Hogs with dogs
 

I'm in a lease of about 600 acres that is overrun with hogs. We are killing every hog we see and have allowed some dog hunters on the property this summer. They come up on the weekends and use dogs to catch and dispatch the hogs. Are the dogs pushing deer off our property? Is there an increased risk in antler damage if the deer are being pushed by the hogs. I'm on the fence with this one because I want to take out as many hogs as possible but don't want to chance pushing those bucks we've let walk the last 4yrs to our neighbors property.

If you don't want to risk pushing the deer off, then there are other means to get rid of hogs. Traps work well, as does spotlighting. A good trap bait mixture is a gallon of milk, three packets of grape kool-aid, and twenty pounds of corn sitting in a five gallon bucket in a hot garage.

I would think that the hogs are doing more damage to push out the deer than a hog hunter with a couple dogs.

Most Hunters train their dogs to chase a certain type Game or Prey and if they are controled to do a certain job at specific times it helps in not scaring the Deer away and its much better than say letting some dogs loose to run all the time...that would do more harm than good in my opinion.A Friend of ours come out to the Farm in the Winter time to go Racoon Hunting,they let their 2 dogs run and whenever they would pick up the scent or chase after a racoon thats what they were trained to do and they didn't bother or chase after any other type animals....as we walked back I shined the light and saw 5 Deer bedded down in our woods,he let his dogs loose and they went up between the Deer and circled back around not bothering any of the Deer.I was impressed to see the Deer stay where they were and the dogs were trained not to chase after Deer....thats what a well trained Dog should do and the Trainer prided himself on that accomplishment!


Now when it gets closer to Deer season I wouldn't run any dogs in there for the sole purpose of just letting things settle down so the Deer move around naturally!

From this time until deer season, I wouldn't want the hog dogs in there. Why take the chance of running any deer off, even if the dogs are trained to only run hogs. I would want to concentrate more on doing what I can to fatten up the deer. If you need to, then take a couple weekends yourself and do some hog hunting. Also, you can run all the hogs off your hunting property, but if the neighbors farm is loaded with hogs, you will have them back as soon as the hog dogs are gone.