Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Gut shooting hogs

Iowa doesn't have enough unbroken cover to support hogs. Tons of food but they would have to hide behind road signs and power lines, there isn't enough fences left to hide behind corner posts.

Having to hunt and shoot feral hogs is like having a case of jock itch. It sucks overall and can really be irritating, but it usually puts a smile on your face when you get to scratch it.....

They tear up a lot of pasture, make a mess of things, and who knows what they do to the ecology of an area. My neighbor’s back door overlooks where they often travel on my land. I told him to do whatever he can to get lead into as many as possible. Shot placement is not a concern to me. I view them as an oversize infestation of rats.

I killed a nasty old boar that had a large tape worm crawl out after a day or so. That thing laid there for 6-8 months. Nothing would eat it.

That’s a great way to view them, big cockroaches is another. That can rip up a football field in one night. They had to build chain link fences around the practice fields where I worked.

STX Hunter

here the coyotes and buzzards have no issues eating hogs. Gators either. Black bears help too.

^^^^^^
This

We had a neighbor who wasn't good with fences. He had a couple of sows and about 10 or 12 babies in our yard over a couple of days. They tore the crap out of the yard. My dad had a conversation with him and he finally got them rounded up. It only took a day or 2 and the yard was a mess and so was some of the pasture. That was 40 years ago and that was the last time I saw pigs out. They were domesticated stock and i really doubt they would of survived over the winter. Their genetics were all wrong for the really cold weather. Our pigs in the really cold weather never left the hog house except to eat out of the feed trough twice a day and then right back in.

If you have pigs in Michigan, they are no longer domesticated. They are several generations feral and come up from the south over the course of several years.

kwg

Back in the old days before lazer range finders and dialing scopes we sighted are p-dog guns in high to be on at 300 yards. Then we held low for a body hit and how ever far in the wind we thought would get the bullet on the target. One of the things a lower body shot would do was to loft the p dog. Something on the order of a 22-250 or the swift would get you a 8-12 ' loft never saw one that got lofted run off. 222's and 223's not near the loft but back then we never shot many bullets lighter than 50 grains. Shooting a dog town generates a lot of carcasses if your hitting , other varmints clean them up. Pretty short order. Fact is after they go down if you wait awhile wily coyote might show up as a bonus. One year a guy I know told me of a fellow who had p-dog problem who couldn't let just anyone bang away on them. He lived with the road to the airport on his east side and over the hill to the west was a subdivision. So it was a low noise requirement as well as low power need. I looked it over and decided all I had to do was stay in an old irrigation canal that was dry using sub sonic Remington hp 22lr's. The next biggest problem was dogs from the subdivision carrying off the carcasses to upset their owners. Wanted me to pick up the carcasses. I found out a pdog shot low would make it back to his mound and burrow to bury themselves and that took care of the disposal problem. Did what was necessary to shoot there causing no problems for the owner or myself. Went about twice weekly for about 2 months. Inexpensive varminting for sure. Got tiresome in the end, no I didn't run out of pdogs. He finally had them poisoned. Sometimes you need to do what needs to be done and not get too ideological. Way it is...mb

like sea gulls.

Yes sir, buzzards will eat them here. I shot a pig yesterday and didn't drag him off because my bride had ordered me back home due to me having Corona. Went back up there about 2PM today and he was being taken care of by 3 turkey buzzards. Those turkey buzzards aren't bad about attacking calves so I let them be.

I have a big hog grave yard, wouldn't even want to guess how many is buried there

Well lets see ...they are more efficient at at plowing your fields than a turning plow, they will eat a newborn fawn as quick as they can get there mouth on it . the love quail and turkey eggs and deer tend to go where hogs are not.

I won't argue the damage hogs do. In fact I get called in by farmers to help shoot them out of the fields, and I try to kill more hogs than the plague.

But I try to put them DRT. Any animal deserves a humane death. No exceptions.

it's fun to hunt them but they get out of hand within a year

You’re just frustrated. Animals are innocent - proceed with a neighborly letter from your attorney instead.

Please don’t intentionally wound a game animal no matter how pissed you are at the situation - not their fault.

Millions of rodents have been killed with anticoagulants, and the internal bleeding caused is painful

Fellas , can somebody tell me why a nongame animal with such a destructive nature receive any better treatment than say a wood rat or a cockroach that most everybody has at one time or another poisoned or hired an exterminator to do it for you. Most all of these hogs that i am dealing with have proven to be very trap shy from previous trapping and loading a 250 plus lb. hog is a challenge at best for me . I was approached by a fella that bragged about how good his dogs where and if i would just let him in he would rid us of our problem. I agreed with the stipulation that no hogs left alive . that was the last I herd of him.
the other day I was traveling between Campti and Clarence and saw what i thought was a barrel in the ditch that moved, then it looked more like a baby Rhinoceros and all I could thing of was how many fawns has that thing eaten and how much destruction will he cause in the future. I am fed up!

So I take it that you folks that would never gut shoot a feral hog are never going to poison another insect or rodent!
I see a market for live roach and wood rat traps!

Dead is dead, once you get there how doesn't matter as much

I like humane kills, but when a critter is enough of a problem getting them gone is what counts most