She has plenty of guns. And the will to use them. The other night she had a bunch of friends/neighbors over with nightvision googles. Hopefully one night they will get at least one.
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Feral hogs are a big problem here. One night I had driven down to the barn to do night check because it was cold. On the way back to the house my headlights caught about 20 feral hogs in the field across from my house. I had nothing but DHās Toyota, so I hit the flashers and horn. They bolted and I chased them down the driveway in the car.
Feral hogs hate light and noise. In the same field above, when I saw additional hog damage, I hung a radio from a tree and played it all night every night. We used to have a 24 hr BeyoncĆ© station, so I tried that first. It changed formats so now they get talk radio. I saw no additional signs of hogs until one night the radioās batteries died and sure enough they had rutted up the field. New batteries, they stayed away.
The hogs in our area have around a 50 mile travel radius. They come through, stay awhile and cause damage. Then they disappear, no signs of them for months, but unfortunately they return.
They used to damage my pastures until I got three donkeys. All of my animals are in at night, but the pastures are still untouched by hogs. I would not leave any breed of dog outside if there were hogs in my area. There are professional hog hunters, their services are used frequently at golf courses.
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Finally I find something I have in common with hogs, neither of us like Beyonce.
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we hunt hogs - year round. My dogs are taught to bark and point in the direction where they are at, but not engage. If you want to hunt them, start shooting with the one in the rear taken out first, then work your way up to the front. We dont ride without carrying - more then once had to shoot one because of aggression - you ride along quietly, most the time you are ok, but occasionalyā¦ and they are so destructive- they will ruin a field in one night and if your horse doesnt know, it can end badly. I had one old mare that taught all our horses how to tip toe in a field that hogs visited- she was the best ever. I have no liking for hogs, but at this point we have not had any trouble at our place for a couple years now- the last encounter a few years back was not pretty- someone let their"hunting dogs" loose and they came onto our property chasing hogs, gutting one, killing a few others - lots of hogs screaming, very messy all the way around. Hogs are not stupid- killing is one thing, killing them messy and they dont want to come back for awhile- the old ones remember. I wouldnt leave any dog out alone with hogs in the area , but I did notice that the dogs jump on higher setting- even a picnic table- and the hogs dont follow up- so we keep that handy. And I sleep lightly anyway- anything wrong and you know your dogs bark, so you know when something is different- go and check . We always have lights ready to go as well as guns. And yes- on occasion we have a coyote party- like last year when they took down a good size calf at a friends place - all we found was the head and the spine. The people that are invited for that are happy for that practice and the chance to help
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Good grief!
And I thought Australia tried to kill people!
Could someone explain what a catch dog is? Thanks.
Presumably a dog that bites and holds the hog before the human shoots it.
The hunt pack finds the hogs and keeps them busy, while staying out of the way of their tusks, the catch dog come in a grabs hold, the people shoot.
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Once in a while COTH has a really interesting thread.
Wild hogs are causing all sorts of trouble in Hawaii of all placesā¦many birds nest on the ground and are becoming rare.
Thank you Simkie. I hope these hogs donāt come to Western New Yorkā¦
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http://wildpiginfo.msstate.edu/history-wild-pigs.html
Looks like they may already be heading north according to this map in link.
Yup I see one little red dot in NYS and one on the border with PAā¦
aarrgh
While your friend would be better off reinforcing her fencing, if sheās set on getting a dog have her look into a bandog.
Get one from a breeder that breeds the catch/hunting type.
http://www.americanbandog.com/catchbandogs.htm
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Yikes - I was thinking this was a problem of the south until I looked at that map - a dot in southern NJ, right about where my farmette is.
I have a 140 lb Caucasian Ovcharka that keeps the coyote population around here at bay, but hogs sound like more than any one dog can handle.
What about donkeyās? They can be much bigger and very protective, no?
Years ago I used to watch a TV show called American Hoggers. Iām an animal lover but I was just fascinated with that show. The main character had family working with him to capture these hogs, live. His daughter used her horse to chase down the dogs and pigs, then the old man drove up with his Jeep, I think, and then loaded up the pig and drove it away to meet its makerā¦
I had to look up the type of dogs they usedāthey were Treeing Walker Coonhounds, both purebred and mixed with other breeds. But they used packs of dogs and the dogs were equipped with safety gearā¦
I was watching the Weather Channel earlier tonight and they had a segment on about feral pigs. Seems someone has come up with the brilliant idea to poison these feral pigs with pellets containing sodium nitrate, which is normally used to preserve baconā¦ :uhoh: If a pig eats enough of it eventually it will deprive the blood of oxygen and the pig will dieā¦
Seems like a simple solution to a complex problem, right? They have developed a complex machine that will only allow hogs into the feeder by detecting their presence via sound recognition. If other animals attempt to feed they will be given a low level shock and I think the machine closes up. The machine has been dubbed HAM, which stands for Hog Annihilation Machineāclever, eh?!
All righty thenāproblem solved! Not so fastāthe hog hunters are all upset. Seems they afraid their hog hunting days are over. Seems like there are more pigs than they can possibly round up!!! Make up your minds boys!!!
Why canāt they just figure out a way to capture these things live, slaughter them and send the meat to food banks??? Why is this so difficult? Set up makeshift pens, run the hogs in and kill them? Itād be like shooting fish in a barrelāno???
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These wild hogs are everywhere! Just ran across this story from Hong Kong:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vicā¦-big-pig-vgtrn
Holy moly!!!.
People do trap and kill them. However, they are smart and not easy to trap. You canāt just ārun them into a trapā. There are several problems with donating the meat to food banks. The first is getting them properly butchered. There arenāt many individual slaughter houses left that will process them. Individuals do butcher them for their own use but butchering is hard work. Secondly, the meat from mature boars has a very rank, gamey taste. Thirdly, they carry several parasites that are detrimental to human health, Trichanosis and something called the bobcat tapeworm.
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Oh my, Sandysmom!
Knowing that I guess the hog hunters are going to have to find a new pastimeā¦ Break out the HAM traps! 
I think there are plenty of hogs to go around. I havenāt heard of these āHAMā traps. People have put out warfarin laced bait. Supposedly hogs are more susceptible to warfarin than other wildlife. However warfarin bait is illegal.
Sandysmom, I elaborated on the HAM trap in my above post #55. These traps use pelleted bait laced with sodium nitrate. It works pretty fast, killing the pigs within an hour, I think.
To clarify then, I hadnāt heard of the HAM trap until I read your post. I havenāt heard of any in use around here.
