Wild Hogs in my front yard.

[GeneD14]

Eddie,

Have you thought of having wild pig hunts at your RV park? That sure beats playing bingo or singing around a campfire.

 

[texasjohn]

Good goin' Eddie! Your grocery bill keeps falling! Thanks for posting...

 

[EddieWalker]

Here's a better picture of the hog with Steph's son. He's five and weighs 40 pounds, just to give some reference.

Eddie

 

[CurlyDave]

Eddie:

What kinds of vermin do the hogs have in Texas?

The ones out here in CA are an entire ecosystem, walking around with fleas, ticks, lice, mites and who knows what else in great profusion.

Before I became a certified geezer, I use to take them with a knife and I would end up with a lot of "pest transfer" in the process. These days, I shoot them like most folks...

 

[rox]

Eddie,
It was good of you to post the pic with Stephs son and the pig. It really gave perspective.

So now I guess I should tell my pig story. The moon has been really bright, well not now but lst week it was. We have a sliding patio door in our bedrrm jsut a couple feet away form the bed. For some reason at 3am I wake up and look outside. There I could see a wild pig, about half the size of the one Eddie jsut shot, standing outside our screen about perhaps 8 to 10 ft away. I wake up my hsuband and we oth look at the pig, then the pig walks off and we go to sleep.

The next night I decide that hey, perhaps I should put some sort of barrier next to the screen as we sleep with the door open and jsut the screen. So I put a small space heater in front of the screen and go to bed. Sure enough about 3am look out the window and there is that pig again.

Next night, I notice the irrigation system goes on for it's once nightly check. Each irrigation station runs for 15 minutes, turns off then the next staion is run. Right when the irrigation system kicks in for the staion by our bedroom along trotts the pig again. We watch it for a few minutes and realize it is there drinking water form the irrigation system, must have been an indentation in the soil or something that it liked this spot.

So I get out of bed with only that space heater protecting me form this wild pig 8' or 10' away. I yell at the pig, "Now you get out of here, what are you doing right by my bedroom" I have my voice raised and I am yelling at the pig.

I assumed the pig would high tail it out of there but it just moved a few feet away behind an olvie tree. So I keep yelling at the pig, "What are you doing here, I know you are behind that tree. You can't hide behind that tree, I know you are still here" Now I am even mroe amazed that the pig has not left.

The pig makes some very low noises and real close to the ground i see a baby pig move away fromm the irrigation hose and run over to it's mother. Then the mother and baby ran off.

As soon as it happened I remembered the thread here on TBN where one TBNer wrote about shooting wild pigs and I'll never forget his words, "This isn't for the light hearted..." He said that adult pigs will never run away and leave a baby pig. Even though I was right in her face the mother pig jsut hid behind a tree and wouldn't leave. Which exactly matched the behaviour the TBNer wrote about.

Since I yelled at the pig they have not been back for their nightcap but I know they are still on the grounds. If we get really uncomfortable with the situation we decided to bait the pigs for a while and then get our neighbor Claude to come over and shoot them. I am sure Clude probably ahs a gun adn would do it for us. About the only thing they really do wreck is the stone walls and we have many of them. They did pull some stones down but my husband just put them back. I did have my camera on my bedside table for a few nights after that but there were no visitors.

Eddie that is some amazing pig. Do you butcher them yourself? My hsuband did his intitial cook training where they butchered calfs, pigs, lots of small animals, and then used every aprt of the animal to make Terraines, Patés etc. He was trained to always make your own geletin out of the bones fo the animals, I think he said calf bone makes he best geletin. So my hubby is a pretty good butcher and has butchered deer and pigs.

The last pig he butchered, road kill my nephew saw it hit, man did that thing stink when he butchered it. I have about lost my taste for the meat becasue of the foul oder during the butchering process.

So Eddie do you do your own butchering and do your pigs really really stink during butchering?

 

[wushaw]

As soon as it happened I remembered the thread here on TBN where one TBNer wrote about shooting wild pigs and I'll never forget his words, "This isn't for the light hearted..." He said that adult pigs will never run away and leave a baby pig. Even though I was right in her face the mother pig jsut hid behind a tree and wouldn't leave. Which exactly matched the behaviour the TBNer wrote about.

I had a sow with several little piglets walk up to me once in daylight while I was deer hunting and as soon as she finnaly realized I was there she ran and the piglets then ran in every direction.
Their eye sight is not the greatest but their sniffer and ears are good.
I thought at the time it was strange that a mother would just up and run like that leaving the little ones to fend for themselves, I didn't have bacon on my shopping list that day so I just went back to looking for venision.

 

[texasjohn]

rox, well, I really loved your story... and your comment about how the hog did n't take off.... well, why should it... it's a French hog and you were speaking English I predict that there will be rost hog on your menu one of these days!

