mongo4567
Well-Known Member
We call that a pig toy here, I've used them. The key with them is really tough pipe, shorter chain, only a few holes (4 or 5), and a flat area so it rolls well in a circle.
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Improve my feeder visits
- Thread starter Blancoalex
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We don't have pigs in my area, but I wonder if the pig toy would work on black bears.
Blancoalex
Well-Known Member
Again Thanks all the suggestions. This evening I put up my carpet and used oil rub post. Next will be to build metal pipe.
Guess as suggested to " sweeten the pie" I can put out sweet feed on Tuesday to hunt Friday evenings.
Guess as suggested to " sweeten the pie" I can put out sweet feed on Tuesday to hunt Friday evenings.
Revolting Peasant
Well-Known Member
Unmolestested hogs finding a reliable and ample source of food with nearby water will generally stay. The post hole diggers hole filled with corn will keep them there a long time but, warning, will result in a rather large mud hole.
Try setting your feeder to bump a few seconds at midnight, in addition to dawn and dusk. Set more feeder times with less duration during day and night. They are more comfortable coming in the dark and will tend to hang closer to the feeder the more times it goes off. Think "winning slot machine at the casino" and you get the picture. You can train them to listen for the feeder.
Try setting your feeder to bump a few seconds at midnight, in addition to dawn and dusk. Set more feeder times with less duration during day and night. They are more comfortable coming in the dark and will tend to hang closer to the feeder the more times it goes off. Think "winning slot machine at the casino" and you get the picture. You can train them to listen for the feeder.
Hogs move way more than 5 miles in their normal patterns. A human walks about 3mph and hogs cover ground better than we can. Solo boars move 30mi plus looking for receptive females. We hunt out west of Seymour TX and had a white boar with a black head and a white left ear "very distinct markings" coming to 2 of our feeders twice a day. Had 50+ photos of him from Monday to Friday and then he just disappeared. We found him on the side of the road dead on a Sunday 18mi from camp and a bout 21mi away from those 2 feeders.
"Baits" can work and they rarely drive pigs away. I've heard of people mixing diesel and corn together and the hogs eat it. But something about feeding an animal diesel that you could potentially eat just sounds like a bad idea. Cows like to rub on creosote as much as hogs. I don't care for cattle hanging around my feeders anymore than they already do. If they have a water source and a food source they rarely wander off and if they do....the next batch will come through in a week or less.
"Baits" can work and they rarely drive pigs away. I've heard of people mixing diesel and corn together and the hogs eat it. But something about feeding an animal diesel that you could potentially eat just sounds like a bad idea. Cows like to rub on creosote as much as hogs. I don't care for cattle hanging around my feeders anymore than they already do. If they have a water source and a food source they rarely wander off and if they do....the next batch will come through in a week or less.
Wish I lived closer to you to help but I'm a long way from Texas.
A friend of my brother had an observation,Pigs were changing their routine every couple of days so it's hard to hunt them.Feeders are the only option for him so he changes his feed every couple od days and that helped.
And another land owner had a great idea,he bought a huge amount of Licorice and spread it around at all his feeders and that helped.
Any new interesting smell can get their attention.One year I poured a quarter of a bottle of Anise on the ground and next day they had a 2 feet hole the size of a deer's body dug and torn up.Good luck to you
Hey buddy you should try that and report.
Double Naught Spy
Well-Known Member
Sounds like some good and interesting information so far. I have been running feeders on my place since 2009, specifically for hunting hogs as I do not hunt deer or turkey. Between running the feeders and doing spot and stalk hunting on several properties, here is what I can contribute.
Hogs do not operate by solunar cycles. I tracked my hunts over a couple of years and basically either you are where the hogs are or you are not. While not statistically significant, both years found me on hogs slightly more often during non-peak hours, which is counter to solunar claims. I know people swear by solunar tables, but as near as I could tell, the greatest chance for hunting success was not by specific timing, but simply by hunting. If you aren't hunting, you definitely won't have a chance to be shooting hogs.
Next, comparing feeder timing to solunar tables, there is no correlation. Hogs don't just feed during solunar peaks.
Hogs do not operate more or less by how high the moon is.
