how to find wild pigs

Dux-R-Us · Apr 18, 2014

If you see mud on trees like below, hogs are in the area. This is where they have rubbed themselves after getting all muddy in their wallows.

mikey80 · Apr 18, 2014

Looks like Jared Carpenter's apartment door!!!

Bob Sanders · Apr 18, 2014

Not too far from me there are a lot of wild pigs in some sort of enclosure. They look nice and pink and well fed. I keep thinking I should hunt there.

Corey · Apr 18, 2014

Dux-R-Us said:
If you see mud on trees like below, hogs are in the area. This is where they have rubbed themselves after getting all muddy in their wallows.

Once you learn what to look for they are all over.

gondo · Apr 19, 2014

Sour corn and a trail cam anywhere u see sign will let you know exactly what is around in a few days.

gondo · Apr 28, 2014

so ive had my cams catching about 20 hogs on my cousins farm on and off for a while, its a 2 hour drive so ive been waiting till i had a week where i could run up there and put bait, cam, and treestand out and then come back a couple days later and hunt, well thursday i went and put my stuff out and last night i went back and put out 50 more pounds of sour corn caz all the bait was gone and i check the trail cam and sure enough they have hit it right at dark the last 3 nights, so from previous hunts i know my odds are better than most

I get up in the stand an hour before dark and the rain rolls in early on me which is usually a good thing since sometimes the hogs come in before dark if it is overcast and rainy, well they dont show in daylight, they dont show at dark and im setting there freezing my butt of soaking wet an hour past dark so i decide i gotta get down and at least go back to the truck and get some dry clothes on since the rain has stopped, I start getting down and right as my foot hits the bottom rung on my stand here comes 20 hogs with a huge boar in the back (if you have ever seen them at night then you know they look like jet black shadows and always run around in big heards, pretty freaky in the dark but really exciting), now im scurrying back up the ladder so i can A) shoot and b )dont get ran over (one of the piglets starts rubbing on my ladder), i get my 300 mag shouldered, red light on, start bringing it down on the boar and (i knew this was coming) they all jet right as im putting the safety off.... heartbreaking when you dont connect on these hunts

soooo if you think hog hunting is easy like on TV you might be right if your in texas or some huge crop field in the mid west, but in middle TN in the hollers and bottoms it is dang hard work and nobody i know has a high success rate, but it is a rush, a huge boar growling caz he knows something is up is about as hair raising as anything that can happen in the pitch dark

mmm probably should have use some periods and capitalization....

dennishoddy · Apr 28, 2014

I think you have enough gun! Lol.
Pigs are pretty smart. Much harder to hunt than deer in most cases because of their unpredictably.

gondo · Apr 28, 2014

i think they have incredible noses and get side tracked easily which like you are saying makes them unpredictable, deer are a cake walk compared to hogs, for me anyways, i got extremely bored with deer hunting until i switched to archery, i am working up some loads for my AR for hogs... i want to have the illuminated reticle so i dont have to turn on the red light unless its pitch dark with no moon in the woods, Do you have a pet load?

dennishoddy · Apr 28, 2014

I've only killed pigs with archery.
But, I do know guys that use their AR's. They try to stick with the .55 grain Barnes solid copper bullets or something heavier for penetration.

jeffhughes · Apr 28, 2014

Micah_Rowe said:
Looks like Jared Carpenter's apartment door!!!

Lol, almost woke up John asleep on the couch...

Bob Sanders · May 1, 2014

Pretty sure I'll see some this weekend drinking corn.

dennishoddy · May 2, 2014

BobS761 said:
Pretty sure I'll see some this weekend drinking corn.

I know somebody that makes corn.

gondo · May 2, 2014

dennishoddy said:
I've only killed pigs with archery.
But, I do know guys that use their AR's. They try to stick with the .55 grain Barnes solid copper bullets or something heavier for penetration.

well i got to thinkin lol... im gonna start going about this another way... my shots will be real close and cranking the leupold down to 3x is still not great up close... so i put my kill light on my 3gun AR and got some remington hog hammer 62 grain barnes tsx, also got a box of 70 grain tsx pills to load up when i get a minute, so i went out and put 300lbs of corn out this morning and will be back to hunt monday night... hopefully pics to follow

im thinking the AR with eotech is going to be a hell of a lot faster to acquire targets at night then my ruger m77 with 3x9 and no illuminated reticle, not to mention i have 30 rnds to snap off now vs 4 in my bolt gun.... we will see if the barnes puts them down... i feel like i have a better chance at getting a quick shot off if need be and getting a shot off quick has been our problem over the last year... we almost always get them to come right in our lap but it can be hard to close the deal in the dark... thats what she said..

boomer mooner · May 2, 2014

Unless you're in a wide open pasture, good luck getting off a second shot even with an AR. Pigs can be incredibly quick and they won't hang around to see what that noise was! At the rate your putting corn on the ground you might want to invest in a feeder. It really doesn't take that much corn to keep them coming back to the same spot every day. If you do get one, either hang it from a tree or get the crank up kind with a spinner that closes. The big ones learn pretty quick on the kind with the barrel mounted directly to the legs that they can rub on the legs and keep the corn trickling out. The can't do that nearly as easily with the crank up style because the barrel is suspended by a cable. The muddy tree pic at the top of this page was made by a hog plently big to empty a feeder in a hurry if the feeder is mounted to the legs.

