Hog questions?

[muslmutt]

Quetion #1: When hunting hogs do you need to use the wind to your advantage to the same degree as you do for deer?

Question #2: Can hogs see in color?

Thanks.
Matt.

[okeechobeefishing]

question #1 yes I believe that hogs have a better sense of smell than deer have. Question #2 don't know but they don't see nearly as well as deer do. It is actually pretty easy to stalk up on hogs as long as you have got a good wind. Many times have had them walk up to me and not even act they know that it is danger. On another note have watched them walk into my wind lift there head take 2 big breaths and turn and run back to where they came from.

[mcraddock]

ORIGINAL: muslmutt


Question #2: Can hogs see in color?

Thanks.
Matt.

I read up on this matter over the summer and found out some very interesting stuff.

I kept spooking hogs at night when I turned on my infared illuimunator to get better view of them through my night vision. Infared is supposed to be invisible light so I couldn't understand what was causing them to spook. Found out that a local university had done a study recently on hogs and part of it was an in-depth look at their eyes.

Hogs can see very well at night because they have a large amount of 'rods'. These are simply light receptors. Humans don't have many. What we do have are three 'cones'. These are the receptors for deciphering colors. One for each of the primary colors. Hogs only have two. They lack the receptor for seeing red. So what they see during the daytime would resemble black and white to us, but with the ultra-violet spectrum showing up as a sort blue hue. Very similar to the way a deer sees. But here is the neat part. They don't see reds as anything different in the daytime, but as night approaches, their vision shifts to "rods" which are sensitive to lights in the red spectrum, including infared,, which falls on the higher side of the visible light spectrum.

And that is what was spooking the hogs. They could see the sudden brightness of when I was turning on the infared emmiter whereas I could not see any change. I develped a new tactic which has proven to be effective since discovering this. I place my finger over the emmiter when I turn it on and very slowly roll my finger away so that the light change is more gradual.

Hope that some of this helps

[SomersetArchery]

I have had hogs smell me and "blow" and run just like deer. I have also had younger (smaller) hogs down wind and not seem to notice.

Kev