Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Advice on wild boar hunting

There's some good information at https://texasboars.com/shop/articles.php Other things to know:

Find their wallows, then follow the trails to their bedding and feeding areas, then set up ambushes where terrain, vegetation, and other conditions permit.

In the brush, you'll want something short and fast like a lever action carbine or a riot gun. Use a deer rifle in the open. Hogs are generally covered in mud so premium bullets are not out of line. If you don't use premiums, go heavier rather than lighter. If I were building a dedicated hog rifle, it would probably be a 308 with a 4x scope. I'd zero it with whatever cheap 180-grain factory load it shot best and buy that ammo by the case.

Hogs don't see or hear well, so it's easy to stalk within 100 yards of them. Their sense of smell is incredible, so watch the wind. There's not much reason to shoot at hogs beyond about 150 yards unless you find a target of opportunity. But if you see one, then more are nearby and it makes sense to hold your fire and plan a stalk that will let you kill several of them.

The herd wills scatter when you fire the first shot, but sit there quietly for 15-20 minutes. They may start milling around near where they were when you fired, and you might be able to kill another one.

They're very smart, and will learn to pattern you as well as you learn to pattern them. Killing one or two can push an entire herd out of an area for a month or more, but they always come back.

The advice to follow your nose is spot on.

Definitely study hog anatomy. The vital zone isn't where you'd expect it to be.

Shooting hogs at night may be illegal now, but that will change once people see how destructive they are. Government will do whatever it takes to get rid of them.


Okie John

Being a hunter, I hunt.
Oz is always hot so the day temperatures always drain energy so I capitalized on that by hunting them in thick brush where the lay after rooting up the soil during the night.
My practice was to quietly stalk the forest looking under the lowest trees with umbrella shade created by the foliage.

The secret was not to look for a pig as their shape will be lost in the shadows and depressions in the soil created by the pigs. What I am searching for is the twitch of a tail or the movement of an ear. As soon as I see a dark log shape in the shadows, I wait and watch for several minute to confirm a pig and also to try and determine the pigs physical layout, ie where is the head and the body facing.

The shot either drops them where they lay or they scream and run offering a second shot. Many are spine shot because of laying down and offering a full length target.
It is very fun and most satisfying. It also hones your stalking skills for deer hunting.

The pigs deer hunters take is a tip of the iceberg. Find a trail, put a game camera out, set up a pop up blind downwind of trail. Ambush you a porker. Feeder and a trap is the easiest way. Guy on our lease that lives close has a camera that notifies him if he has a customer in his trap. That way he doesn’t have to drive to check it for nothing. This one has feeder that goes off once a day.

Not knowing the particulars makes its somewhat difficult to advise you as to what is the best method for you.

So with that in mind.......

In Texas hogs are basically considered vermin/invasive species. As such they can be taken by any legal means, 24/7/365. I'd guess if you have a permit to own and use dynomite then it would be legal to dynomite them. I do know some folks use Tannerite.

Anywho, I take hogs in a number of ways. I trap them.....







I snare them





and I shoot them.




If you can bait them, you can use spin cast feeders slinging corn. If they are nocturnal and you can hunt them at night, pick up a "kill light" that mounts on your scope. I use the Wicked Lights 403 green light.

https://allpredatorcalls.com/wicked...or-hog-night-hunting-kit-with-green-led/

I also have night vision and thermal for after dark use.

Timed demand feeders work well, day or night.

Hogs are omniverous and will come to anything.

If you decide to use a timed feeder that throws at intervals here are a couple thought.

Roasted soybeans combined with corn and protein pellets draw them very well. Set your feeder to throw for several seconds before shooting light. Maybe a second throw for a few seconds about shooting light.

Throw in the afternoon about an hour before dark. Hogs usually come in to a feeder very early and just before dead dark. If you can set a feeder next to a water source, all the better. If you can let if feed undisturbed for a month to three months before you hunt it, you can come back much more often, as they get in their piggy little brains that "this is where the groceries are". Too much pressure to soon and they will either go nocturnal or quit coming for a couple weeks.


Burnt motor oil on a burlap bag wired around a tree makes a great rub.

If the soil is not to rocky, you can dig a hole and mix "hog wild" with corn. Pour the combo in the hole and cover with dirt.

Soak a 5 gallon bucket of corn in deisel overnight. Pour out the diesel soaked corn.

Strawberry jello either dry or mixed with a little water and poured over corn works as an attractant.



A hog pipe also works well. Get a length of 4"-8" pvc pipe, a collar and a cap, an eyebolt, and nylok nut, swivel and aircraft cable. Drill holes large enough for corn to leak out in pipe. Add some sweet feed or jello. Tether to tree or use a tie down auger. They will worry the pipe until the corn is gone.


Anywho, you probably get the picture.


