David/Mo

I have been thinking about hunting for these feral hogs that the Dept. of Conservation says we have in some of the southern National forest areas. I was wondering if anyone has any first hand knowledge of concentrations of these feral hogs? I have heard that around Table Rock Lake is one place, and the other is around Ironton/Farmington area. Anybody with knowledge of feral hogs? Thanks in advance.
David/Mo

kevin1

I checked with our DNR , and feral pigs aren' t even considered game animals here , you can hunt them all year if you want . Check with your DNR to get the rules straight in your state .

Feral hogs are just farm pigs that have escaped and gone back to a more wild state . They are probably about as dangerous as Russian boars if spooked , but not quite as aggresive . Even a year or two later they remember what people smell like , but would view us as less of a threat than a wild hog . They may even associate your smell with feeding time at the slop trough . Watch out for sows with piglets though , a mama pig is always dangerous at that time .

Angus74

There are a lot of the feral hogs around the Ironton area, and also around the Lesterville, Black, Oats, area. There is a lot of ground to cover but they seem to be pretty tough to hunt. I work with a lot of guys that live there and hunt them on a regular basis, they claim they are harder to hunt than deer. They are very skittish and cover a lot of ground when spooked. They are also pretty nocturnal. They have the best luck tracking them in the snow and baiting them with corn. They have become a real nuisance around there, but it provides a lot of off season hunting opportunities.

Grasshopper13

There are quite a few around the corps of engineer ground near wappapello lake. I have seen them several times but I was never in the position to hunt them. I was either scouting before bow season or scouting before rifle season, all the times I was without a gun, LOL! My cousin and a hunting buddy of ours killed 3 about 3 years ago near the Greenville area. I know the boys up around ironton hunt them quite a bit. As the other guys said, they are REALLY skittish. I remember the first bunch i saw about 5 years ago, i was coming home form bowhunting on FF hwy south of Greenville. They just came walking across the road. I thought they were just some tame hogs that had gotten out from one of the farms around there. There were about 10 of them, 1 old sow and all her little ones I' d guess. At that time, nobody really knew there was a feral hog problem, and for the first couple years, they were relatively easy to kill. You just drove around the backroads checking Corps fields that they had leased to farmers to grow corn or beans on. The farmers always have to leave some of their crop in the field, per the lease agreement. If you saw some, you could just climb out of the truck, and sneak close enough to shoot one or two. However after just s few years of hunting pressure they turned almost totally nocturnal. If you do see one in the daytime now, he' ll run as soon as your truck stops moving, if not before!

The guys I hear now that have some success are either bowhunters who happen to have a bunch walk under their stand, or the guys from ironton have actually trained some hounds to run them till they bay them. I personally know one fella who does this and I could give you his name if you will email me at [email protected]. I haven' t hunted with him in several years, I used to coon hunt with his nephew some and hunted with him a time or two.

GH

RICHIE3

I called the M.D.C. last year about the hogs. An agent told us to take a sidearm, firearm, ect. with us due to the meth labs that are in the area of the hogs. I guess it is real thick timber down that way and the perfect place for the meth-heads to do their lab work. Watch for booby-traps, snares, or meth-heads protecting the crop or stash, and if you do encounter something out of the ordinary, go back out the way you came in! Be careful!!