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Hunting the Wild Hog involves much more action than deer hunting. There is no closed season on hogs, so you can hunt them year around. I stop hunting them once the temperature starts getting up in the low sixty-degree range. When it gets that warm, it makes me work too fast to get the meat on ice and that’s not my idea of fun! They can be hunted from a blind like deer hunting. You can use the same weapons you use for deer hunting. They will come to feeders or hog waddles (a mud hole). We all know that hogs love to lay in the mud and waddle. This is done to put moisture in their skin; hogs have very dry skin. It also helps keep the bugs off them.
There are several ways to make hog waddles. The idea is to furnish them with oil for their skin. I dig a hole three foot in diameter and about a foot deep, and I dump in old motor oil; the rain will do the rest. This is best done where you have found natural waddles before. This also gives me something to do with the old motor oil after I changed oil in my car and truck. I also get old oil from friends; those that don’t use Jiffy Lube. I know this isn’t good for our environment, but it helps the hogs and it puts pork in my freezer. I sometimes use a five-gallon bucket of oil with a very small hole in it, hanging over the hole. This keeps the waddle freshly oiled for a while.
Another way to furnish them with oil is to saturate a piece of old canvas or a piece of old carpet with the oil and fasten it to a chain stretched between two trees. The piece of canvas should be two feet wide by four or five feet long. As long as the canvas has oil on it the hogs will keep returning; the oil will last about a week and a half. It’s best to use a small chain or cable to hang it between the trees. If you have a three or four hundred pound hog rubbing on it, a rope just won’t hold up. The bottom of the canvas should be six inches from the ground. This method also helps the hog scratch its itches. I’ve seen them rub on the canvas and chain for thirty minutes, with a big smile on their face. There is an additional way to entice the hogs to come to where you want them, but I only use it as a last resort. I’ll tell you why later!! I get a five-gallon bucket with a top; dump in corn and add water and yeast. If you try this method you need to add water to this mixture once a week. I let it ferment for several weeks; the longer the better. It will have a green and yellow hairy looking stuff on top when it is ready.
I don’t think I can describe what it will smell like, so I won’t try. Unlike the deer, hogs can’t see that well and their hearing is not as good, but their sense of smell is great. I take the bucket of fermented corn out to where I’ve seen a fresh set of tracks and dump it out. If that doesn’t get the hogs in, nothing will. If they don’t come in I’ll just chalk it up as a bad hog day and try again some other day. OH YES, why I don’t like the fermented corn method: Once my cousin Mike and I were going to put out some fermented corn. He volunteered me to take it out of the truck and load it on the four-wheeler.
As I was lifting it out of the truck I lost my balance and fell backward flat on my back. I dumped the whole bucket right on my chest. You wouldn’t believe how bad green and yellow hairy stuff smells when it is dump on your chest. My cousin could hardly stand up; he was laughing so hard, but he did manage to ask me, “Are we having fun yet?” I didn’t hunt that day and I didn’t use the ferment corn method again for several years! You can also stalk (still-hunt) for hog. I like this way and have had good luck with it. I find what I think are good fresh tracks and follow them until I catch up with the hogs. Always keep in mind that hogs can be dangerous and will sometimes attack. Usually if it’s a sow and she has little ones, she will at least make me run for the nearest tree. The down side of still-hunting is if you catch up with the pack (hogs usually travel in packs of five to eight) and get lucky, and get one or two, you will have to struggle to get them out of the woods. It’s a long haul back to the four-wheeler or the truck. I always try to harvest the shoats (young hogs weighting between seventy five and one hundred fifty pounds). If a shoat weighs one hundred pounds when you harvest him, he will seem like he weighs three hundred pound by the time you get back to the truck. All things taken into consideration, hog hunting can be a lot of fun. I enjoy hunting them well past deer season’s closing. The meat you get off the Wild Hog is just as good, if not better, than any you buy in the meat market. So, if you deer hunt, give Wild Hog hunting a try!
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