Hog hunting tips for Texas

Finding somewhere to hunt, which is the real problem

Most people reading about hog hunting in Texas do not have a gear problem. They have an access problem. Four routes, in rough order of how well they work:

• Ask landowners who have a hog problem. This is the one that works, and it is less awkward than it sounds — TPWD's own wild pig pages frame hogs as a nuisance species costing landowners real money. Turn up in daylight, be specific about what you will and will not do, and offer to help with the trap rather than just shoot.
• Your county AgriLife Extension office. The county directory is public. Agents hear from landowners with hog damage constantly and often know who is looking for help.
• TPWD public hunting. The Annual Public Hunting permit opens up a lot of acreage; read the need-to-know page carefully, because public land rules differ substantially from private-land hog rules, including on night hunting.
• Guided or lease hunts. The paid route. Fine, and not what this page is about.

If you are starting from zero, note that Texas hunter education requirements apply by age and licence type (TPWD hunter education). Sort that before you worry about optics.

Reading the ground

Texas A&M AgriLife publishes a short field guide to recognizing feral hog sign, and it is the single most useful free document for a new hog hunter. What you are looking for, and what each thing tells you:

• Rooting. Overturned soil in patches, like someone went through with a hand plough. Fresh rooting is dark and damp; old rooting is dried and crusted at the edges. This is feeding sign and it is the most reliable indicator of a worked area.
• Wallows. Muddy depressions near water. Hogs cannot sweat, so wallows are temperature management and they get used hard in summer.
• Rubs. Mud and hair on tree trunks, posts and the lower part of fences, usually right beside a wallow. Rub height gives you a crude idea of animal size.
• Tracks. Rounder and blunter than a deer's, often with dew-claw marks that sit wider than the main hoof. In soft ground around a feeder, track size spread tells you whether you are looking at a family group or a lone boar.
• Trails and crossings. Hogs are creatures of habit and they wear paths through brush and under fences. A low gap under a fence with hair on the wire is a highway.
• Scat and bedding. Flattened ovals in thick cover, usually shaded and near water.

AgriLife's feral hog ecology page is the background: food, water and cover, and a group animal that travels together. Put those three together on a map of the property and you have narrowed the whole place down to a handful of spots worth sitting.

Choosing the sit

You are looking for a place where food, water and cover meet, with a safe shooting angle and a wind you can live with. In practice that means:

1. A feeder or bait site they have already learned. Easiest, most predictable, and the reason most of this site is about feeders.
2. The edge of a crop field or food plot against cover — hogs come out of the thick stuff at dark.
3. A water source in dry weather. In August, water beats food.
4. A crossing between bedding and feeding. Harder, better for a lone mature boar.

Then get elevated if you can. On flat ground, height is what gives you a safe downward angle and lifts your scent — our ranking is on best tripod stands, and the ground-level alternative on best ground blinds. If you cannot be elevated, be honest with yourself about what is behind every shooting lane before dark.

Wind, noise and approach

Mississippi State Extension puts playing the wind at the top of its wild-hog advice, and it is the correct ordering. Hogs have poor eyesight and an excellent nose, so the whole approach is a scent problem.

• Park further out than feels necessary and walk the last few hundred yards.
• Approach crosswind or downwind, even when it means a longer or less comfortable shot.
• Remember that cold air sinks after dark. If the feeder is below you in a draw, your scent is running downhill into it regardless of the forecast.
• Be quiet on metal. Gate chains, truck doors, a bipod leg on a shooting rail. These are the noises that empty a field.
• Get settled early. Twenty minutes of sitting still beats arriving at full dark and rattling into position.

Timing: season, moon and pressure

There is no closed season on feral hogs on private land in Texas, so "when" is about the animals, not the calendar.

• Hot weather pushes them later and nearer water. In midsummer, expect the first hogs well after dark and plan around wallows.
• Cool weather spreads activity out. Winter hogs move earlier and feed longer, which is the best time for anyone hunting without thermal.
• Pressure makes them nocturnal. Texas A&M's research summary on activity patterns and behavioural modification describes exactly this shift. Every failed hunt at a site trains the group a little further into the night.
• Hunt a site rarely. Once every week or two, properly, beats three half-hearted sits. This is the most under-appreciated tip on the page.
• Rain is your friend. Wet ground shows fresh sign unambiguously, so the morning after a storm is the best scouting trip of the month.

The three things worth owning first

Full rankings: cellular trail cameras, thermal monoculars, hog hunting lights and shooting sticks. The whole kit list is on hog hunting gear list.

The rules that actually apply

Mistakes that cost people hogs

• Hunting the same site every night. You are training them, not hunting them.
• Ignoring the wind because you have thermal. Thermal solves seeing. It does nothing about smelling.
• Sitting where it is comfortable instead of where the sign is.
• Shooting the first pig that shows up. Count the group; the edge animal is the shot. See hog shot placement.
• No camera. A week of camera footage is worth a month of guessing.
• Buying the optic before getting the access. The thermal is useless without ground to use it on.
• Treating hunting as the control plan. It is the follow-up to trapping, and saying so is how you keep access.
• Not knowing what is behind the animal. On flat ground at night this is the one that matters most.