a cage on it, and the bed would lower down to ground level. He had little pits dug for the wheels to fall in. He backed it up to the trap, raised the gate and sometimes the hog would just run in the trailer and he would shut the gate.

Those big boars would look for a niche or crack - anything they could leverage open and escape. Lots of power. Sometimes they would break their face so much that they just had to be shot.

He tried to avoid that and had techniques. At least $2000 was at stake on the big boys.

He had catch dogs too, and his father used them too. They caught a lot of hogs with the dogs, but I never witnessed that. I can't imagine dogs tough enough to catch the really big boars, nor the nerve to trust the dogs to hold the SOB till he could be tied up. Next time I see him, I'll ask if he caught the big boys with his dogs.

He complains because no one allows dogs on their property anymore because of deer.

ME:
Where was that?

What state are you in?

Thanks,
George

Georgia

dustoffer is in Texas, and that picture is from Gonzales County, just a bit east of the Guadalupe County line on Hwy Alternate 90.

Thanks, both of you.

Good long drive from CO.

Be over a year before I could make such
a trip again. Having knee's replaced.

Finish the butchering instructions for the guy. Sounds like he's lacking experience but is willing to learn and not afraid to get his hands messy either.

George

They were there last night, and this is what was left as many of the smaller ones escaped thru one section of panel that has 4x6 openings. Had 6 shoats and 2 big sows.







Both sows were pregnant---4 in one and 6 in the other. Do you think this one was fat?

I'll be going out this week to put a new panel in the trap and to enlarge it a bit.

Nice work!

quote:

Do you think this one was fat?

That's the kind of fat I'm used to seeing on the pigs I shot in Texas.

So, I see that you couldn't resist salvaging some backstrap.

Another truck load of pigs.

Good for you.

Well fed for sure.

George

They are just coming off a wet fall, pecans and acorns everywhere, and deer season with corn feeders going, so they have eaten well.