Big Boar! Tractor was Useful During Hunting Season

[gsganzer]

Just a basic setup, Diamondback DB10 in .308, Witt Machine muzzle device, Bering Super Hogster thermal.

I setup and sighted in one of those Pulsar's on my brother's rifle. Nice!

I started out with a Pulsar Trail XQ50 with the 384-288 resolution and later upgraded to the Thermion with 640 x 480 resolution. What a big difference! I also bought the Pulsar thermal binoculars. Great for scanning.

 

[EddieWalker]

When I bought my land, I was excited to have hogs to hunt all year long. Once I started clearing my land and trying to make it nice, I started to dislike the hogs. They would show up and totally destroy half a acre.

For years, we shot them when we saw them, and nothing really changed. Then Covid hit and the shutdown allowed people to continue to hunt. It didn't make any sense to me, but if you where out hunting, you could leave the house and head out into the woods. One of my clients is a fanatic on hunting hogs, so I let him hunt my place during the night.

He would sit in my deer blind and fall asleep. Then his phone would ping when something was in front of his game camera. He had three game cameras spread out around the deer blind, and a sack of corn in front of each camera. He would wake up, see what camera it was, shoot a hog or two, and then go back to sleep. His best night was 14 hogs. He had several nights where he got 12. It was very rare that he didn't get one. By the end of the year, he had shot 114 hogs.

The next year sort of slowed down for him. The hogs where still there, but not as many, and he had a lot of nights where they didn't show up. He only shot something like 70 hogs that year.

Since then, we can go months without seeing any sign of hogs. The deer population has increased dramatically. I'm not sure if there are more deer, or just more deer coming to my land?

He still has several cameras on my place, and he did such a good job here that my neighbor has him hunting his place. I don't know the numbers for there, but overall, it's rare to see hogs on either place.

It's possible to slow them down, but it takes somebody like Gary to sit there all night, and keep coming back every week, or even during the week, to get them under control.

My wife never shot a rifle in her life before we met, now she's taken 4 deer and about a dozen hogs. It was exciting for her to shoot the hogs at first, but now she wants them gone too, because she likes having the deer here.

 

[gsganzer]

One thing for sure is that east, west and south TX have a lot of hogs. I hunt central TX and we don't have near the number the other places have, I guess because it's mostly range land and not planted crops. I'm not sure I'd ever get tired of shooting them. I hunt and shoot them every way possible, from thermals at night at a feeder, thermal at night stalking, early morning stalking and middle of the day when you can find them sleeping in the heavy brush. Every type of hunt is just another adventure to me.

I had a big boar showing up very infrequently on my camera at my deer feeder, usually coming in late at night. When I was deer hunting the other week, I brought my thermal with me and stayed out after dark. Right at 7pm, I see him meandering through the pasture, working his way to one of the diversion ponds near my feeder to get a drink. I nailed him right in the neck, dropping him in his tracks. It never gets old to me.

 

[Rockbadchild]

This particular one ,.. No!
He was very rank and smelled horrible, and had several open festering wounds from fighting with other boars.

I generally don't eat many wild hogs. One reason is that if I took time to butcher all the hogs we get, we'd have no time to hunt. Farmers get us to hunt their fields before and after they plant, and we stalk at night with thermals and AR rifles. Sometimes we get over 30 hogs a night.

If I were to eat one, it'd be a younger hog.

that sound like a blast

 

[BackRoad]

Do you just drop 'em and let them lay where they die?

Drag them off to a "down wind, far corner" of the property?

How long do the carcasses last?

Do the dead draw in coyotes, vultures or similar?

Do the other hogs eat the dead hogs?

Enquiring minds need to know!!

 

[EddieWalker]

At my place, if it's fresh and under 100 pounds, we pull the hams and backstraps. I don't skin or gut them, I just cut off what we want. Then we use the meat for dog food that my wife cooks in the crock pots. She has three crockpots, and there are days when all three are making dog food.

What's left is hauled off to an area that we call the "Bone Yard" The same happens with the big ones, and the guy who hunts my place. What he shoots all goes to the Bone Yard since we're asleep while he's hunting, and they are already stiff by the time we wake up.

Coyotes clean them up. But that's also where we shoot coyotes. Since coyotes kill my chickens and goats, I'm more into shooting coyotes then hogs!!!! Somehow, there are always more coyotes out there that clean up the hogs in less then three days.

 

[1 Old Man]

Do you just drop 'em and let them lay where they die?
No. Always moved to "relocation area".
Drag them off to a "down wind, far corner" of the property?
Far corner of the property.
How long do the carcasses last?
2-3 day max.
Do the dead draw in coyotes, vultures or similar?
Yes. Exactly. The clean up crew.
Do the other hogs eat the dead hogs?
They will. Hogs will eat just about anything. Including their own.
Enquiring minds need to know!!

I'm in EddieWalkers general area. Same problems. Same solutions.

 

[BackRoad]

Thanks for that...now we know the rest of the story!!!

Bit of work to haul them, but sounds like it could be an interesting hobby, especially knowing how destructive they are.

 

[rockinbbar]

Do you just drop 'em and let them lay where they die?

Drag them off to a "down wind, far corner" of the property?

How long do the carcasses last?

Do the dead draw in coyotes, vultures or similar?

Do the other hogs eat the dead hogs?

Enquiring minds need to know!!

I drag, or carry them off. I don't want the carcass contaminating the areas I rid of them. There's an old pen in the center of my ranch I try and put everything. The buzzards and coyotes have good access to it.

Whether or not the carcass gets eaten by coyotes depends on the animal. I've seen some hogs eventually, and very slowly disintegrate without ever being fed on. And I know coyotes find them because I deploy game cameras, and see them check out the carcass, but for some reason they reject certain ones.

YES, other hogs will eat dead hogs at times, just like other coyotes will eat dead coyotes too. Again it depends on the animal. Some coyotes are totally eaten in a day, and other coyotes I've seen were never touched.

 

[blksn8k]

So long as they fall near a trail I've found that the Kubota's bucket is the easiest way to get my deer out of the woods. Doesn't work out every year but it has a couple of times. The first photo is from 2022 and second is from this archery season. You can see some of the changes to the tractor as well including my home built cab.