Hogs Aplenty

I just earned the rights to hunt a beautiful piece of land along the Withlacoochee River near Nobleton and the landowner asked me to specifically target the wild hogs that have been tearing up his property. He’s been trying to find ways to keep them away, but they simply ignore his efforts and continue on with their rooting. So, I visited the property and did some scouting to locate a convenient spot to establish a bait pile to begin thinning their numbers. And in no time, my Tactacam 2.0 trail camera was showing one heck of a lot of sausage on the hoof, tearing into my bait.

As much as I love archery, I wasn’t to eager to sit with my bow as it’s been just a tad too warm for my liking and the thought of blood trailing Ol’ Porky in the swamp, so I carried my favorite old .30-06 along and the first night, I invited a fat little boar hog home for supper. After that, the entire sounder went nocturnal. But, I had the solution for that too. I called up my buddy Lonnie Beck and asked him to join me on a visit to the property with his souped-up AR15, decked out with a high-tech, night vision scope. We arrived pretty late at night and he entered the property on foot in total darkness and in no time at all I heard his rifle call out yet another invitation and as I drove in, it turned out to be a huge, old boar hog had accepted the invite. Both of us working together could barely get that rascal lifted onto the tailgate!
My buddy Sean Cummins, volunteered to help out, as he is in need of some fresh meat in his freezer, but after two shots and two misses in two evenings, I figured that shooting them one at a time just wasn’t going to get the job done. That’s when I paid a visit to a dear friend, Mr. Victor Waller, of Istachatta, and asked to borrow a hog trap. The next day Sean and I transported the big, steel cage trap out to the property and set it up at the bait station and poured a hefty amount of my secret recipe hog attractant into it and left. Within just a few hours, my Tactacam alerted my phone there were hogs at the site and minutes later showed me that the door to the trap door was down.

Arriving on scene, I was plum tickled to find four hogs in the trap totaling about three-hundred pounds of soon to be table meat. Bristol, Sean’s six year old daughter, was totally excited and asked permission to dispatch one of the hogs and under very close supervision of her dad, she did just that and sent a fat sow to the happy mudhole in the sky. Later, she joined in on the skinning and butchering her first hog, and taking the lessons she learned very seriously. I was mighty proud of her. Kids ought to be taught not only where their food comes from, but how to procure it and prepare it for the freezer.

This trap is doing a fine job of helping me thin out the invasive porkers and the meat is being distributed amongst the local community to help out wherever it may be needed. Now, if y’all might like to learn a bit more about hog trapping or establishing a bait site, I’ll be happy to help you out; just give me a shout at [email protected]. God Bless, and good hunting!

Toby Benoit is a best selling novelist and professional outdoors-man with thirty-five years of experience guiding and outfitting for big game all across America. Toby is a renowned archer and turkey hunting expert who manufactures custom game calls and is a regular judge at NWTF sanctioned turkey calling events across the Southeast.