Question re hunting hogs.

[FoghornLeghorn]

This place looks as dead as Julius Caesar but I'll give it a shot. (Get it? "Give it a shot" on a hunting thread?)

I might/maybe be hunting hogs. Without dogs. I've read on the internet how dangerous it can be. If it works out that I can start hunting hogs, it'll be from an elevated stand around tall grass. But, have any of you ever been in a precarious situation w/hogs?

Also, on a hog hunting thread (some internet source) an expert said if you place a feeder at your spot, and said feeder is set to go off a certain time of the day, that the hogs will arrive when they hear said feeder dispensing feed.

Dunno if that's true but the information was posted as an answer to "how to hunt hogs in daytime." I'm definitely a daytime hunter.

[taylorce1]

I've only hunted hogs from an elevated stand or ground blind. I've never found myself in danger while hunting hogs. They never paid any attention to me or my scent, as they can smell you easily. I've also trapped hogs. If you don't shoot them inside the trap, but try to load them live in a trailer, that's when it'll get dangerous.

I've been in far greater danger working with domestic livestock, hogs included. Sows get aggressive when they have piglets, and some boars become extremely aggressive when the girls are in heat. You just have to pay attention to what's going on.

[Ricklin]

100% safe in a tree stand, don't fall out of the tree. I do suggest boning up on hunting from a tree stand. Safety first.
I wish we had feral hogs here in the Northwest....well not really but they would be fun to hunt.

[rickyrick]

When you shoot, mayhem will ensue if there is a group of them.
They can run at you without seeing you… you just happen to be in the random spot that the pig ran towards.
Cornered, they will fight, otherwise they will run. I’ve seen videos where someone gets charged by a pig, but has never happened to me.

Hogs will return to the same area where free treats are found, until you start putting pressure on them, then they’ll change routine for a bit.

Some advance recon may be necessary to see how they travel. I always laid in wait near a known route if I wasn’t trapping them.
Mind the wind as with any other hunting. Best scenario is moon at your back and wind in your face.

Edit to add:
If you go through the archives, look for information from the late Hogdogs, all of his information was solid. I learned a lot from his posts back in the day.

[603Country]

I plan to shoot one tomorrow evening, if the hogs cooperate. They’ve shown up at the feeder pretty regularly lately, so my odds are good. I’ve shot a bunch and trapped a bunch (and shot them) over the years. Most of my hunting is over corn feeders from elevated blinds, with a few shot at the yard feeder. Only have been up close and personal with one big boar. I walked out of the woods after leaving a blind, and there he was at maybe 30 yards. Looking right at me. Not much of a kill zone if they are facing you, so I shot him in the face. He jumped into the air and spun like the Tasmanian devil and ran away from me, then hit a fence and came right back at me. It all happened so fast. I think I froze, and he swerved away from me. He’d have had me if he tried.

All that said, there are many serious hog hunters that stalk them and shoot from close range.

Hogs are pretty tough, so I now hunt them with an AR in 6.5 Grendel, and I parked the bolt gun. More ammo.

[rickyrick]

Shot one in the middle of the night, I knew I hit it but looked like it ran away.

Did some cursory searching but didn’t find him.

I went back the next day and found him feet from where I had shot him, he apparently collided with a tree

[georgehwbush]

i shot one just a few days ago, normally around here they will avoid humans like the plague. but this one didn't notice me, so i had time to wait for the shot i wanted, dropped in his tracks and didn't move.

i have made hasty shots that were not that clean, before. but this one was great.

[FoghornLeghorn]

Thanks for all the responses. There were no active threads on this forum and I didn't expect any answers. But thanks for all the good information.

Having never hunted hogs I expected something out of Peter Hathaway Capstick's "Maneaters."

[GeauxTide]

When I hunted hogs on public land, I carried a 450 Bushmaster AR with a Ruger 45 Colt Blackhawk in a chest rig. Hornady 250gr FTX in the AR and 285gr Hard Cast handloads in the Blackhawk. The revolver loads will fully penetrate, from any angle, to 30 yards. When you're on the ground with these fellers, you want to "disconnect" them with one round.