JAPPFT,


GWB

Thanks again for the information. I saw that 300 pounder you got today... he would taste mighty fine on my bbq!!! Rifle whitetail season here tomorrow.... there's been some fattening up on my chick pea stubble that might be on the bbq tomorrow night!!!

Hanco
What do you do with all them piggies?

Just an FYI and not %100 hard and fast rule. But most of the time in my experience you won’t even want to try to eat a big pig, especially a big boar. They get tough and stinky. I’m talking run you out of the house when you’re trying to cook pork chops stink. If I can smell them when I get close to a dead one and he’s rank, all pigs smell but you’ll know a stinking old boar when it hits you, I just snap a quick pic and leave them. Half the time coyotes and other pigs won’t even eat them.

I tell guys that come with me all the time that the reason I stalk up close in pigs isn’t for the first shot. It’s easy to make the kill no matter the distance on the first shot. We stalk up close to set up the running shots on the next ones.

AR’s make multiples easy. My favorite rifle for pig hunting right now is a Winchester model 70 featherweight stainless in a McMillan stock in 30-06. I am pushing a 208 grain ELD match that works well so far up and down the weight scale. No pig shot with that bullet had moved a step so far.

I watched a video about 5 years ago of a guy hunting hogs. He made a stalk and all of a sudden the hogs started running and he shot 5 or 6 of them right there with a semi auto rifle. That guy was a heck of a good shot!!

If they are in the thick stuff, I wouldn't be able to resist trying a snare on em. The investment would be pretty much just your time.

Mostly buzzard bait. I clean one every once in a while.

I learned to snare hogs in Hawaii, and there are a lot of downsides. Normally, you set snares during the day and check them the next morning. When you catch a hog, they fight the snare all night, only getting snared tighter, and they go half crazy with thirst. When you get to them, they summon one last burst of panicked energy, break free, and charge. At that point, you've got a pissed off wounded hog with nothing to lose headed your way and hoping to even the score. The only good thing about this situation is that you know where they are. You can plan your approach or just shoot them before they get a chance to move.

Herd behavior is another downside. Sometimes other hogs will hide in the brush to guard the snared hog, and those hogs may charge, too. But you won't know where they're coming from and they can blindside you. I have NO interest in getting into that situation--one evening I shot a huge feral bull at last light. I hit him hard but I didn't kill him, and he ran into the brush surrounding the coffee orchard where I was hunting. About an hour later, I got to listen to him scream as a herd of pigs ate him alive. I'd rather not suffer that fate if I can avoid it.

Some folks check their snares and if they find a hog, they just leave it there until it dies of thirst, which can take several days. That gets rid of the charging problem but it ruins the meat and it's just too damned cruel for my taste. I think you've gotta be pretty tired of hogs to go that route.


Okie John

OJ,

I only set snares at my "Beer Lease". I set between 8 and 12 snares in various locations where there are holes in the "hog wire' fence or along a route they travel between our spin cast feeders. Each morning when I'm at my lease, after I get out of the stand, I will run my snares. Here, most times the hogs do not move about during the day, only at night. I make sure before I leave that all snares are securely positioned to where they cannot do damage.


ya!

GWB

I bet they go wild when they get caught in a snare.

Fresh BBQ pork is one of the finest meals there is! ( Not an old Boar, but the younger ones). In fact, it is so good, you are tempted to eat more of than you should...you WILL end up being able to poop through the eye of a needle at 15 paces! Moderation in all things...but especially fresh pork! ha

Good on you. You can run snares ethically, but the way that the Hawaiians did it made me ill.


Okie John

One dodge around the no baiting laws is to hang a cheap strawberry air freshener near a hog trail. I have seen them follow the scent in even though it was some nasty synthetic smell. This might technically still be baiting so I would check the laws.

I would also think that northern feral hogs would act much like European Wild Boar. The traditional method of hunting is either a high seat or to drive them. Even two people can do a sort of drive where one person works through some cover hopefully spooking the hogs toward the other hunter. This takes good coordination to do safely and the hunters should be in contact with each other by whistling or phone or some method to keep it safe. The standing hunter needs to be in a location the other person can recognize easily.

We eliminated the wild hogs here.
Rumors had a driver unloading a truck load of
hogs hauled in from the south for a high fence operation.
I guess it was a fly by night deal, when they tried to deliver,
The buyer refused delivery. There was no health or other required paperwork.

The driver just unloaded them on a mountaintop game lands.


Anyway, we had a Decent population a couple years later.
The word got out, and the Game Comission allowed enhanced techniques
for hunting them. What was left was trapped.

I live 5 miles from the area, haven't heard of a hog in several years.

We have a few right now in the suburbs around me. Rooting around in a very upscale cemetery.
I found my first set of tracks today on a property I hunt that's less than half a mile from city.
Going in the AM with high hopes and a 308.

They have an extremely good sense of smell, very good hearing, and their eyesight is poor. The strawberry jello mixed with corn works good as someone else mentioned.