 

[EddieWalker]

John, you beat me to it. hahahaha That was the same thing I thought, the pig doesn't understand English. hahahaha

Rox,
Your encounter with the pig sounds like your in an area that they are not hunted very much and don't have allot of fear of humans. That pig should have got out of there right away when you yelled at it. The babies would follow. Since she stood her ground, you might have a problem animal there.

Pigs are allot smarter than dogs, so she's got something figured out. What? I have no idea, but she knows your no threat, so she's feeling safe and secure in your yard. This scares me.

When a hog sees me, it runs off. I think you missed the part the other poster said about about shooting and wounding a baby. Then the others will stay to protect the piglet while it's squeeling. Not for the faint of heart, but a good oportunity to shoot multiple animals.

Some people think of pigs as big game animals and want them given that status. Here they are more like vermin that tastes good. They are very destructive and breed like crazy. The woods are too thick to affect their population and for this reason, there really aren't any rules on killing them. Just kill as many as you can to keep the growth to a minimum.

I do butcher them myself. When I first moved here to Texas and shot my first hog, I took it to a butcher. It was winter at the time. I shot it at last light, gutted it and loaded it into my truck. It was freeziing out that night so I knew it would be fine. I took it to the butcher first thing in the morning.

Two days later he called and told me the meat was bad. It had rotted and they had thrown it out. I know this was a lie and they had kept it for themselves. Why they did this is a mystery, but I've told everyone I know about this and they all agree. I've also shot allot of animals all over the world and never lost one before.

So now he doesn't get my business, nor those who I tell about him. I just butcher the animals myself and Steph cooks them up. SHe's a great cook that likes to experiment with seasonings and methods. We eat very well!!!

Thanks for your story. If you can, take a picture of your pig. I'd love to see it.

Eddie

PS two more pigs are now eating our bird seed in our front yard. Not as big as the one I just shot, but we're still suprised at how soon this is happening again.

 

[greatrandini]

Feral pigs by deffinition started life as farm raised animals. (Or come from such lineage) The only difference between some wild pigs and those on a pig farm is which side of the elec wire they are on. It is interesting though that in not so many generations feral pigs begin to take on physical chararistics of wild boars or Razor Back hogs. They do this even without cross breeding. A lot of wild pigs are still looking to man to feed them. These are easily caught in simple traps baited with corn etc.. (One guy said to use human poop mixed with jelly but that is just gross) Wild pigs in Ok, Tx, AR, etc... cause an amazing amount of damage to crops.. They can undo a farmers work about as fast as he can get things done. Trapping is the best and easiest way to cut down on the number of wild pigs in an area. The French sow and piglets mentioned here could probably be easily trapped and returned to the farm from which they came. (or roasted)

 

[rox]

Yeah perhpas I shoudl have yellled in French.... Never thought of that.

Teh pigs aroudn here look like wild pigs, they do not look at all like Eddies pigs. They have brown hair and more or less look wild. France also ahs a serious pig problem and they hunt them liek crazy. OUr neighbor said that in one area that would be similar to our version of a a very large county, 10,000 pigs wee hunted and killed in just one season. They are all over the place.

We are having a drought here, not really any rain since February, less than an inch I woudl say and nobody else for a wide area irrigates so our property with irrigation provides them with water. Come to think of it, the whole of Provence is covered in irrigation ditches with water taken from the Alps so I guess now that I think about it, the pigs can get water for probably a thousand miles of irrigation ditches. The farmers really use the ditches.

A coupel hundred years ago a famous guy in France came to Provence and said this land is so fertil it will grow anything it just needs water. Like 200-300 years ago they built these canals and they are still maintained, upgraded and used. For us we have 2 wells, one is 120 meters deep (400ft) so far we are okay. They have banned people form using water to fill up their swimming pools, but in our particualr area of France they never cut the farmers off from water. They will cut them off in other areas of France but not by us. We are the breadbasket of France, we produce all the vegetables and fruit, and of course wine. If our well ever would go dry becasue of a draught we would just get a meter and pump out of the canal. I would just go over land that is a nature preserve to get to the canal by my house so that wouldnt' be a problem.

Olive trees survive a draught, you'll never loose your trees. You just get really small olives if you don't water, but the trees don't die and next year when there is water, they go right back to where they were.

I don't knwo what to do about the pigs, my hsuband fixed irrigation lines today and said it must be the pigs wrecking them. For some reason I am hopefull that that mama pig won't come back 8ft from my bedroom patio door. Do you think she would have tried to come through the screen? She only stood her ground untilt he baby finished drinking then they left so I wasn't thinking she is a "problem" pig.