EAST TEXAS HOG DOGGERS FORUM

Its my 1st poll so humor me please. :D

On other threads we have discussed what kind of dogs and measures we use to catch these running hogs. I want to see how runners relate to the terrain we find them in occasionally.
I left a few off but figured 8 options was enough.

I know runners are closely associated with highly dogged areas however; I think terrain has a lot to do with it also.

What do you think?

briar thickets and 6 to 10 year old grown up clear cuts full of yupons brias and tala trees

Forest is 80% of our hunting but the dogs get burnt alot in what we call guinea grass but I don't have a picture of that, So I guess I choose other!
(http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g90/bigainaboi/S2010002.jpg)

Mature crops probly give the hogs the biggest advantage in my opinion for a number of reasons........the thickness, the warm/hot temps. that we have during that time of year, limited acess into the middle of fields ect.  Also I beleive a big problem is the size and continuity of the crop....each square foot is exactly the same as the next so there is no place for the hog to back up into and bay up.  99% of the time they don't feel comfortable standing at bay in the fields so the just leave or run circles within the crop.  Then the size....... some fields can be a couple hundred acres in size with nothing more than a few turn rows to break it up.  Briars are bad but you don't see very many 200 acre solid briar patches without trails and openings scatterd around.  Then again when you have a June corn field that is in the middle of polination and next to that is a bad brair thicket with high temps and 80% humidity the hogs have a bit of an advantage. ;D

Waylon

we run in river bottoms and thick s!@# and thay get out run quick alot of times

Pine trees about head high up to about 10 or 12 ft is pretty tough in this area. Thats about what 90% of the land is like around here these days. Its tough but as long as your dogs got plenty of bottom you can catch the biggest majority.

moscow  :o

Young pines because the briar are hard for the dogs to get through and the hogs know where they're going and just plow through it. Thats just my opinion.
 

.    Roger that... Everywhere around the Moscow,Camden or 7 oaks area the hogs run for miles... The terrain is mostly pine plantations full of nasty yopoun (sp) and saw brair thickets. We have ran hogs in this place for up 9 hours before finnaly stopping the hog, as soon as they here the first bark or smell you or the dogs the race is on. And they can get a huge lead on the dogs. While the hogs are runnin straight ahead the dogs have to smell everywhere the hog went and try to manuever through the thickest crap you've ever seen. I will try to get some pics of the thickets I'm talkin about. And last year we ran. Barr hog over two miles before we caught him. Don't now how he ran so far. He was bumpin 380.

I agree Waylon. Crops are the worst. To add to you list of reason why... the tend to get the most hunting pressure in a short period of time.

The most productive for me is Wolf Grass and the thick under-brush type stuff. Of coarse LARGE acreage with very little hunting pressure is easy pickings.

(http://i255.photobucket.com/albums/hh153/alanhuskey/DSC01590.jpg)

Palmetto flats are bad enough but when they can get regular sunlight it can be almost impossible to get to a bay. A perfect mix of saw briars, yopon, and who knows what else, that only dillas and hogs live in. Hogsgonewild has his work cute out for him in this place.  Gotta get like Tarzan and take to the trees sometimes. ;D

Waylon, I agree. My hats off to the guys that hunt them regularly. Any hog in a mature corn field is tough on a dog.

some of the stuff down this way is still the thickest ive ever seen. a place i hunted a long time ago had short tallow trees and thorns, thorns, thorns. it took me 25 mintues to get 150 yards. i wasnt caring about getting cut by thorns, thats just how long it took to push and crawl through them.

Rose hedge.  Either run rough stuff or get burned.

I get burned all the time when hunting in these lygodium vines. It just forms a big mat over the palmettos and myrtles that the hogs have tunnels through. Ive had to track to my dogs and cut them out of these vines because they can not find a way out from underneath it. Some bad stuff.


I'll take any briars ya'll got over this stuff.



(http://i547.photobucket.com/albums/hh445/sfboarbuster/392px-ARS_Lygodium_microphyllum.jpg)

yea its hard for are dogs to go through them to but they usually catch up after they get out

I agree. The runners I chase usually get caught if they get pushed out of or just leave whatevere nasty stuff they are able to stay ahead of my dogs in. Caught one Monday after she decided to leave the swamp the dogs had chased her in for an hour.

Sf, that's some nasty stuff.

sfboarbuster,

I have been in those lygodium vines in Alabama. Never hunted hogs in them though and hope I never have too! I dont know how anything can get around in that stuff other than a snake!

Palmetto bottom and briar/rosehedge seem to be rough on my dogs. I only hunt in that crap once a year though so it does not concern me really.

I almost never loose a pig in the rocks, hills, cedar, mesquite, cactus, yaupon and whitebrush that constitute my Happy Hunting Grounds. And, I think that is what matters.

Steve

we caught a hog in them vines one night and ended up getting lost the only way you could get through is crawl over top and you would fall through and have to crawl back out we were dragging dogs with us and decided to cut them back loose after about a hour of crawling we heard the dogs baying again it was the same hog in the same spot we started from after another 4 hours we made it out It wasent too hard to get to the hog the first time they had it but it was like the stuff grew up around us

any fl guys ever hunt in mangrove swamps there is one by my house it hase some bad hogs in it but the skeeters are even badder. Hogs have to be some tuff animals to live in that stuff the few i have caught in there where fat and healthy guess they can drink saltwater

I knew a guy in Punta Gorda that hunted the mangroves, he said the hogs could get pretty nasty.

