I'm in West Texas. I've been finding the ground on my hunting place grubbed up in lots of places. It looks like hog to me, but why are they not touching the corn at my feeder or the mineral block that's not 60 yards from this grub? Plenty of deer, turkey, coons, rabbits, dove and quail at the feeder via the trail cam... but no hogs. I've got a mineral block out too. What gives?

May be a wise old Sow that knows feeding plots are dangerous. They are notional and sometimes hunger takes over and they forget common sense and you get lucky. If they have lived until around age four, they are likely to be smart and spooky. I've had them weave a path through the countryside always keeping the farthest distance from any high seat or shooting tower as possible. The 1-2 year olds are sometimes stupid, but an old Sow usually makes the decision for the the whole sounder.

Sometimes they get hungry for protein and would rather eat worms than corn. When they have stopped visiting my little bait piles covered with a rock, I often fill up a bucket with Chicken bones (dumpster at Kentucky fried) and hang it in a tree maybe five feet up and check the soil for tracks the next morning. Take a rake so you can smooth out the dirt under the bucket.

You can try the same thing with Nuc Mom poured on a bush. Nuc Mom is some Vietnamese fermented fish sauce that smells like rotten crotch. It puts up a scent cone that can be smelled a very long way off. Funny, but just a many Deer as pigs come to see what that smell is.

Kind of like fishing, if you get no bites, try a different spot or a different bait.

I have seen a lot of hog damage from rooting in both GA and SC and you picture does not look like hog damage. I can tell how big that area is where the sod was taken off but it looked more like skunk damage. The hog damage I have seen looks like the damage in the picture of damage in the link below. The ground almost looks plowed up.

http://www.extension.org/pages/63654...hog-field-sign

That does not look like hog rooting. Looks like a deer scrape or deer lick.

I thought it could be that too, I don't know about Texas but it is early for scrapes in PA, there are some shallow holes on that bare patch that look like something dug them. That dirt looks loose in some spots there shoud be some tracks around there to give a clue what did it.

Doesn't look like hog damage to me either!

Could be, that soil looks like it's hard and Hogs can be notional. I've seen them favor digging up the mound running down the center of a dirt road. I have no idea what's in those mounds that attracts them?

I dig a little hole, put a handful of corn in there and cover it with a good sized rock. I scatter them around some.

Put up something that throws out a good scent cone, rotting meat or whatever.

Pigs are Gypsy and covering ten miles a night isn't at all unusual. Sometimes they just disappear for months. Boars are often loners and may pop up anyplace at anytime.

It is easy to tell when the Hogs have been in a pasture or Meadow, with hard pan it is harder to tell.

What do you have to loose by trying to find out for sure and/or maybe draw some Hogs in that are passing through.

Do you see cattle in the area ?

Could be dug up so they can get down and roll in it....................... ??

Could someone look a little closer and tell me if I am imagining Horse Hooves tracks almost in the middle of that? I have seen Horses many times "pawing" and making what could very well look like a scrape. That really does not look like any kind of hog routing I have ever seen but I am sure I haven't seen everything. I just missed the Dinosaurs by a couple of years

My eyes aren't the greatest any more but I saw what looked like a horseshoe print also. I also noticed it was pretty defined and on top.

The part that looks like it might be Hogs, is at the top of the cleared area. Many times Hogs try to kind of roll the grass up and over, roots on top, grass blades on the bottom. But then again sometimes they go deeper (or try) to get to roots or bulbs.

Then again maybe it is just someplace a larger critter took a dust bath, maybe some old Rodent burrows or a Mole hill.

A couple of tips, Google earth is your friend. There really aren't any rules, I've spooked pigs and even shot one within yards of where I parked my truck to go hunting. But find paces on Google earth or a map that have cover, water and find places that are likely to have food. Take a ten mile drive in kind of a box pattern around your hunting area if possible, way early A.M. and look for places the Hogs may have crossed the road. Real easy to see where they've crossed after a rain, looks like the muddy path the kids leave in the kitchen.

You may be able to tell which places are likely to be the bedroom and which likely to be food and water. Setting up between the two isn't a bad idea. Putting up something that throws out a good sent cone my also prove fruitful, you may be off the normal path. But if they smell something interesting they may come in to investigate on their way by. If they find something yummy they may visit that spot again.

The down side to drawing the Hogs in is they can and often do spook the Deer, especially the ones ready to drop or with new fawns. They eat fawns. Many times I've known the pigs were coming way before they got near, because the Deer took off in a panic. But like I've said, there really aren't any iron clad rules, just tendencies. I watched a giant Sow feeding maybe twenty feet away from a Doe and Fawn, that was a real head scratcher.