[2damnold4this]

The first feral hog I harvested was in the late 1990s. An older friend had hit a pig with a muzzle loader while hunting deer. His son, his son's BIL, and I had heard him shoot and we gathered near the stand he had hunted after dark. While my friend's father held back, the three of us set out to find the pig. After searching for an hour or so with the old incandescent flashlights that we had, my friend's son found the hog and the chase was on.

Running through a swamp at night with the crappy flashlights of the time, the BIL and I closed in on the son chasing the pig. Every step in the swamp we took caused us to sink six inches or so into the soft earth. When we hit the creeks running through the swamp, we went in up to our knees. At the third creek, the pig was trying to scramble up the bank and while the BIL and the son shined their lights on it, I shined the lights on the sights of my pistol. The first shot into its back took a lot of energy out of the pig so I tried a second shot at its head and missed. As exhausted as I was, I took a shot behind the shoulder and hit and was then able to put a final shot of .45 ACP into its head to end the chase.

The gist of this long post is that pigs mostly try to get away and you will be fine hunting in an elevated stand.

[georgehwbush]

yes indeed, almost all animals will try to "get away" but even a wounded squirl can "hurt you" so just use your head for something besides hunters orange, and you'll be fine.

[jmr40]

I wouldn't classify hogs as dangerous. On rare occasions they may attack, but so do deer. Probably more people killed by deer than bear.

I've never taken one but see them quite often when hunting. I wouldn't go to the trouble of shooting one unless it were really big. Most that I see are pretty small.

[Double Naught Spy]

Hogs are dangerous in the sense that any wild animal is dangerous, but 99.9999% of hunters/trappers who don't try to go hands-on with a live hog or hogs never get injured by them, at least not here in the US. I have only been hunting them for 15 years and killed over 2000 of them, most via spot and stalk. Probably over 1800 of them on video on my Youtube channel.

Yes, you are 100% safe from hogs in a tree stand, but based on IHEA reports, you are much more likely to be injured or killed due to tree stand falls or collapses. This happens to people all over the country using tree stands for hunting a variety of animals.

Those hunting hogs with dogs do get injured with some regularity, usually minor stuff, but their dogs often get cut up if from boars if they don't have cut vests. Hands-on puts in the most danger.

Once in a while hogs will charge people. I may have had such an event for a wounded hog that changed course toward me, or it just may have been running scared. I have been overrun by fleeing hogs several times, close enough that they kicked up dirt on me, but they were just getting away in a confused manner. They no more perceived me as the threat as they would have a tree. So as a matter of choice, I try to shoot hogs at >75 yards which greatly increased your chances of them NOT running into you if they run.

To give some personal comparative stats, I have had 4 vehicle collisions with large game during my hunting pursuits, 2 with deer and 2 with hogs. As a night hunter, I have gone to the ER once and the doc's office several times due to 'slip, trip, and fall' type injuries, getting cut up crossing a barbed wire fence in the dark that had a large animal hole on the other side instead of solid ground, poison ivy, sprained ankles. Additionally, I have had the wind swing a gate I opened right into me and knock me down. I have cut myself with knives while skinning and gutting hogs (great way to get an infection, DON'T DO THIS), but I have NEVER had a hog injure me by its intent (only by lifting a dead one, LOL)....and a live hog has never injured me directly. I have gotten bruised by a hog doing the curly shuffle, stanky leg, dirt dance, or what some scientists call disinihibition of the motor neurons. After death or severing of the spinal cord, the hogs limbs will often flail about, sometimes quite randomly, sometimes due to stimulus. A hog's hind legs can kick pretty hard when you don't expect it. This will usually pass a few minutes after death.

As a matter of advice, I would say that it is never a bad idea to deliver a quality assurance shot to a hog that is down that you suspect might still be alive and it is best to do it from yards away and not inches away. Don't walk up with your pistol and place the muzzle to the head of the hog to pull the trigger. Aside from blood splatter and the like, you are just too close if the hog is still alive. Over the years, I have learned that hogs with their eyes closed are more likely to be unconscious than dead. I have only had 3 hogs die in an upright position and one of those was leaning on a pole (shot while rubbing on the pole). So if the hog you shot is still vertical, more than likely you need to shoot it again.

NEVER approach a downed hog from the front. Approach from rearward and slowly circle around. Look/listen for signs of breathing. Satisfied that no breathing is detected, I will touch the open eye with the muzzle of my rifle or a long stick (such as the base of my shooting sticks). If the eye blinks, the hog is still alive. Ear flicking or attempting to lift its head is not part of the curly shuffle. For all these things, shoot it again.

