Hogs - No longer Nocturnal !?!

[ml williford]

View attachment 135855

Date and time is correct. These were nocturnal 2 months before. My wife shot the redish hog under the feeder one month after this game camera photo was taken in the afternoon...4:30ish. It weighed about 80 lbs live weight. The next time they came to the feeder was 9:45pm.

I sat the feeder with our night vision one night roughly a month after they started coming in after 9pm...they still were waiting till almost 10pm to come to the feeder.

It was the first time I had watched hogs with NV, so I ended up not shooting. It was a 50yd chip shot, but I was playing with different things to see how it worked on live critters.

By the end of turkey season they still had not returned in the day light...they train pretty quickly...and these are not much, if at all over 1yo!

 

[ml williford]

I hunt and live in SE TX, hogs are very smart. The start of bow season hogs go dark. Sooner if lots of activity in the woods where there are. They do not start coming out in the day until after January after gun season is over. This is there normal routine for the last 40 years since I remember. Do not know which is smarter dogs or hogs. Dumb ones on both sides. I raise and show English Bulldogs and there are some that do not do anything good. Really who cares and why can't we have different opinions? We all love to hunt, shoot and fish. That's all that really matters. and I'm a redneck and proud of it. Would love to hunt Canada but hate the snow and that's why I live in the deep South.

 

[J E Custom]

We are gone from our lease months at a time and rely on game cameras to tell us when and where they are moving/coming to feeders. When we go to the lease to feed or just work off season, we still hunt Hogs and the game cameras are great,

We pull all the SD cards when we first arrive and replace them with another card (So we don't miss anything) and that first evening we review them and decide where and when. Works great and we don't spend time hunting a non productive area.

J E CUSTOM

 

[redriverhunter]

I don't know why they do what but I have seem them at 10 am for a few days in a row then don't see them at all for a while then see them feeding at night some times in bunches other solo. this is north Texas near Wichita falls

 

[John Klingenberg]

J Klingenberg pretty much summed it up...hogwise that is. My experience has been the same on my ranch in Central Texas. I might add that the large boars (200+ lbs and over) are solitary and are the hardest to get shots on. They are very wary and it's as if they have a sixth sense about when they are being stalked. From my game cams they are impossible to pattern and roam over very large areas....probably looking for females in estrus is my guess. A large boar my show up on my cams for 2 or 3 nights in a row and then disappear only to show up over on the cams on the ranch 4 miles away 2 weeks later. Who knows where he goes in the interim. It has also been my experience that the big boars are way more nocturnal than diurnal, although I have seen them on occasion in the middle of the day. Another thing....the worse the weather the more likely I am to see hogs.....especially during the day. In my experience.......heavy rain, sleet or snow is the best time to see hog activity and be out hunting. Just some of my experiences.

True on the weather. Usually that little sprinkle of snow we get in west Texas is an A+ day to hunt. You can really rack up a score of them in rough weather. And it's my observation also that big boars are almost totally nocturnal which is really puzzling. Pigs are practically blind. At night they must really rely on their other senses. I've walked right into herds at night when the ground is soft. It's a little unnerving when they discover you and scatter in every direction.

 

[Alex cooray]

They are much smarter than most animals! smarter than dogs.
Pigs are actually considered the fifth-most intelligent animal in the world—even more intelligent than dogs—and are capable of playing video games with more focus and success than chimps! They also have excellent object-location memory.[/QUOT

 

[Alex cooray]

You are absolutely correct there, Here in Aussie they are found in large numbers during the day, ideal for long range shots. Its also a fact that wild pig has the ability to auto crimp their bullet hole therefore reducing blood loss. You got to hit them in the boiler room or head.

They are much smarter than most animals! smarter than dogs.
Pigs are actually considered the fifth-most intelligent animal in the world—even more intelligent than dogs—and are capable of playing video games with more focus and success than chimps! They also have excellent object-location memory.[/QUOT

 

[hunterbob]

Hunters make a big mistake whenever they think a hog is predictable, or can be patterned....Fact,,hogs come out at night,,, Hogs go to brushy cover when daylight comes.. They stay until it gets dark again...Where ever the hog is at dawn he goes to the nearest cover to hide whether he is on my ranch or 3 ranches away from me. Furthermore a hog does come out in the daytime too,,,or a sounder may show up to feed in a field...at times ...They are unpredictable..lol

 

[Steelflight]

Fact hogs love corn and apples and whoever else they can munch on.

 

[John Klingenberg]

Every year we culled deer for QDM and gutted them near this tank dam. If we cleaned 20 deer it would be gone by morning. Hogs will eat anything.

 

[Australia]

Pigs are like any animal, they learn and they are probably one of the
true surviving species on the planet and I sometimes feel they will survive like cockroaches
we have killed thousands and the next year they are back but more cunning so they due seem to pass on genetics where survival is concerned
Have any of you guys seen pigs that are threatened and not know where the threat is from form a Roman ring ?
I have only seen it twice where the larger pigs form a circle with there snouts in the air with the smaller pigs in the centre all rotating trying to pick up a sent
So Pigs do have intelligence but I think it varies from place to place

 

[John Klingenberg]

Pigs are like any animal, they learn and they are probably one of the
true surviving species on the planet and I sometimes feel they will survive like cockroaches
we have killed thousands and the next year they are back but more cunning so they due seem to pass on genetics where survival is concerned
Have any of you guys seen pigs that are threatened and not know where the threat is from form a Roman ring ?
I have only seen it twice where the larger pigs form a circle with there snouts in the air with the smaller pigs in the centre all rotating trying to pick up a sent
So Pigs do have intelligence but I think it varies from place to place

I've seen them do that when a coyote gets cheeky. Otherwise, they just run in all directions. To maintain a population you have to kill 75% of the population every year. I've seen large groups together, different family groups, that numbered over a hundred. Shooting 75 of a hundred hogs is a monumental task. Especially in some of the West Texas brush country. That's why they're proliferating so well.

 

[Wedgy]

There's a really great Jager Pro video where the hogs only show up on this ranch on the weekends, it had them stumped until they found out there was a neighboring hunt club that was open on the weekends. They spent a couple weeks conditioning this sounder to go in the pen/trap but the alpha sow and a couple other old sows wouldn't go in. This isn't the video but it gives you and idea how smart they are.


https://jagerpro.com/hog-trapping/hog-trapping-videos/

 

[Mike6158]

Some of my 308 reloads are more likely to go through level 3 body armor than you 338 edge lol

At 1,500 yards?