Typically if they make it to the pepper tree heads or the lake bottom the odds of it turning out in the hogs favor are pretty good!  If we cant cut them off or call them out it typically turns into a few hours of hollering and driving in circles :-\

Who wants to crawl hands and knees in 6 - 12 inches of water any way?  lol

The really thick cane (right before harvesting) and palmettos are also a little harder for the bigger dogs to work it, but the smaller ones zip right through it....

We cant catch them all but we can dang sure try to give them a run for their money!!!!  :)

I heard some mangrove islands in the indian river lagoon have hogs on them, or at least used to.
Maybe I will have to take the boat out one of these days and see if the rumors are true. Maybe drop a few hogs off there and see if they live.

try a little north of pecks lake east side of river they in there

Where are you from chopper?

all depends on the hog,,,and where. lol

Seems like when our dogs get left in the dust it is usually in the briar thickets. One time we actually witnessed a hog running at top speed, go right through a tightly woven briar thicket and the dog was right on its heels. the hog disappeared and the poor dog was bounced off of the briar mesh like a trampolene. Those hogs are built aerodynamic and can run at top speed through the crap that makes a dog have to slow down and find a way through it.  So i voted other. ;)

I tell you what I know some good medicine for bad brair thicket or any vines for that matter.  A good dose of fire about mid January will cure allot of briars.  Find a good natural fire break and light it several hunred yards up wind from the break about mid morning with damp ground and a steady 5-10 mp wind is perfect so it don't get away from you.  Just light a match briars burn quick and sure helps clear things up and even makes good deer habitat for the next couple years, so the goat hunters will be happy as long as one of their deer feeders does'nt jump into the fire. :)  It was not uncommon while hunting when I was kid after the dogs were caught for the old men we hunted with to take out matches and just set a patch of woods on fire.  The ground is damp and grass is grazed to the ground by the cows so you couldn't burn the pasture if you poured gasoline on it.  The trees tops wont burn because there is no leaves on them  but the briars are dry and burn very well.

Waylon

We have suggested the farm manager that if the fire jumps while they are burning to let'er rip but they always put it out :(  those hogs would be confused if when they got there the thick was gone. 

One of my properties that has the lagodium vines is gonna be burnt in the next month or so. I'll be able to teach them hogs a lesson after that. ;D

I would have to say in about a 5-7 yr old pine plantation because the briars are so think in there our dogs cant make circles around the hogs to bay them. Gotta have some real rough dogs around the Groveton area. We were in a pine plantation last weekend that they had select harvested about 3 years ago and the briars were so think and tall that our jeans were tore all to pieces and couldnt hardley lead a catch dog. We wound up catching 2 little boars about 15 lbs apiece but man it was sure nuff thick in there. Hard huntin and gritty dogs around our area.

briar thickets! hogs would run ahead and rest til the dogs caught up then go again.briars were full of hogs.if they ever came out the dogs would run em down and catch em.but the briars made our dogs look bad.

This is definately tough. Very similar to an open canopy palmetto flat. Its the worst of both worlds. I know of some good dogs that have fallen to nasty boars in this stuff also.

yup,,, hard for a dog to turn and run from a hog through brairs

Well I locked in the poll folks.
After reviewing results and post it seems to me that most hogs hunter get burned in the real thick nasty stuff in general including mature agg crops.
The only surprise for me was the percentage that voted for Pasture land - mostly open country. Kinda blows my theory out of the water with that country and has reinforced my opinion in other areas about runners.
I guess they are out there but I have never seen them. Quick as they are I have never seen a hog flat outrun a dog in open country. Catch dogs not included. ;D  Maybe its as simple as just never having the opportunity on the right hog but Im not convinced of that yet.
 
Thanks for the participation and the input!

It doesn't matter where we start the hog, what time of day or what the terrain is our hogs can flat out fly. They have had so much hunting pressure that they almost refuse to stop. They get worse and worse. We used to think a dog that went two miles had bottom but my dog and two dogs of my buddies ran a hog for around 4 miles before they finally bayed in a brush pile in a orchard in the middle of a plum thicket last week.

Near the city, on county property nicknamed hell

Where part of Texas are you running these hogs?

Please explain. lol

The Stephenville Texas area. There is almost every possible thing a hog can hide in. Anyone who thinks they have some 'Stop' dogs need to come hunt with us. But i do give credit to the south texas guys who hunt in black brush. That is some bad stuff

I voted for pasture, mainly since that's what I have to hunt, but I have one that is worse than others for running hogs.  It's pretty open, with patches of thick stuff all through it.  It's like the hogs will run through the thick stuff, then break out into the open and hit the afterburners and never want to stop until they get to the next patch of thick stuff, then the dogs almost catch up and they're gone again.  It hasn't been as bad yet this year but last summer was real bad for running hogs.  I watched one go over a hill with a dog hanging off his ham trying to put the brakes on him, but no dice.  Not a real big hog either, maybe 160-170 or so.

Briar Patches, which seem to make up about 50% of the landscape on most of the places we hunt. Briar patches that are over your head and have thorns not little stickers.. A hog in a 200 acre briar patch has all the advantage he needs. I like wendler's idea about burning them down but you would probably get in trouble for burning half of al and ms.. Although it probably wouldn't hurt much lol..

I would say it all depends on the hog