How active are hogs in hot weather?

[der Teufel]

My limited experience (this is my second year to hunt feral hogs) seems to indicate that the hunting will slow down from about now until well into fall. I'm in central Texas, where it is hot and dry now.
And when I say hot and dry, I mean it!
As watering holes dry up the hogs seem to move to places I can't find. Probably they've gone off to someone else's property, but it may just be that they're feeding late at night - I don't really know.

I don't know that there are all that many hogs in the area. About two years ago I saw a pack of about two dozen, but since then I have rarely seen more than five or six a time unless it was a single sow with a litter of eight or so.

I'm just wondering what other folks are seeing or have seen at this time of year in similar climates. To me it seems like I might as well stay home until November unless there are some good ideas for finding and luring hogs out of their hiding places.

[SWThomas]

Do you have a feeder out? No matter how hot it gets, hogs still need to eat. Setting up near some sort of water source is always a good bet when it's hot but like you said, most of them dry up when the rain is lacking. I haven't had any issues with finding the hogs here but they do seem to be sluggish on the hotter days. The area I hunt is swamp land though, so they always have somewhere to go cool off when they want to.

You could put out some feed or a feeder and set a trail camera on it. Then you can see when they are coming and going. I like to set the feeder to go off first thing in the morning and then 10 hours after that. About 4PM. And I set it to be pretty liberal on the feed. I leave it like this for about a week to get them comfortable and therefore complacent. Then I switch it up to where it goes off every 5 hours after the first feeding and the amount of feed distributed is a lot less. Like 2 seconds worth each time. That will cause them to come out during the day to eat out of fear that they won't get any unless they come early. Sometimes they will come just by the sound of the feeder going off. This works especially well if you have other animals showing up for the feed also. Like me, I have coons, turkeys, and crows that come to the feeder. It seems to me like the hogs get pissed and come early to eat before the other critters can get there.

[The Rev]

Hogs can't sweat so they don't move a lot during the day. If they do they will head for water. When looking for a good spot to set up look for trails and wallers in water.

During this Texas heat, I only harvest sucklings, this way I can get them in ice easier. The larger pigs are too hard to get them cleaned and iced down in the Texas heat fast enough.

We've had some real hot days the last month, but with the rain the last couple of days, I think I'm going to try this week end.
It's supposed to rain Sat. night, so Sunday morning should be good.
If I were a gun hunter, I'd hunt at night, but gave that up years ago. I also quit hog hunting nights with a bow, when I sneaked up on a group of porkers at night looking for the pig I had shot. Not a good situation!!!! I backed out and told them to enjoy it!

Good luck

[Rebel Hog]

They try to find all the water holes and shade they can!

[der Teufel]

Originally Posted by SWThomas

Do you have a feeder out? ... You could put out some feed or a feeder and set a trail camera on it. Then you can see when they are coming and going. I like to set the feeder to go off first thing in the morning and then 10 hours after that. About 4PM. And I set it to be pretty liberal on the feed. I leave it like this for about a week to get them comfortable and therefore complacent. Then I switch it up to where it goes off every 5 hours after the first feeding and the amount of feed distributed is a lot less....

I guess I need to try that again. I had a feeder and camera out, but there are cattle in the area, so that in June I had ~500 pictures, ~400 of which were cows foraging around the feeder. Another 50-60 were raccoons, and the rest were false triggers except for two hogs that came by sometime in the month. I had set the feeder to go off only in the evening, I'll try running it in the morning and see if that produces different results. -- Thanks!

[CamoCop]

Originally Posted by Rebel Hog

They try to find all the water holes and shade they can!

X2! i find them easier to hunt the hotter it get's. focus on water and shade.

[bush_pig]

more than likely you will just find them just at the edge or in the water

[falcon]

During hot weather i watch the water holes. Have killed 7 hogs so far this month from stands at water holes.