If you are having to hunt hogs by yourself at night you should look at getting you a light from Cabelas that mounts to your scope. That way you have both hands free to shoot.

If you go down through the river bottoms the hogs like to follow trails down through creeks and along the river. They move mainly at night so unless you are hunting over a feeder the best time would be around midnight. During a full moon if you find a place where the moon light can penetrate the trees you can see well enough to shoot w/o a light if you have a good quality scope. I use a Zeiss Conquest 3x9x50 on my Marlin .450. It really helps when you are hunting at night gather light. I like using a large caliber gun for hogs because you can get some really large ones and if you shoot them in the shoulder it takes a heavy bullet to penetrate the shield. We shot a 350# boar from around 60 yards w/ a .35 Remington and the bullet stopped under the skin on the far side. We used to use a .223 and shoot them in the head but we had too many problems w/ it so now the smallest gun we use is a 25-06. I personally shoot a .450 Marlin for hogs though it is larger than you need when you shoot one it goes down.

For cleaning them we clean them right away and keep them on ice for about 4 days draining the water and adding more ice as it melts. It helps drain the blood out of the meat and we've never had a problem w/ wild taste.