As noted above, winds can affect hog behavior and we find that higher winds usually result in less hog encounters. While less often, high winds can also result in some of the best hunting when you do find hogs as when you are down wind of them, they can't hear you and they can't smell you as you approach. Now even though winds seem to limit their movement, they don't hunker down and not move. They are out feeding somewhere. They may not come to your feeder, but that doesn't mean they aren't out and about. You just gotta find them. If you have hogs in your immediate area and are running a feeder, they will still likely come to it. If they are traveling greater distances, your chances diminish.
How can you improve your feeder visits? People have been trying miracle attractants for years and so many people swear by this commercial attractant or that homemade concoction. What I have found in trying a couple dozen commercial products and special recipes at sterile locations (not where a feeder has already been set up or where feeding regularly occurs, not on a known game trail, not at the water source) is that nothing works particularly well. Eventually, hogs will find anything edible, but just because something smells sweet or yummy and hogs have a great sense of smell does not mean hogs will necessarily come to it. Moreover, introducing something new and strange to a feeder location may actually dissuade hogs from the location for 2 or 3 days until they realize the new smell (a change in the environment) isn't a threat. Will hogs eat your super duper soured corn/very berry jello mix. More than likely. Will they love it? Is there anything they won't eat? Well, yeah, there are a few things they won't eat, but pretty much they eat almost everything. Just because they are eating your commercial attractant or special recipe does not meant it was a super attractor of hogs. If there was truly a super attractor of hogs, we would all be using it and we would not have a hog problem. You could drive out to your property or lease, pour out some of your super attractor, and in no time, be shooting hogs. Just like with regular old corn, sometimes it takes days or weeks before hogs appear on a sterile location to try the special attractor bait.
The reason for testing at a sterile location is because that is what actually tests how well a bat "attracts" hogs versus hogs just finding under a feeder that has been in operation for a long period of time and hogs know to find, or a trail being used by hogs where a hog may just happen upon the miracle bait, or at a water hole where the hogs would be anyway. The attraction was already in place before the bait was deployed. That skews one's testing.
Schedules: As noted above, hogs don't keep them, or they do, but they are highly flexible. If you are running a feeder and have a hog that has come for 7 days in a row at 9 pm and you show up on day 8 and the hog doesn't show up, you may find this quite frustrating. A common statement I hear or read is "I had this big boar/sounder patterned and then they didn't show up when I went to hunt them." The reasons they didn't show up can be numerous. Maybe you screwed up and they knew you were there. It happens to all of us. Or maybe, just maybe, something happened in the other part of their lives that you don't get on game camera that kept them from coming. Maybe they got shot at by another hunter while on the way to your place? Maybe they got spooked by the neighbor plowing his field next door. Maybe they found a better source of food. Maybe they just got delayed. You never know. I have read several accounts of hunters getting upset a patterned hog didn't show up on time and then went home (or back to camp) only to have the hog show up a couple hours later or checked the game cameras and found the hog was there a couple of hours before the hunter. Hogs don't wear watches and hogs don't punch time cards. In my experience, a "pattern" of 1 event is just as likely to produce good results as a pattern of 12 events. If you are running a cellular game camera and a hog showed up at 10 pm last night, I would be in the stand by 7 pm and waiting. For now, 7 pm is 1 hour before dark. I try to never be approaching the stand later than that.
So why show up so early? Two hours early is usually my minimum window for arriving and 3 or 4 are better. This is because hogs often arrive in the area well before they show up on camera. They circle the area, forage, maybe wait for the feeder to go off. Being early allows whatever scent you left on the trail to fade some. Getting there early means hopefully beating the hog to the general area and the hog not hearing you. Getting there early means being able to be in the stand and set up and completely ready and comfortable with the setup long before a hog might arrive, or that is the plan. Hogs don't wear watches or punch time cards. On numerous occasions I have arrived early only to find hogs already at the feeder.
Pig pipes: Cool idea. Fun to watch. Can keep hogs busy for a while. Probably best used with a feeder alongside as pig pipes are not great for sounders as a dominate pig will tend to occupy the pipe if you have a group. They will keep a pig our a couple of pigs busy for a while, no doubt. The biggest problems with these that they must be refilled often. The second significant problem with these is that they break. When they break, it is usually a chain or post issue and then the pig rolls your pipe for sometimes great distances until it runs out of corn or the pig hits a barrier with it and can't go any farther. I know folks that run these that find them as far away as 400 yards, sometimes on the neighbor's property, and sometimes in creeks.
