TheArmedFarmer wrote:Congratulations on successfully catching 17 of them! That's very impressive. Good luck with finding that boar and his sow.
Yeah, actually I DIDN"T get the two I really wanted.
The boar and the alpha sow would not go in the trap. The way it worked out...I had to take what I could get while I could.
We had a North wind here yesterday...so I decided to set up a tree stand and manually trip the doors. The wind was blowing from the trap out into an open pasture (perfect).
The hogs came in about 30 minutes earlier than I was expecting, it was actually light enough that I could have taken video.
Even though I always wear rubber boots when visiting the trap, the boar immediately picked up the faint scent left behind...and began back-trailing me.
He was "growling" the whole time (something they do to denote displeasure), it’s not an alarm to other hogs...but more like a warning or a show of dominance to anything around.
I had the boar and two sows still outside the trap. It was obvious the boar wasn't going to enter...but I wanted to wait as long as possible for the sows to make up their minds.
The boar followed my trail right up to the fence line and the tree I was in (he was directly under me). He stuck his head through the barb wire fence as if he was going to enter the lane and get behind me. I could see him slobbering on the wire as he stood there growling.
In a minute...he turned around and trotted out into the pasture still growling. Now...he starts to a make a half circle back toward the lane which will put him directly behind and downwind of me. He is definitely going to "bust me" at this point.
Luckily, one of the sows decides to go into the trap at this juncture, so it was a race to see if she would get in the trap before the boar winded me and "woofed" his warning the rest.
As soon as her butt cleared the doors, I tripped the trigger and the whole pen exploded. I'll try to get some video next time so everyone can appreciate how strong these animals are, they really rocked the pen and most of these hogs are little ones.
I might be able to lure the boar back in later with some "sow in heat" scent, but he is smart one...and will never enter a trap after this.
The alpha sow...I don't know about. If I have any chance at her..it will be in the next few days. After that...she will probably move on (even wiser than before).
So, while I managed to catch the majority of this sounder, I failed to catch the "brains", making it that much harder to take them out.
But, thats we have so many of them. They are very smart.