striped1 · May 2, 2014

Hornady TAP works wonders. Shot placement is key. Don't shoot them behind the shoulder like deer because you will miss the heart and lungs. Shoot ahead of the shoulder in line with the ear hole / bottom of the ear. Head or neck leaves them DRT with a .223 / 5.56

gondo · May 2, 2014

Scott G said:
Unless you're in a wide open pasture, good luck getting off a second shot even with an AR. Pigs can be incredibly quick and they won't hang around to see what that noise was! At the rate your putting corn on the ground you might want to invest in a feeder. It really doesn't take that much corn to keep them coming back to the same spot every day. If you do get one, either hang it from a tree or get the crank up kind with a spinner that closes. The big ones learn pretty quick on the kind with the barrel mounted directly to the legs that they can rub on the legs and keep the corn trickling out. The can't do that nearly as easily with the crank up style because the barrel is suspended by a cable. The muddy tree pic at the top of this page was made by a hog plently big to empty a feeder in a hurry if the feeder is mounted to the legs.

This is not my normal spot, this is a special permission place that im not going to get to hunt long enough to mess with a feeder probably. I do have my normal spot 3 miles down the road where we have a 55 gallon feeder hanging from tree that puts out a smidge of corn everyday... but the hogs go away this time of year because there is nothing else to hold them except the corn and we cant put out enough of that to keep them happy. They come back when the acorns drop and crops get planted. In my normal spot we also have a huge setup of solar powered red lights that come on at night and go off at dusk. It is quite the premo setup for middle tn if you ask me.

The reason i put out so much corn on the farm im currently hunting is because that is how much i thought it would take to keep them coming to the bait site until i can hunt monday (its a 2 hour drive). Takes a lot of corn to keep 20 pigs coming 4 nights in a row without a feeder... i sowered 20 gallons and buried it deep with a post hole digger and buried a lot more pretty shallow but will still require some work to get. I may take some of my pvc feeders soon as well. The pvc feeder are 5 feet long with a few small holes and hold about 30lbs of corn, one end attached to a chain and the other a fence post, they keep hogs busy forever. I had a huge boar that stayed on one for about 4 hours last year, shame my brother didnt close the deal on him.

I find these hogs we hunt are really sensitive and nomadic compared to what i hear about GA AL and Texas hogs. I wonder if it has to do with where these come from.... over the last 50+ years they have been escaping from the game farms in crossville and it is very very rare that we see one that doesnt look straight up russian. They all have razorbacks and are the same brown black color.... pretty cool lookin i think.

gondo · May 2, 2014

striped1 said:
Hornady TAP works wonders. Shot placement is key. Don't shoot them behind the shoulder like deer because you will miss the heart and lungs. Shoot ahead of the shoulder in line with the ear hole / bottom of the ear. Head or neck leaves them DRT with a .223 / 5.56

Yeah this 223 hunting is new to me, i been shooting archery or 300 win mag since i was eleven at any big game so that is all i know. I read that stuff like hornady tap 223 is designed for humans and doesnt penetrate deep but rather expands fast so that is why i went with the barnes 223 bullets. Then i also read on the barnes box that it is designed to expand in less than 2 inches of penetration so who knows with experience lol. But im with you on shot placement... that is all that really matters on most any animal from what i have experienced. I got a good pass through with my 300 last year on a 100 to 150lb pig, both lungs and she went about 25 yards. Guy i was talkin to this morning hunts with slug gun exclusively but he is just a farmer that shoots them from his tractor a few times a year... pretty sure he just lets them lay too... waste of good meat if you ask me.

gondo · May 2, 2014

heres one i killed last march, was quartering away and clipped back of one lung and destroyed the other, was amazed that she made it 25 yards, ran right at me after the shot and she died on the run and did a cart wheel or two about 10 feet in front of my stand, quite the show for my first pig

gondo · May 6, 2014

about 20 came out downwind of me last night (just opposite of where they came out last sunday night), flicked on the light and shot the first one i could get on before i got winded, eotech was superfast to find in the dark and elusive wildlife light worked great as always, shot at about a 100 pound smaller pig but that would have been fine with me, shot for behind the ear, squealed like crazy and they all took off in the woods, couldnt get another decent shot on any of them, got down from stand pretty confident in my shot even though it was just a touch high, no blood no pig no nothing... little disappointing as this is the first game i have ever lost out of ~35 deer and hog.... not so much surprised that a hog got away (ive been told this is much more common than with deer) but i was really surprised about not finding any blood... i was looking forward to more tenderloin

best i can figure is my shot hit above the spine and more in the razorback hair area.... i saw the dot lift and thought it was perfect but apparently not... i feel like there is probably a coyote chewing on it now...