Hog Hunting Tips: Curisoty Killed the Hog

Many hunters go hog hunting during the fall and winter while also whitetail deer hunting. Although that is a good time to be out in the field, I have had the best luck in very late winter and early spring. And at least in Texas, this is one of the best hog hunting tips I can give you. It is also a good time for hog trapping. This is because around spring green-up there is usually zero hunting pressure on hogs.

Although late winter and early spring are my go-to times for putting pork in the freezer, I do go hog hunting during other times of the year. I am always keeping an eye out for some good barbecue material. Just this year, in early October, I was out riding my mountain bike around my deer lease in north-central Texas. I knew from game cameras that there were some hogs using the area. And some of them were BIG hogs.

I like to ride my bike because I can cover lots of ground quietly, looking for hogs in the mornings and evenings when they are out moving around and feeding. It is also good exercise. Well, late one afternoon as I topped a rise I could see a big beast of a hog walking away from one of my corn feeders. The hog was almost at the brush line, which was about 120 yards away, so I jumped off my bike and steadied my rifle across the body of the bike.

The hog was in tall grass and almost gone, when I let out a fawn bleat as best I could. I didn’t know what else to do because I was just trying to stop the bulldozer-sized rooter. At the sound of that noise, he spun around and began trotting directly at me. The pig went down through a slight depression and then his backed reappeared, still coming right to me.

The hog flew out of the tall grassy habitat and was about 65 yards away. At this point, I think he saw me, but hesitated. It was right then that I exhaled, the crosshairs of the scope settled between his eyes and his ears, and I squeezed the trigger. The hog dropped without so much as batting an eyelash — dead in his tracks! The big boar weighed in at 238 pounds!

I share this story not only because I think that it’s pretty cool, but to let other hog hunters know that they can use a hog’s curiosity against them. I don’t know why the hog responded to the fawn bleat. Was the hog looking for a meal ? I know the feral hog diet include just about everything. Or did he think it was something else? I don’t know, but I know that hogs will respond to a lot of different sounds. Some hog hunters will even use rabbit distress calls to bring hogs out of the brush. Using distress calls is one of the more common hog hunting tips that I have heard of, even though I mostly hunt by area searching.

In short, hogs are curious animals that, like me, are always keeping an eye out for a quick meal. My hog hunting tip for today would be to use wildlife distress calls to stop hogs and maybe even turn them your direction. It worked for me. When it comes to hog hunting nothing is a sure thing, but maybe using this technique can help you put one on the ground in the future.