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Saving The Oats: Thermal Hog Hunting Success Story #7183985 05/30/18 08:50 PM
Joined: May 2011
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Double Naught Spy Offline OP
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Hunting may not solve Texas' hog problem, but it can certainly provide relief to individual landowners.

Pig_Popper and I finished off our season for protecting the oats field down in Bosque County. The harvester came. We had one last hunt in the oats and despite the harvester making things nice for us, this was our toughest hunt. We got onto a small sounder, shot at 3, hit 2, and could not find either one. I was very concerned that the harvester would find it and the hog would tear up the machine. We just couldn't leave hogs out in the field on the day of harvest.

So I dreaded contacting the landower. To my surprise, he invited us up for breakfast despite the news. Once there, he explained that he wasn't worried. He felt that they would spot the hogs before harvesting them, particular since the buzzards should be on them pretty quick. I was hugely relieved. He went on to explain that based on what had been harvested so far, they they were going to have a bumper crop, the largest in years and when I asked if he thought we had made a difference, he said he was certain of it. banana

Now, we weren't the only ones. He had managed to shoot a hog and he had a trapper that had trapped some hogs before we started and after we started, but that the trapper had not been very successful, only because the hogs go trap shy.

The key to this success is that we start earlier this season than previous seasons and it wasn't just a one person operation. The oats field was hunted on a weekly basis and also two or three other times in between. There was usually two of us doing the hunting. And a huge help was that the landowner would collect and dispose of the carcasses for us, letting us spend more time actually hunting. When you only have 4-5 hours of hunt time you can spend, you don't want half of that time dragging or carting carcasses out of the field. We would simply provide the landowner with a map the next day that we made up using GPS coordinates taken at the recovery locations. He would drive out his little front loader and collect them. That he collected the hogs was a matter of him not wanting us driving through his crop in our vehicle. I can understand that.



Hogdalorian - Si vis pacem cum sus, para bellum.
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Re: Saving The Oats: Thermal Hog Hunting Success Story [Re: Double Naught Spy] #7184063 05/30/18 10:17 PM
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SapperTitan Offline
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Great job

Re: Saving The Oats: Thermal Hog Hunting Success Story [Re: Double Naught Spy] #7184309 05/31/18 01:46 AM
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der Teufel Offline
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A nice success story!

Keep After 'Em!


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Re: Saving The Oats: Thermal Hog Hunting Success Story [Re: Double Naught Spy] #7184706 05/31/18 02:47 PM
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I'd have to say, this was the first time I'd been present for a crop harvest and it fills up your cup to the rim with pride to close out on a good note with the crop owner.

The patch that had been cut ahead of our arrival, you could reach down and pull up a full hand of oats (surplus crop) like sand on a beach.

Landowner says they grind the oats and supplement other feed with it to hopefully avoid having to buy hay come next Jan/Feb.

I appreciate the invite and look forward to helping you here when opportunity comes knocking again!

As for the hunt, well I must have muttered it 100 times that night into the next morning as we looked for the down'ed hogs.

"We shot'em right, they just didn't die right"

After such a successful month, with confidence swelling, leave it to a few hogs to remind me that there are no guarantees with hog hunting and so it continues.....


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Re: Saving The Oats: Thermal Hog Hunting Success Story [Re: Double Naught Spy] #7187618 06/03/18 10:49 PM
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up

Re: Saving The Oats: Thermal Hog Hunting Success Story [Re: Double Naught Spy] #7190908 06/07/18 10:54 AM
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Great Job guys. cheers

Re: Saving The Oats: Thermal Hog Hunting Success Story [Re: Double Naught Spy] #7192142 06/08/18 03:24 PM
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Man.. what do I gotta do to hunt with DNS!!


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Re: Saving The Oats: Thermal Hog Hunting Success Story [Re: Double Naught Spy] #7192209 06/08/18 04:41 PM
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LOL, while flattered, the big issues at hand stem from landowner concerns. Pig_Popper happened to get in on the ground floor in Bosque and has been coming back each year.

Heard back from the landowner. Their bumper crop equated to 50 bushels of oats per acre, which for them is very good, about 11% above average for Texas oats production (compared to 2017).


Hogdalorian - Si vis pacem cum sus, para bellum.
My Videos https://www.youtube.com/user/HornHillRange
Re: Saving The Oats: Thermal Hog Hunting Success Story [Re: Double Naught Spy] #7192345 06/08/18 06:43 PM
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This is all about standup hunters doing the right things and enjoying what they do. Way to go fellas.

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