Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Wild Hogs

Has anyone noticed if hogs tend to root up areas that are thick with Johnson grass? I notice this phenomenon on my place and have sprayed the stands of Johnson grass with Roundup to see if it reduces the amount of destruction. If my neighbors have lots of Johnson grass, maybe the hogs will stay over there.. Any thoughts if this is a realistic goal??du

Are they eating the grass or whats under it? I always thought they would root to get the grubs/bugs under ground. Maybe applying something to kill the grubs/bugs will make them go away. Just a thought.

I believe hot lead at fast speeds is also effective...

Tom G may have other methods that go BOOM

I consider Johnson Grass the most invasive plant around. I need to spray some before it gets out of hand and I kinda feel like the hogs digging up and eating the roots are an ally. Yes, I would spray it but if the neighbor has lots of, it will be back. It spreads from not only roots but seed. Both hogs and birds droppings make this one a tough plant to erradicate.

I thought they were after the roots.I'm also watching to see if this is just a Texas problem or if everyone has a wild hog problem.

Tom got 'em thick in parts of GA. Easy to get invite to hunt hogs on anothers land not the same with deer.

Sorry for the confusion, but yes the hogs root up the Johnson grass rhizomes, they don't eat the grass itself. Just thought if there is little of it present, maybe they would go somewhere else. It's very hard to shoot them because they are mostly nocturnal. I've had trappers here, but caught as many deer as hogs. du

I have noticed that hogs will root into Johnsongrass on top of my dam, but not sure why. They also root into random areas on the edge of my pond in the winter and my trail through the woods to annoy me. The only way I know of to get rid of them quickly is trapping, maybe the bait choice was wrong if it drew to many deer.

Try sour corn.

If you kill the johnson grass, they will just root up something else. They have to eat every day, so it's just a question of what they find. During the course of the year, different foods are available to them, but one of the biggest reasons they are doing so well and increasing in numbers so quickly is they will eat just about anything. I shot one last week in my front yard that was eating the bird seed that had fallen to the ground. It was 55 feet from my front door. That's the second hog that I've killed in my front yard in three years!!!!

The only thing that has any degree of success is a large walk in trap that will catch a dozen of them at a time. The pen area needs to be at leat 100feet in diameter and the door needs to be left open long enough for them to come and go to the feed and get comfortable with it. Once they get over their feer of the trap, the entire group of them will go into it. The biologist in my area are using this type of trap now exclusively to cut down on hog numbers. Shooting and small traps doesn't affect the population at all. With up to three litters a year, they are having more babbies then you could ever kill.

Good luck,
Eddie

I really think they breed faster than rabbits, and because of their size and growth rate, there's not many predators that will take one other than man.

I have helped a friend last year run one of those large walk in traps like eddie mentioned. The deer did not seem to like sour corn and stayed away. We were also getting $.50/pound for the hogs at a processer. He would bait it for 4-5 days unset and set it Friday night. I would help him on Saturday get the trap full of hogs loaded on a trailer. The local population ran out after about 2 months of this.

Use corn soaked with a little bit of diesel. Deer, coons, etc won't touch it but hogs will be drawn to it.

This is very true. The fecundity of hogs could make a rabbit blush.

Here's another cheap, effective idea for baiting. Take a few packages of koolaid. Either dig a small hole a couple feet in diameter or use an existing hog wallow. Pour the packages of koolaid on the ground and add some corn on top. It does work.


I cannot verify this next part, but supposedly if you put powdered sugar on top of the pile and then Q-beam the hogs at night over the bait, their faces and noses will be covered in the stuff and show up really white, with their eyes shinning in the middle. I don't want to sound too crude or too much like a redneck, but can someone say "headshot?"

Thank God they don't go haywire up north like they do down south... WV used to have a healthy population of wild hogs, but they are darn near extinct now. PA is now starting to have a problem with hogs, but the hunters have hammered them to death. I think hogs just don't breed as many times up north as down south.