Pig barrels: A barrel set up like a pig pile will hold a lot more corn. Depending on the size of barrel and weight, it may be too much for smaller hogs to move. These don't have to be filled as often as pig pipes, but pigs will sometimes work them near continuously until they are empty...meaning you don't want to put 50 pounds in the pipe and just leave for a week because may all be gone long before you return. These also have breakage issues and get found away from the original location.
Post holes: Dig a hole and put corn or your magical miracle concoction in it and wait for the pigs to find it and going to work to try to get at the corn. Like pig pipes, they will end up with a dominate hogs occupying the hole at the exclusion of others. If the hole is unmonitored and the hog remains unmolested, they can take your small hole and make it a crater that you later have as a crater or you need to backfill.
Feeders: I know deer hunters who hunt hogs and have their feeders going off at dawn and dusk. That is fine if you are hunting dawn and dusk. If you aren't a morning hunter, don't set your feeder to go off in the morning. This should be a common sense statement, but apparently a lot of folks don't get it. Only set your feeder to go off at a time when you can be hunting. My feeder is set to go off just after dark. I do this because I have found that turkeys will eat all my corn if I have it going off before dark. I also have my feeder spit corn either 3 or 4 times for short durations at 30 minute intervals after dark. That spreads out the time for a while, but also keeps the deer and coons from getting too much of the corn all at once and I figures it is more like ringing the dinner bell multiple times than just ringing it once. It also spreads out the amount of time hogs may remain at the feeder or in the area.
Hogs do not operate by solunar cycles. I tracked my hunts over a couple of years and basically either you are where the hogs are or you are not. While not statistically significant, both years found me on hogs slightly more often during non-peak hours, which is counter to solunar claims. I know people swear by solunar tables, but as near as I could tell, the greatest chance for hunting success was not by specific timing, but simply by hunting. If you aren't hunting, you definitely won't have a chance to be shooting hogs.
Next, comparing feeder timing to solunar tables, there is no correlation. Hogs don't just feed during solunar peaks.
Hogs do not operate more or less by how high the moon is.
As noted above, winds can affect hog behavior and we find that higher winds usually result in less hog encounters. While less often, high winds can also result in some of the best hunting when you do find hogs as when you are down wind of them, they can't hear you and they can't smell you as you approach. Now even though winds seem to limit their movement, they don't hunker down and not move. They are out feeding somewhere. They may not come to your feeder, but that doesn't mean they aren't out and about. You just gotta find them. If you have hogs in your immediate area and are running a feeder, they will still likely come to it. If they are traveling greater distances, your chances diminish.
How can you improve your feeder visits? People have been trying miracle attractants for years and so many people swear by this commercial attractant or that homemade concoction. What I have found in trying a couple dozen commercial products and special recipes at sterile locations (not where a feeder has already been set up or where feeding regularly occurs, not on a known game trail, not at the water source) is that nothing works particularly well. Eventually, hogs will find anything edible, but just because something smells sweet or yummy and hogs have a great sense of smell does not mean hogs will necessarily come to it. Moreover, introducing something new and strange to a feeder location may actually dissuade hogs from the location for 2 or 3 days until they realize the new smell (a change in the environment) isn't a threat. Will hogs eat your super duper soured corn/very berry jello mix. More than likely. Will they love it? Is there anything they won't eat? Well, yeah, there are a few things they won't eat, but pretty much they eat almost everything. Just because they are eating your commercial attractant or special recipe does not meant it was a super attractor of hogs. If there was truly a super attractor of hogs, we would all be using it and we would not have a hog problem. You could drive out to your property or lease, pour out some of your super attractor, and in no time, be shooting hogs. Just like with regular old corn, sometimes it takes days or weeks before hogs appear on a sterile location to try the special attractor bait.