Hogs are not hard to kill, but they don't want to die. If you don't do significant upper central nervous system damage with your shot (brain, upper spine), expect the hog to run after being shot. I have had a hog with two broken shoulders run 35 yards. Heart shot hogs can run up to 100 yards along with double lung shot hogs, though the distances are usually much less. I have had a single lung shot hog run over 400 yards. Liver shot hogs may also run up to 100 yards, but 50 is more like it, if they get that far.

Once a hog is shot and running on adrenaline, they will soak up rounds and run so long as the rounds don't hit the CNS or break a leg, particularly the front leg (causing them to fall). So you can heart shoot a hog and put 2 or 5 more rounds into the side of the hog as it runs and it still go 75 yards.

Place your shot in a spot with the trajectory that you believe will carry the bullet through the correct vitals and the hog should die. I hunt with 6.5 Grendel. I am not a fan of calibers smaller than that for hogs. You don't need big bore rifles, but the more powerful the caliber the better. This is my opinion, YMMV. Some people do great with .223 on hogs, but I would not suggest it, especially not for a newbie hog hunter.

Oh, and about the feeder. Hogs only come reliably to feeders when they go off when they are in need of resources and they will literally race other animals to the feeder. I have seen this out in west Texas. Where I am in north Texas, sometimes you have hogs come in around the time the feeder goes off, but more often than not, they wander in within a few hours of it going off. Keep in mind that yours may not be the only feeder they are hitting.

[FoghornLeghorn]

^^^^
A wealth of information. Thanks.

[603Country]

I usually shoot a hog at least twice - once to put them down and once to be sure they stay down. I also use a Grendel, and it is much more effective than the 223 I used to use.

[Ricklin]

Traps are the thing down in Mississippi. Some good video online, they are having a lot of success with remotely operated traps monitored with a wi fi camera with remote trip for the gate.
Watching them once they know the jig is up.....stay the heck back, they go quite nuts. Good advice from double naught spy.
It is great to hear they are getting a handle on the issue.

[thallub]

Got into hog hunting in about 2000 after being charged by a 250 pound boar a friend had wounded. Scott warned me: "Don't go near that hog".With that, the hog jumped up and the rodeo was on. i stood there and killed that hog with my muzzleloader: DUMB.

My hog hunting is mostly done from stands and blinds overlooking wheat fields, game plots, ponds and feeders. i hunt with muzzleloaders. We also trap hogs. Last week i took seven hogs from two traps in Garvin county.

West of Lawton, especially on Fort Sill and the wildlife refuge we have a different kind of feral hog. A wealthy OK City resident ordered breeding pairs of Eurasian boars from Germany: He turned the hogs loose north of highway 62. Hogs in that area have a different attitude.


i killed an Eurasian boar on Fort Sill in 2007. There was a tag in it's ear from a Bavarian game farm:



Don't go looking for wounded hogs at night.

[Double Naught Spy]

I mentioned the risk from tree stands. Here is a recent death that resulted in multiple blunt force trauma injuries, compounded by the individual's health conditions, resulting in his death in a tree stand behind his home...
https://www.wbiw.com/2024/10/30/terr...-and-parishes/

If you use a tree stand, wear the appropriate safety gear.

[georgehwbush]

yeah YOU ARE NOT AS YOUNG AS YOU USED TO BE !


(hand cupped up to ear) eaa? what's that ya say ?

[Ricklin]

I see industrial safety harness's quite often in 2nd hand and pawn shops. Of course inspection is required on 2nd hand safety gear. That said given you had no harness prior? I'd take my chances with used safety gear versus no safety gear. Grown men are not supposed to be climbing trees unless you work for a tree service, a case of the mind writing checks the body can't cash. Note who you do not see working for a tree service, anyone over about 35 years of age.

[dogtown tom]

At least ten years ago on some gun forum I can't remember, there's a pretty darn funny story of a hog hunt in SC/GA/FL where the hunter took a shot at hogs in a clump of palmetto, a boar charged him, he dropped his rifle to climb a tree and the boar didn't want to leave.

The storyteller said from then on he's packing a handgun as well.