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Old January 17, 2013, 08:42 PM   #1
603Country
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Was a great day...the pigs are back

With all the rain we've had recently, I expected that the pigs would come back, and they did exactly that. Had about 8 of them come out on my hay field at approx 250 to 275 yards. I just can't find the words to tell you how happy I was. It wasn't far enough to bother with the rangefinder, so I took the old 220 Swift and parked the first one right behind the shoulder of the biggest pig and then tracked the rest of them as they took off in a medium trot. Missed with second shot and hit soundly with third shot. Life is good. And when I went to gaze at the recently deceased, there were about 5 does standing in the hay field. All that shooting and none of them ran off. Maybe my place has what you might call low pressure hunting. Nobody but me doing any shooting. And I walked back to the house for wine and steak. I sure like being retired....
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Old January 17, 2013, 08:48 PM   #2
rickyrick
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Yey, I'm probably going out this weekend too. Normally valentines day is the peek if their activity. Two years ago me and the wife had the st valentines day massacre, we had a good time, better than sitting in a stuffy restaurant
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Old January 17, 2013, 09:56 PM   #3
603Country
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"The St Valentine's Massacre"....that's great. I'l be chuckling over that for days.

My wife will hunt pigs every now and then, but isn't a serious hunter. She says that she won't shoot a deer because they're too pretty, but she'll shoot a hog because they are ugly. As I age and get progressively less attractive, her logic is beginning to worry me.
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Old January 18, 2013, 01:24 AM   #4
hoghunting
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Just don't snort or squeal and you'll probably be ok!!! Yes sir, the rain does bring the hogs back, I'll be out again in a couple of weeks and hope for the same results you had.
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Old January 18, 2013, 05:31 AM   #5
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She doesn't like the "hunting"part of it, but if there's a guarantee of pigs there, she will materialize in a second for the shooting.
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Old January 18, 2013, 04:58 PM   #6
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""As I age and get progressively less attractive, her logic is beginning to worry me.""

Perfect..............just perfect!!!
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Old January 19, 2013, 07:25 PM   #7
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in my opinion a good,young, cooker sized pig is much better eating than a deer.
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Shot placement is everything! I would rather take a round of 50BMG to the foot than a 22short to the base of the skull.

all 26 of my guns are 45/70 govt, 357 mag, 22 or 12 ga... I believe in keeping it simple. Wish my wife did as well...
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Old January 19, 2013, 08:57 PM   #8
603Country
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Yup! No doubt that pigs are better eating. My Dad used to say that "Son, compared to pig meat, if we needed to shoot deer there'd have to be a bounty on em".

No pigs here the last two afternoons, but one coyote did show up. I punched his ticket.
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Old January 20, 2013, 01:44 PM   #9
horatioo
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Where do you live? Just kind of general where do you live, not specific?

Also, I read that living where pigs are means you never have to go without meat? Is it that predictable to get pork from wild pigs where you live? Also how much meat do you get out of whatever size pig you prefer to shoot? Is that size prevalent where you live? I am in southwest Missouri, no pigs here.

Can you shoot pig anytime of the year and have good pork?

Lots of questions. Thanks for any answers.

Steve (the gonna be a pig hunter someday hunter)
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Old January 20, 2013, 05:12 PM   #10
603Country
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I live in central Texas, about 40 miles to the SE of Waco, and if we have enough rain, we usually have plenty of pigs. With deer season over, I've transitioned to pigs/coyotes and I'm having a fine old time. Lately I've just been rifle hunting for pigs, but if I needed more meat I'd set up one or both of my hog traps. The most pigs I ever had in my big trap was (I think) 16. As for the meat, I really hate skinning hogs. Nothing can dull a knife faster than cutting through a mud encrusted hog. Somebody on the forum recently mentioned power washing them first, and I hate myself for never having thought of doing that. As for the meat, on a medium sized to big hog, I'll take the backstraps and hind quarters and use the rest for coyote bait. On a little one, sometimes I'll split it down the middle and we'll cook one half and freeze the other half. As for how much usable meat comes off a hog expressed in % of body weight, I'll leave that to someone else to answer. And if you have hogs in your area, unless we have a famine and everybody drags out their rifles, I really do not think we can exhaust the supply of hogs. After nuclear war, there will be cockroaches and hogs left.

