Wild Hogs in my front yard.

[EddieWalker]

Here in East Texas, we have quite a few wild hogs. Up until three days ago, they have kept their distance and avoided the house. Then thursday morning we noticed this rub on a tree in our front yard.

The hogs like to wallow in the mud and scratch themselves on a tree or stump. I have places where the bark is rubbed completely off a tree and the wood is polished smooth. All of my power poles have mud on them from the hogs scratching themselves, but this bird feeder and pine tree in my yard are brand new.

Eddie

 

[EddieWalker]

The difference between hog tracks and deer tracks are in the thickness of the hog tracks. Deer tracks are narrow and very pointed. Hogs are much more round and blunt at the front.

These tracks are 25 feet from my front door!!!

Eddie

 

[EddieWalker]

There are two sets of tracks, which kind of indicates to me that they are boars. No piglets and just the two of them is a good indication, but you never know for sure until you kill one or get a really good look.

Our first question was when are they showing up? We've never heard anything and have no idea of what time of the night or morning they are here.

Steph bought a motion sensor from Walmart for $10 that I put in an extension cord. Then I connected it to a work light that I hung from our bedroom window. During tests with Steph's son, I adjusted the location of the sensor to work everytime he walked the same path the hogs did.

Eddie

 

[EddieWalker]

At 12:30 am, this morning, the light went off on our window. I got up, and realized I had no idea what to do.

I grabed my portable spotlight from the workshop and shined it out the window, but never saw anything. It could have been an animal or just the wind.

Then at 5:30 am, the light went off again. It was still dark out, but at least I had the spotlight ready. In this picture, on the left hand side, you can see a pine tree with a few bird feeders on it. There was a very large hog eating the bird seed that had droped to the ground right there. It was covered in mud and easily 150 pounds.

Again, I had no idea what to do. The question that came up in my mind went something like this. OK, there's a hog in the yard, it's dark out, but he's only 40 feet away. Hmmm, what do I do know? Oh yeah, I was also totally naked.

My rifle has a scope on it and it's sighted in for shots at 200 yards. At 100 yards it's 2 inches high. At 40 feet, I have no idea what will happen, or if I could even see the hog through the scope.

I have a Ruger Super Blackhawk piston in .44 mag with a 12 inch barrel that I've killed a few hogs with. I grabed that, tried to open the door real quite, and scared off the pig.

By now Steph was there too, but she never saw the hog.

We got dressed and went outside with the spotlight, but never saw anything. Half an hour later it was light enough to see, but we never saw anything.

The tracks had been all over the yard, but there was at least two, maybe three hogs this time. We followed the tracks all around the house, the pond and up and down our driveway. Not only were those hogs in our yard, but others were wondering around. Steph said, "we're surrounded by them"

I checked the corn at the deer feeder, but they hadn't touched it. So we went back inside and back to sleep.

A few hours later when we woke up, we took another walk to see where they had been and the exact path they took. It turned out that they were still real close to us when we'd been up earlier, but we just missed them. The corn was also all gone from the feeder!!! After we went to bed, they had continued to walk around the pond and our driveway, working there way to the feeder and ate all the corn. The feeder goes off at 7 am, so they ate the corn after then.

Looks like we blew it this morning,
Eddie

 

[JimR]

You could use a game camera with a timer to find out when they are showing up. I smell bacon in the future for you Eddie.

 

[rox]

Eddie,

I also saw a wild hog last night about 3am perhaps 15 feet from our sliding patio door in the bedroom. The door was open and we just had the screen between us and the hog.

We ahve not done anything about the wild pig problem because they don't eat olvie trees but I'll keep a keen eye out to see if they are damaging the trunks of the trees. If so we'll have to trap them, there were so many good posts on this topic and good ideas. I think I would ask Claude our neighbor to do it since we don't own any guns and I am sure he must own at least a rifel. We could bait and trap and ask Claude to come in for the kill. I have seen quite a bit of their scat lately and now last night I saw my very first one, the moon was very bright.

Our nephew brought over a baby pig he saw killed by a car. So he stopped and picked it up. My husband butchered it, man did it stink phew! I took a picture of my husband butchering it but I thought the picture was to gross to share on this forum. Actually it grossed me out so I deleted it. I don't think I will be able to ever eat wild pig meat again after smelling tht foul smell during the butchering. And it was a fresh kill, my nephew say it get hit so the foul smell ws not that it was old or anything.

 

[Tom_H]

Might be time to visit the army surplus store. Let's see-night vision scope, and...hmmm....are land mines legal?

 

[swiftboot]

Eddie, Down here we trap them, if on smaller size, castrate males and set them free for next time. Of course be careful with the big boars. If the size is what you like to eat, pen them up and feed them corn for a month and butcher. But the way they been eating from your deer feeders, feeding might not be necessary.

 

[texasjohn]

Eddie!!! You're killing me!!! You hunt hogs in the day. You hunt hogs at night. You hunt hogs dressed. You hunt hogs naaakkkeeed. You hunt hogs at your pond. You hunt hogs at your feeder. You hunt hogs in your yard. Steph has clever ideas about how to discover what is wandering around in your yard... for cheap! If you live any more of the American Dream... I'm not sure I can stand it!!!

I'm green with envy!!! Keep the stories comming!!!

 

[billbill1]

Time for Steph Mrs. Texas Ranger to get her gun out, she hasn't killed a hog for a week or so.