The reason for testing at a sterile location is because that is what actually tests how well a bat "attracts" hogs versus hogs just finding under a feeder that has been in operation for a long period of time and hogs know to find, or a trail being used by hogs where a hog may just happen upon the miracle bait, or at a water hole where the hogs would be anyway. The attraction was already in place before the bait was deployed. That skews one's testing.
Schedules: As noted above, hogs don't keep them, or they do, but they are highly flexible. If you are running a feeder and have a hog that has come for 7 days in a row at 9 pm and you show up on day 8 and the hog doesn't show up, you may find this quite frustrating. A common statement I hear or read is "I had this big boar/sounder patterned and then they didn't show up when I went to hunt them." The reasons they didn't show up can be numerous. Maybe you screwed up and they knew you were there. It happens to all of us. Or maybe, just maybe, something happened in the other part of their lives that you don't get on game camera that kept them from coming. Maybe they got shot at by another hunter while on the way to your place? Maybe they got spooked by the neighbor plowing his field next door. Maybe they found a better source of food. Maybe they just got delayed. You never know. I have read several accounts of hunters getting upset a patterned hog didn't show up on time and then went home (or back to camp) only to have the hog show up a couple hours later or checked the game cameras and found the hog was there a couple of hours before the hunter. Hogs don't wear watches and hogs don't punch time cards. In my experience, a "pattern" of 1 event is just as likely to produce good results as a pattern of 12 events. If you are running a cellular game camera and a hog showed up at 10 pm last night, I would be in the stand by 7 pm and waiting. For now, 7 pm is 1 hour before dark. I try to never be approaching the stand later than that.
So why show up so early? Two hours early is usually my minimum window for arriving and 3 or 4 are better. This is because hogs often arrive in the area well before they show up on camera. They circle the area, forage, maybe wait for the feeder to go off. Being early allows whatever scent you left on the trail to fade some. Getting there early means hopefully beating the hog to the general area and the hog not hearing you. Getting there early means being able to be in the stand and set up and completely ready and comfortable with the setup long before a hog might arrive, or that is the plan. Hogs don't wear watches or punch time cards. On numerous occasions I have arrived early only to find hogs already at the feeder.
Pig pipes: Cool idea. Fun to watch. Can keep hogs busy for a while. Probably best used with a feeder alongside as pig pipes are not great for sounders as a dominate pig will tend to occupy the pipe if you have a group. They will keep a pig our a couple of pigs busy for a while, no doubt. The biggest problems with these that they must be refilled often. The second significant problem with these is that they break. When they break, it is usually a chain or post issue and then the pig rolls your pipe for sometimes great distances until it runs out of corn or the pig hits a barrier with it and can't go any farther. I know folks that run these that find them as far away as 400 yards, sometimes on the neighbor's property, and sometimes in creeks.
Pig barrels: A barrel set up like a pig pile will hold a lot more corn. Depending on the size of barrel and weight, it may be too much for smaller hogs to move. These don't have to be filled as often as pig pipes, but pigs will sometimes work them near continuously until they are empty...meaning you don't want to put 50 pounds in the pipe and just leave for a week because may all be gone long before you return. These also have breakage issues and get found away from the original location.
Post holes: Dig a hole and put corn or your magical miracle concoction in it and wait for the pigs to find it and going to work to try to get at the corn. Like pig pipes, they will end up with a dominate hogs occupying the hole at the exclusion of others. If the hole is unmonitored and the hog remains unmolested, they can take your small hole and make it a crater that you later have as a crater or you need to backfill.
Feeders: I know deer hunters who hunt hogs and have their feeders going off at dawn and dusk. That is fine if you are hunting dawn and dusk. If you aren't a morning hunter, don't set your feeder to go off in the morning. This should be a common sense statement, but apparently a lot of folks don't get it. Only set your feeder to go off at a time when you can be hunting. My feeder is set to go off just after dark. I do this because I have found that turkeys will eat all my corn if I have it going off before dark. I also have my feeder spit corn either 3 or 4 times for short durations at 30 minute intervals after dark. That spreads out the time for a while, but also keeps the deer and coons from getting too much of the corn all at once and I figures it is more like ringing the dinner bell multiple times than just ringing it once. It also spreads out the amount of time hogs may remain at the feeder or in the area.
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Homebrewer
Active Member
Double Naught...
