Baby Pig. Now What?

[EddieWalker]

I think this thread was one of the first threads I posted in when I joined years ago.

Having said that, I haven't kept up:

Oscar is a male I take it?

Did you have him fixed? If so how?

Has he ever shown any aggressiveness at all? I would be a +500 lb pig could pose some problems if he decided to stir up some trouble!

Yes, he is male and he was fixed by a vet friend that came over and did it here. First shot in his hip and he took off I to the thick stuff. Two more shots and he was down, but still in some very thick brush. I held up his leg and she castrated him right there.

 

[bindian]

I can't believe you have a 66 Parklane!!! I was born in Sep of 65 and that same month my dad bought a 66 convertable Mercury Parklane. It was white with blue interior and roof, 2 door with the big block engine. I think it was a 410. That was what I drove in High School, and when I left for the Marines, my brother drove it, and wrecked it. For years it sat in the driveway all tore up and finally they scrapped it. It's the only old car that I've ever thought about trying to find one day and restoring.

Do you have any pictures of it?

Eddie,
Calm down. It was my parents car.:2cents: But I loved it.:licking: Mom always had a huge Mercury to drive. One of those old Mercury's power windows that worked without a key in the ignition. First day, my brother and I drained the battery. We couldn't go to church in the next morning.
The 1966 Parklane did have a 410 in it. You should hunt a rag top down and restore it.:licking: That would be cool, since it was your High School car. Mine was a 66 Mustang after a year of driving a 1973 Ford F150 with manual and a 6 banger.
hugs, Brandi

 

[fried1765]

Yes, he is male and he was fixed by a vet friend that came over and did it here. First shot in his hip and he took off I to the thick stuff. Two more shots and he was down, but still in some very thick brush. I held up his leg and she castrated him right there.

Poor old Oscar!
So.... "he" is an "it".

 

[gsganzer]

I shoot wild hogs all the time and it always amazes me how much pigs weigh. They're such stout animals. I love the little newborn piglets (my kids call them bacon seeds:licking, they're all snout.

 

[EddieWalker]

I have a 3 brothers that come out here all the time to shoot hogs and coyotes. They use supressors and thermals, so we only know that they are here when the dogs let us know that they have arrived. They supply all the corn, they have 5 or 6 game cameras with cell cervice to their phones so they can pattern the hogs and know where they are hanging out. So far this month, they have shot a dozen hogs, and last month it was twice that, plus half a dozen coyotes.

I've kind of lost interest in hunting them. I'll shoot one when it shows up and I have my rifle with me, but otherwise, I don't put any effort into it. My goal is to get my place fenced in and never have a hog on it again!!!

My neighbor has 240 acres and he's been putting a lot of money and time into his hay field. In one weekend, he said that he counted 300 hogs on his place. He has also seen over 30 on my dam one time when he was down at my pond. The largest group that I've ever seen at one time was about two dozen. His wifes brothers and cousins have been shooting them at night with thermals and supposidly doing well, which might be why so many are showing up on my place. Or there are just way too many hogs running around here.

 

[2LaneCruzer]

I shoot wild hogs all the time and it always amazes me how much pigs weigh. They're such stout animals. I love the little newborn piglets (my kids call them bacon seeds:licking, they're all snout.

Most of us never see how really big a pig can get; I guess they go to market before they reach their peak. I once saw a Duroc boar at the stockyards that I estimated to be about 750 pounds; yes, he was huge, and you could smell him from a block away. They are not much good for breeding when they get that big. My Granddad used to raise hogs, and he claimed he had a Poland China boar that weighed 1200 pounds. I have heard stories that hogs can get to weigh as much as a ton; that's a lot of bacon!

 

[FTG-05]

Hunting will never get rid of wild hogs. If anything, it just spreads them out and teaches them to be nocturnal.

If I owned acreage in TX, I'd invest in one of those Jager Pro's trapping system and catch whole sounders at one time.

We don't have hogs up here - yet. But I fear it's only a matter of time. It will happen sooner or later mostly due, IMO, to hunters.

 

[ultrarunner]

Have cousins that pig farm organically...

Raise all their own feed and such.

I was with my brother and his young family at the time and they had never met their second cousins...

Anyway we had a layover and called... they said welcome any time but they were slaughtering a hog and making sausages... my brother said maybe another time but his girls said we will probably never see them... oldest was 9.

So we went and his city girls enjoyed every minute... especially when the second cousins said tonight Papa said they can eat all the sausages they want

From hoof to table with the kids making the sausages and grilling them.

 

[2LaneCruzer]

I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I grew up in Oklahoma and SW Missouri in the 50's. We always lived in the country; my Dad was a construction foreman, and always had a job, but we were poor...but then so was most everybody else. I learned to hunt and fish as soon as I was able to bait a hook and shoot a rifle. In fact, My Dad was a country boy, and I learned from him. We supplemented our table with about everything edible you could think of, except maybe mushrooms. We hunted squirrel, rabbit, quail, ducks and geese and caught all kinds of fish. In those days, deer and turkeys were pretty well hunted out by the depression meat hunters like us. We gathered possum grapes, wild black berries and boysenberries...even wild strawberries when we could get them...not to mention walnuts, hazel nuts and hickory nuts. My brother and I walked about a mile to the bus stop, and many was the time we picked our lunch pales full of possum grapes (mmm...Mom made great jelly).

There were folks in Oklahoma and Missouri that I don't think would have survived, with their big families, if they couldn't live off the land...and in SW Missouri and Eastern Oklahoma, you could. There were no wild hogs in those days that I know of; I think they would have been hunted down to nothing had there been.

I think that the economy and change in society from rural to urban has pretty much eliminated living off the land any more, so we don't have hunters killing all of the deer...and hogs, had they been here...like we used to do. It's done mostly for sport now, not for survival. Food stamps are easier. Recall my Dad telling me that when I was little...pre school...I ate more venison than any other meat; but we lived in Lawton at the time, one of the few areas that had deer, and every one poached them.

 

[EddieWalker]

This morning I found Oscar next to his pond, passed away. He would have been 10 years old on the 9th, give or take a few days. He was around 540 pounds and he seemed fine yesterday. Last year, he started losing weight so we changed his food and he put the weight back on and was out and about like normal again. From what we can tell, he had a heart attack while in the pond, but was able to get out of the water before passing away. I buried him where I found him, which was his favorite area to hang out. Those bushes to the left is where you would find him most of the time when he was sleeping in his house.

I'm sad, but it's not overwhelming. We have been expecting this day since last year. He had a very good life. He never missed a meal, he always had a roof over his head and he was loved by many.

8-9-10 to 8-1-20