I hit the jackpot early this morning, I made a quick run to the place where our cabin is located in Navarro County, to replace a faulty feeder timer and to do a quick "cow check" (had another new calf, too) and drove down in a new work truck I bought last week; got there and didn't have gate keys, so I climbed over the gate and headed to the back to work on the feeder (only about 1/2 mile). Right after I went thru the second gate I smelled pigs and about 5 seconds later a nice sow popped up about 20 yards away, I shot her in the head with my suppressed AR-15 and another sow popped up from the broomweed, I shot her, too and all hell broke loose as piglets were running everywhere, there had to be at least 20 of them. After the shooting stopped, I had gotten 2 sows (maybe 180-200 lbs each) and 4 piglets...really little, still had stripes. Hopefully, this will cause them to move away for a while. Can't kill too many of them!

That small you likely killed all that were left too by starving them to death.
Sows full of milk?

George

No, didn't seem to have a lot of milk. I don't know if another sow will "adopt" piglets from another sow, but in the past when I've shot a sow with piglets there were still lots of piglets under my feeders. I'll see later this weekend if my game cameras have lots of pig photos.

Keep up the good work. We've had orphan piglets adopt a feeder and make the area their home, but they were out of the striped stage.

Got quite a few squirrel-sized ones on the cameras now.

quote:

That small you likely killed all that were left too by starving them to death.
Sows full of milk?

Well, that sounds brutal and it is. But, if given a choice, a man should shoot sows with small piglets first, hoping they'll die too. If you think of hogs as overgrown rats, you'll come closer to the right mindset.

Nits grow into lice. There are so many feral pigs in Texas we will never get rid of all of them.

Karl:
That's good, maybe they were being weaned and were eating other stuff enough.
I agree, wherever there's pigs, there will always be pigs.
But, imo unnessesary cruelty is uncalled for and should be avoided if at all possible. We don't need more shit for the anti's to bait on.

Same goes for wounding and not following up on your shots. IT's all the same deal far as I'm concerned.

George

Well...game camera check revealed lots of pigs, big and little, so I didn't make too big a dent in the population. I'll be trying again.

Karl, having chased feral pigs for probably 30 years or so, I would seriously recommend a suppressed rifle or sub-sonic projectiles, heavy for caliber, if you intend to work on them solely with a firearm. They are just so prolific it is incredible. I have shot a LOT of females, and with one exception, every one of them was pregnant, and most were pregnant and had pigs from the previous litter still with them when shot.

I believe the number is 80%; in other words, to keep the numbers constant, one has to take out 80% of the existing pigs, and do it repeatedly.

I have shot and eaten boars, but if given the opportunity, I shoot sows, for obvious reasons. I live very near the coast here in TX, and after a rain they literally wreak havoc on the sides of the roads with their rooting. It is a shame. And yet most landowners wish to charge us exorbitant numbers to hunt them.

THAT I simply cannot understand. I will eagerly pay a reasonable trespass fee, but some $500 per pig, and a limit of two is just ridiculous.

I will hush now.

OOOPS. Actually it is 2 hogs in two days there not 2 per day. Sorry for my oversight.

$500 per pig is over the top. I found a place in W. Texas (Dos Plumas) I'm considering in spring for hogs. $500 will get you two days in a stand over a feeder including lodging, no meals, no butcher work. Big attraction here is no trophy fee, any size, 2 per day.

quote:

Originally posted by Doubless:
It is a shame. And yet most landowners wish to charge us exorbitant numbers to hunt them.

THAT I simply cannot understand. I will eagerly pay a reasonable trespass fee, but some $500 per pig, and a limit of two is just ridiculous.

I will hush now.

I went down to one of my places today to work on a deer stand (not the one where I shot the pigs last week) and drove my Mule, Kawasaki variety, right into the middle of a huge sounder of pigs in the dove weed. Didn't manage to get a shot off but there had to be 20 or 30 of them, all sizes. I hate pigs. Deer season starts very soon and I plan on popping some pigs and will encourage my wife and one son that like to hunt to do the same...Dr. Scott on AR, too.

Deer and pigs, oh my.

quote:

Originally posted by K Evans:
I plan on popping some pigs and will encourage my wife and one son that like to hunt to do the same...Dr. Scott on AR, too.

I wouldn't worry about shooting sows with little ones. A feral hog can survive almost from the day of birth if it's mother is taken. That is one of the reasons wild hogs are so numerous once started in an area.

As has been stated above, I don't believe I have ever shot a sow that was not carrying a lither of pigs in her belly, even with piglets following her. Wild hogs do millions of dollars damage to land and crops every year. Top this off with the fact that hogs are responsible for the loss of wild turkeys, and quail by eating the eggs in the nest, and killing and eating deer fauns. Like others I love to get a real buster of a male hog once in a while, but shoot mostly sows, and young one for the table.

Texas has only two kinds of land! They are lands with wild hogs, and land the WILL have wild hogs.

Do the land owners a favor and shoot as many as you can get your sights on, and land owners should charge a day fee and allow as many hogs as one can shoot in each day. Wild hogs will never be eradicated in Texas as long as land owners set a limit on wild hogs on his land. Ridding of the hogs will increase his deer,quail and wild turkey crop and there is where he should set limits. above the state limit as to size, saving his young bucks to take the place of the so-called trophy bucks
that are taken.

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