Excellent info, driven by your long experience whackin' the piggies. Always enjoy your hog hunting vids.
A couple things that have helped me...
Cellular trail cameras:
- Real time data on hog visits to my feeders.
- Date, time, temperature, and number/size of hogs.
- Eliminate leaving human scent in the area while reviewing SD card type cameras.
- No fuel expense or time to physically check camera data.
Hog roll barrels:
- As you stated above - Alpha hog (our #1 target) will dominate use of the barrel.
- Need to reinforce the chain/cable size/swivel attachment to t-posts. And still expect breakage.
- If using plastic water barrels for your roll barrel, attach heavy gauge metal plate over the holes in barrel. Otherwise, the raccoons will chew out the holes to get at the corn.
2 to 3 half inch size holes are sufficient to keep them interested.
- Add a handfull or two of rocks about golfball size to the barrel. The hogs will hear the rocks rolling inside, keeps them playing with the barrel after the corn runs out.
Low cost attractant:
- The sour corn post hole, as you already discussed.
- Used, rancid cooking oil. Don't dispose of used peanut oil after deep frying turkey. Dump used oil around and in the sour corn hole. They will dig to get all of it, and takes more time - keeping them in the area...
Excellent info, driven by your long experience whackin' the piggies. Always enjoy your hog hunting vids.
A couple things that have helped me...
Cellular trail cameras:
- Real time data on hog visits to my feeders.
- Date, time, temperature, and number/size of hogs.
- Eliminate leaving human scent in the area while reviewing SD card type cameras.
- No fuel expense or time to physically check camera data.
Hog roll barrels:
- As you stated above - Alpha hog (our #1 target) will dominate use of the barrel.
- Need to reinforce the chain/cable size/swivel attachment to t-posts. And still expect breakage.
- If using plastic water barrels for your roll barrel, attach heavy gauge metal plate over the holes in barrel. Otherwise, the raccoons will chew out the holes to get at the corn.
2 to 3 half inch size holes are sufficient to keep them interested.
- Add a handfull or two of rocks about golfball size to the barrel. The hogs will hear the rocks rolling inside, keeps them playing with the barrel after the corn runs out.
Low cost attractant:
- The sour corn post hole, as you already discussed.
- Used, rancid cooking oil. Don't dispose of used peanut oil after deep frying turkey. Dump used oil around and in the sour corn hole. They will dig to get all of it, and takes more time - keeping them in the area...
dwightb
Well-Known Member
I started hunt pigs in 2010. I have killed a few! Tried a lot! What I have learned: a broad cast corn feeder is best. Hang it high, spin full speed, no varmint cage with legs high on the drum. Coons and deer are not your friends! The further you sling corn the more time it gives. All the other stuff has one problem, when do you start hunting? Pigs can show up 24/7. One feed time gives you a time to start hunting. Put corn on the ground right at or a little after dark, pigs will find it if they are there. Weevil dust carries a long way in the wind! A game camera will tell when they might be there. Pictures give you a reason to stay sitting! Hunt when you want. They might show or maybe not, that's why its call hunting! I have 4 feeders going to play the wind. When I decide to hunt one will have good wind. Corn is not cheap any more but neither is the other stuff!
My friend that lives in Texas would mix beer, water, corn, and a couple packs of strawberry jello and let it ferment. He said the strawberry jello was the magic ingredient to bring the pigs in. He would bury 5gal buckets and then fill them about 1/4 full in a few areas. The pigs would smell it from miles away and he said he could hear them as they came for it.
I have always wanted to go down there are try hunting with him.
I have always wanted to go down there are try hunting with him.
Double Naught Spy
Well-Known Member
LOL, funny how many people have there special concoctions proclaimed to bring in the hogs.
If they worked with any actual consistency better than just regular old corn, we would all use them and we would not have hog issues.
If they worked with any actual consistency better than just regular old corn, we would all use them and we would not have hog issues.
lubbockdave
Well-Known Member
sweet feed works, but having lots of available groceries is best-we have a 600 lb feeder with a plate that is about 12 inches off the ground-fill that up on a tuesday and by the weekend the hogs have most of gine, but there is enough residual we have someting to shoot at 
