Feral Pig Hunting - Using Traps, Blinds and Cages to Hunt Wild Hogs

Depending on where in America you live, feral pig hunting could be an important skill to master as a way of providing food and hides in a survival situation. It is not the same as hunting other big game like moose, as feral pigs have completely different behaviors to other animals, both as individuals and as sounders.

They are very intelligent which makes them hard to track down as once they get a human scent, they won't revisit that area again. However, with an average hog coming in at over 100 pounds, taking one down will solve your food problems for a month or more.

Feral Pig Hunting Techniques

Make no mistake, feral pig hunting will be one of the harder tasks that you undertake in a survival situation. The best time to go hunting for feral pigs is at night, which is fine if you have a flashlight, but once the batteries run out, you'll be reliant on the moon and fire for lighting after sundown.

Chasing a vicious feral pig armed with either of these puts you at a disadvantage. This is why most feral pig hunting techniques tend to focus on trapping rather than shooting. Common feral pig hunting techniques include:

• Snares - feral pigs tend to stay in and around one area for extended periods of time, especially if they have good access to food and water supplies. The size of the animals means that you'll begin to see game trails and paths forming in the woods around your home and this common behaviour allows you to set snares. As mentioned before, the feral pig is intelligent enough to ignore or dismantle a dangling neck noose, but you will have more success with a snare that is aimed at the leg. Be prepared to shoot to kill when you come back to check the snare as the pig will get angry as it becomes more frustrated.
  
• Cage traps - if you're looking to try and generate a long term supply of meat, luring a wild hog to a cage trap is worth considering. You can set it up as a corral with the animals free to come and go once you open the gate again, or as a straight up cage where the animals come, the door closes behind them, and you can pick your pig at will. Your choice will depend on the amount of open space you have as a cage needs almost twice the square footage that a corral needs as the pigs will remain in one place. Be sure to have large amounts of corn or milo to act as bait.
  
• Stands and blinds - if you're determined to use the TEOTWAWKI event as an opportunity to become a crack marksman, then building a series of stands or blinds along the game trails will allow you to shoot the pigs as they make their way past you. Their intelligence means that once they get scared by the gun shot, they won't return to the area, and the fear can also lead them to anger which could be directed at your stand.
  

The main difficulty that you'll find when you're thinking about learning about feral pig hunting as part of your survival preparations is that in most states you need a specific license to hunt. However, this is relatively easy to get hold of as long as you can pass a background check and hold other gun licenses.

You may want to use the license as an opportunity to experiment with other methods of trapping and killing pigs without using a gun. In a survival scenario, you may not have access to more bullets and grease to keep your gun operational. Or you may want to keep that ammunition for defense against humans.

Then again, in a post-apocalyptic world, you’re probably not going to have to worry about getting some government-mandated license to hunt for food in any case!

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