Some friends and I went on our first hog hunt this past weekend. We went down to the Love Valley WMA in southern Oklahoma. Anyways, we saw signs of hogs all over the place. Lots of tracks, trails and torn up ground. Bedding areas everywhere. But we only saw one hog. He came blasting out of some brush right in front of my friend and me. By the time we got him stopped, we had used three 12 guage slugs each. I don't know if we hit him every time though. The first shot for me anyways was kind of a panic shot. We gave him some time to make sure he was dead. When we flipped him over, he had a softball size hunk of meat missing off of his left side. He had obviously been shot or wounded a couple weeks ago. The wound was filled with maggots and he was in bad shape. So, we didn't feel comfortable taking any of the meat. Was that the right thing to do?

I have some questions now. I'm thinking that a rifle like a 30-06 with iron sights would be best for hunting an area like this. But I never see any 30-06 that doesn't have a scope on it.

Does anybody use a tree stand to hunt out of? I was thinking about setting up a feeding area and then setting up a tree stand nearby and wait for the pigs to come. Does anybody do something like this?

What do you guys do? Do you walk around until you come across some pigs, or do you sit somewhere and wait? I definately had a good time though. Other than when I went walking across a dried up pond and went crashing through the crust up past my knees. That wasn't as bad as when the mud dried and fused my socks to my leg hair. Ugh.