And yes, we can hunt them year round (you do need a hunting license), though if I shoot one in hot weather I usually don't mess with keeping the meat.

Leave Missouri and come on down here to Texas. Like many folks are fond of saying, "I wasn't born in Texas, but I got here as soon as I could". I promise that if you move to Texas, you will (almost immediately) be taller and better looking...and smarter. I think one of the guys on the forum just moved to Lubbock. Maybe he'll back me up on the taller and better looking issue.

And now..right now... I'm going to grab the 260 (or the 220) and go pig/coyote hunting. Wish me luck.
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Old January 20, 2013, 06:32 PM   #11
Sgt Pepper
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Good luck! I do the same thing with hogs. Just cut out the back and the hind hams. Fairly quick work and it's the best meat by far. I don't generally have the time to skin a bunch of hogs at once, so that's the best course of action in my book. Happy blasting!
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Old January 20, 2013, 06:39 PM   #12
WillyKern69
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Love the posst. I'm hunting near Thrall Tx, tomorrow. Quail though, and it is a canned hunt. But I'd rather do that then hunt wild birds for they need all the help they can get. I got to keep my pointer happy.
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Old January 20, 2013, 09:24 PM   #13
horatioo
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thanks for the reply, good luck
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Old January 20, 2013, 09:55 PM   #14
603Country
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Willy, your mention of a canned quail hunt brings back an old memory of when I used to take folks on canned quail hunts for the company I worked for. Seems like every year we lost about 85% of all the quail population, so we bought pen raised Bobwhite quail and introduced them in areas of our 50,000 acre ranch so the customers would have something to hunt. Most years the purchased quail were sufficiently wild that you'd never know they weren't truly wild, but one year we switched suppliers and got mostly tame quail. Nobody told me that they were tame, and I took a jeep load of guys out to hunt and when we got out of the jeep close to a quail feeding station, the quail ran out of the underbrush and stood all around us, waiting to be fed. You could kick at them and they'd back off a few feet, but come right back wanting food. Geez...can't shoot tame quail, so I took the guys off to look for some Blue Quail that I knew to be fully wild.

Shortly after I (and others) reported in on the tame quail, the president of the company put out an interoffice memo that said, on threat of being fired, nobody was allowed to shoot any quail not fully in the air. Any quail on tippy toe or with only one foot in the air was still off limits. I shoulda kept that memo.
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Old January 21, 2013, 03:31 PM   #15
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Quote:
Where do you live? Just kind of general where do you live, not specific?
West of Lawton, OK.

Quote:
Also, I read that living where pigs are means you never have to go without meat? Is it that predictable to get pork from wild pigs where you live?
We always have a surplus of pig meat. We have feeders and traps running nearly the entire year and the hogs are always fat. Last year we shot about 20 wild hogs and trapped about 150 more. All those hogs went to someone who needed the meat. Most were given away as field dressed hogs, some were skinned and some were processed and donated to the food bank.

Quote:
Also how much meat do you get out of whatever size pig you prefer to shoot? Is that size prevalent where you live? I am in southwest Missouri, no pigs here.
We get about 35-40 pounds of meat from a 100 pound hog. OK is over-run with hogs of varying sizes.

Quote:
Can you shoot pig anytime of the year and have good pork?
Pretty much so. The meat from a skinny hog is no good. Once in a great while we will trap a skinny hog: They go into a friends hog pen to be fattened.

OK does not require hog hunters to buy hunting licenses.
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Old January 21, 2013, 09:43 PM   #16
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603 country...

last couple times I was down there visiting my folks I haven't seen any. On a whim, my cousin and I went down to the woods just before dark. Saw a big boar messing around. It was too dark to see the crosshairs but I sent a 150 gr .270 WSW his way.
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Old January 21, 2013, 09:47 PM   #17
603Country
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Up until this recent bunch of rain, like I mentioned at the start of this chat, I couldn't find a hog, but I've got them now. I plugged a medium sized boar this afternoon. Deer season might be over, but I'm shooting more now than I did during the season.
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Old February 9, 2013, 04:29 AM   #18
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One thing about pig huntin...U get to shoot a lot....
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Old February 12, 2013, 03:42 AM   #19
okiewita40
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Sounds like I may have to get ahold of a buddy of mine in Lawton. We don't have too many hogs up here in the far N.E. corner of OK.
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