EAST TEXAS HOG DOGGERS FORUM

SO...  Ol' Lee came to me with another lead on a possible property... seems one a his old buddies had a farmer relative up in Tifton GA that had a "hog problem", so we were keen to go check it out...   As it seems with the never ending search for more properties.... for every 10 that you hear about... ONE might actually come through to fruition... fruition in respect to ACTUALLY being able to even hunt it once to see if it's worth a chit...

OF THAT 10 PERCENT.... seems to hold true that less than 10% of that original 10% actually pan out to anything productive.... quite depressing honestly...  ;D  But it is the game that we are in, in my area... so it is what it is...

... Drove 3 hours up there after work Friday... got to a property that was supposed to be 3K acres with a "pile" of hogs... and turned out to be 6K acres, with maybe 2 or 3 old, big hogs(maybe), that were traveling doing broadspread damage...  The property was mixed woods/creek bottom/crop field, with the only active crop being a wheat/rye patch about 100acres that the hog was rooting up small patches in.

So we get there about 9pm, to a property we'd never been to and those that were there to show us around were straight deer hunters and had no concept of what, or how to show us what we needed... So, they just led us to the "rooting" that had caught there attention... as we inspected it, I could tell it was all old... made by a big hog, no pig(little) tracks...   every spot was the same, spotty, spread out rooting on the
edges of the crop fields, most likely just foraging for volunteer p-nuts left on the edges...

...next thing I noticed was the abundance of hard roads surrounding the property...  :-\ rolleyes... to be safe, we kicked our shortest dog Snappa out first to "feel" the property out...  she eased along an edge for a while not doing much... so I got aggrevated and kicked out our next shortest dog, Spinner... Spin hit the ground, winded the hog down in a bottom, and it was off to the races...  Less than 20 minutes later, both dogs had run clean across all 6K acres after this damn hog, and crossed two hard roads rolleyes :-\ before we finally got them caught up as they were about to continue down some random river bank we had no possible access to.... 

... all this with our "short range" dogs lol... I was about ready to go back home at this point...

... beat around for a few more hours, and started to finally get a "feel" for where the hog(or two  ;D) was at... kicked Shine/Camo out in the wee hours of the morning, jumped, and AGAIN.... ran clean off the property... they did bay up for about 10 minutes, but we got maybe 500yds from them in the truck and the hog broke and hauled ass...  Old, roaming hogs... been there, done that.... long way to drive to try and outsmart/out muscle one of these types lol...

Oh well, got to check every lead out... never know when it might pan out... that's what I keep tellin' myself anyways HAHAHA  rolleyes ;D

.... sometimes I start to gettin' REAL tired of chasin' properties... I spend more time tryin' to find/keep decent properties these days than
comes CLOSE to the time I actually get to hunt... chit's gettin' real old I got to say.... 

I sure hate to hear that.  Those old big hogs is what hog hunting is about though.  They are worth twenty sows and Shoats.

I agree... if I lived less than an hour away, their ass would be grass... but I ain't drivin' three hours over and over to prove a damn point  ;D

I'd have to see some trail cam pictures, never know they might be worth it after all.  Been there done that and come up empty handed on those long hauls more times then not though.

On this property, I'd probably run more heat next round(if I had to hunt it again)... these hogs knew the game well and were ready to run... just too dangerous a spot to run a dog with too much bottom. 

Any of yall live up that way I'll have Lee give you the farmer's #

Need 1 single hound on the dirt. That's it.  ;)

nice place to hunt IMO, ive hunted some of tifton, lenox, and some of phillipsburg before. did yall hit I75 all the way down?

what was the farmers name if i may ask?

i like your honesty, most hound i mean dog hunters only post the blown up storys about all the hogs they catch, but seldom admit to being out run, but i like your honesty, you have more than proved yalls dogs with your pics and storys, cant wait to read more, and by the way, i want to read about this tuff man contest u were gonna tell abt???

Got to be in the right mood to tell that story...  ;D

I'M in Georgia. Can u PM me the # ?

Well I hate it for you buddy,....but it makes me feel a bit better to know that we aren't the only folks to have that problem. We hunt a bit north of where you were in GA and I've done the same thing seems like countless times,.....hear about a farm that has a 'ton' of hogs on it, go check it out and it's about like what you guys found. Luckily we have a really good friend down there that's a farmer and he knows everyone,....I mean ...everyone....and a good thing for us is he hunts with us and knows what to look for when checking out a new place.....so it saves us a lot of work. Of all the new places we've gone over the last several years, we have had one that was better than I could have expected.....it seems to always have hogs on it and some big ones at that.....seems to hold some old, mean boar hogs most of the time. The lack of peanuts and the abundance of cotton for the last 2 years, plus the drought they've been in seems to have really scattered the hogs where we hunt.....makes it tough because they seem to roam so much more than usual. We just haven't had those days we kill a sack full off of one place. However, the peanuts will be back this year I'm hearing, and maybe the drought is waning a bit......good news for us.

We are not in Georgia but we do hunt a farm around 3200 acres that is surrounded by woods. I say its loaded with hogs..... but that is only true when the right crops are planted and at the right stages of growth. The rest of the time, its a craps shoot.

 

Sounds like my Georgia trip I got suckered in to.
 " This place is so covered up in hogs we cant even deer hunt or put out corn".
Got there and the corn they had out was starting to sprout..