Hogs Close To Home

• Hogs Close To Home

I saw the first signs a few weeks ago while walking across the couple of acres that serve as our ‘front lawn’. I do keep try my best to keep the varied species of grasses and weeds some might call a lawn under control but it’s been a real challenge lately with all the wet weather. I noticed where the ground had been disturbed and instantly knew a sounder of hogs from the nearby woods had invaded our neighborhood. We had an abundance of acorns on several of the mature post oaks on our place and back during the fall, squirrels did a good job burying a good many of them. Wild hogs are used in Germany to sniff out truffles and their keen noses have no problem locating a soured acorn or hickory nut a few inches deep. The ground under those oaks honestly looked as though a garden tiller had been at work. I love hunting and eating wild hogs and thought it was neat having them coming to me, on several occasions, I’ve seen their sign within ten feet of my front porch. I’d thought of using my thermal scope mounted on a big bore air rifle and hunting from the porch swing but a trail camera I set up captured their images in the middle of the night. A half mile from home on some land my neighbors let me hunt, I have them patterned to a corn feeder each night just about dark. I just don’t wish to lose sleep waiting for these ‘home hogs’ to show, even if my ‘stand’ is a front porch swing!

This ‘hog problem’ as my neighbors call it was not limited to my place, the nuisance porkers were working over the entire neighborhood. I shed a sympathetic ear when my friends were complaining about the rooting done by the porkers. I even joked with them a bit at first with statements like, “Heck, I really like them aerating to soil for me, it will make my assortment of every grass species known to northeast Texas flourish”.

One of my neighbors has his place on the market and the porkers were hitting him pretty hard. He even resorted to setting a radio outside a window and playing late night money market shows all night. The hogs kept coming and as smart as I know hogs to be, they might just be opening up their own financial planning companies soon! He didn’t laugh when I joked that a potential buyer might be a hunter and relish the idea that hogs were actually coming out of the woods to his property. It became clear that It was time for ‘Ole Luke’ to go into action to keep harmony and lessen stress in the neighborhood!

I have a little trap and can catch one or two hogs at a time but that would do little to solve the problem. My neighborhood needed a serious trapper and I knew just the man, Steven Waugh, the wild hog buyer for my area. Steven has contracts with several companies/agencies to remove hogs and he’s equipped with state of the art traps that are active by a cell phone app. He sets up a camera on the trap and when all the hogs are in the enclosure, he drops the gate. The hogs are then sold and ultimately wind up on a plate at a fancy restaurant as “wild boar chops”. I love to see wild pork put to good use, wild pork can be very tasty and through the year, I have made many dishes from the hogs I’ve killed, everything from pork chili to fajitas. But like I tell everyone, not every wild hogs will make good pork. I’m very selective in the ones I shoot and much prefer younger hogs weighing between 50 and about 125 pounds. Sows are almost always more tender but young boars that haven’t reached breeding age can also be excellent table fare.

Steven showed up with several panels which chained together to make up a round trap enclosure about 30 feet in diameter. He constructed the trap near a couple of oaks on my neighbor’s place. The ground had been ‘tilled’ well the night before. This was just the right spot to set the trap, easy access and in a spot with lots of fresh sign. It was also close to a long fence that served as a funnel for the hogs as they left the cover of the woods and headed to the oaks.

Like all savvy trappers, Steven only partially assembled the trap, he left a wide opening for the hogs to access the corn he uses as bait. He wanted them to learn where the corn was located and feel comfortable around the fencing. He then set up a live feed camera to monitor the trap a couple of nights.

When the hogs are hitting the bait on a regular basis, he will install the trap door and soon, when all the pigs are munching on corn, he’ll hit the button that drops the gate on the trap. The piggies will go to market and the neighborhood’s yards will no longer have the benefit of twenty or so mini garden tillers! So far the area has been baited for two nights and I’ve seen fresh sign just a few yards from the trap. The aroma of corn is more than hogs can take and I expect them to lose the fear of the newly constructed trap and begin munching very soon.

LUKE’S FATHERS DAY GIFT IDEA FOR THE YEAR For the past many years, I’ve mentioned some gift ideas for Ole Dad or Grand Pa on Father’s Day. This year, a product from Vinyard Max www.vinyardmax.net is the winner. It’s a little kit with everything necessary to tag a harvested animal during hunting season, complete with lighted pen to fill out the tag, scissors to snip off the tag from the hunting license, reusable zip ties and wire fasteners to secure the tag and tags to write your contact information for the processor/ taxidermist. This all contained in a little zipper pouch with a loop for securing to one’s belt. Hunter’s that have scrambled in the dark to tag a harvested big game animal will greatly appreciate having everything necessary to make the job easy. The kit is available through the website.

Email outdoor writer Luke Clayton through his website www.catfishradio. org. Luke and his friends Larry Weishuhn and Jeff Rice produce a weekly outdoor show, “A Sportsmans Life” that is on You-Tube and Carbon TV.