I'm heading down to Hamilton this weekend. The full moon is not till Monday. Does this really make much difference on when the pigs move? Is there a specific time of day that would be most productive? I'm in a blind about 100 yards from a feeder that runs year round so I think that would be more of a factor than the moon. Am I wrong?

No, it does not matter. I have kept track of the pigs I have shot and most have been at night (all but 1). In checking the dates to the moon phases, I have shot throughout the month with the exception of 100% full moon and 100% no moon, which are usually just 1 day each.

Keep in mind that even on full moon nights, depending on the cycle, you may still get part of a night with no moon at all until very late into the evening/next morning.

I really think the full moon thing is a myth. Pour some corn out and they will come regardless.

Trust me it matters. And in different ways depending on the time of the year. With as hot as its been getting latly they are going to be visiting water/mud holes durring the day. Ideal would be a hole with standing water but alot of mud that they can waller in and cover theirself. It helps them stay cool and helps keep the bugs off as well. If there is a hole in the middle of a thicket like a spring or drainage they will be hitting it hard since they wnt have to leave cover and go right back to their bed. But on the feeding side most of them are going to wait untill dark to get out in the open since the temp will drop alot and they will be able to see with the moon. and i did say most...there will be those that never follow the rules. like ones that are eating at the same feeder as 2-3 other groups of hogs or deer, they will race to get there when the feeder goes off

Get to your stand a bit before dark and stay for as long as you can stand after...you will be able to see everything with a good set of binos and you wont need a light to shoot through the scope tonight

Corn doesn't always work. We put out 350#'s of corn on a field last January and I watched with my own eyes about 10-12 hogs walk right over the corn and completely ignore it. This was in the middle of the night using a night vision rifle scope so they had no idea we were there. In fact they rooted all around the corn. Hogs just do what ever they want and if grub worms are in area, they will choose those over corn everytime.

I think the feeder I am on flings corn at about 6:00AM 3:00PM and 7:35PM and I am going to put out a bucket of sour corn that I made a couple weeks ago. it's got water, yeast, beer, jello, sugar, and Kool Aid mix in it. I bet it's pretty nasty stuff about now...I think that would call them in better than the moon phase.

Good luck, and have fun.

Ben Lee once said about deer " Two things make a deer move, their stomach and the Rut" I think Hogs are the same way. With the hogs rut is anytime a sow is in season, caught one in a trap one time and she had 5 boars in the trap with her and others hanging around the trap.

before the last full moon (super moon) period, the hogs were coming to the feeder between 8 pm and 3 am. i usually check feeders and fill hog tubes around 9 am. i was thinking the hogs had moved on because the tube was full and the corn was on the ground and no tracks except for raccoon and birds. i set the camera back out and found out they were coming right after i left at 10 am and they were not hitting the tube. my feeder only goes off once a day at 6 pm which is what i was finding from the night before. toward the end of the full moon period, we had some cloudy nights and the hogs went back to their night time schedule.

my theory is that shadows scare them and they stay in the woods like big lone boars. my feeder sits more in the open but my friends on the same lease is more tucked in the woods which was hit every night. my friends second feeder which sits on a pipeline also was skipped.

my son and i are hunting tomorrow night and plan to stay til morning in the stand. next week when the full moon happens then we are going fishing on a pier in the bay.

Interesting. I was always taught that hogs didn't like to get out in the open during a full moon because everything can see them. Hog hunts are definitely more successful during periods of good moon because most hunters don't have night vision and the extra light actually helps them to be able to see hogs that otherwise they would miss.

I am not sure that being able to see is what gets hogs out during a full moon. They seem to be able to navigate and do what they need to do or want to do regardless of the moon and regardless if they are in extremely well shaded woods that turn even full moon nights into pitch blackness.

I wish our hogs would pattern better, but in the last three years, I have tried various people's ideas on foods, attractants, timing, moon phases, noises, weather, wind, and scent covers with little replicable success. The supposed smart hogs haven't managed to learn that humans are necessarily bad and have returned to get shot in the same places their buddies have been shot. I figured they weren't fearful of humans when after hunting where I didn't see a single hog (but heard them in the woods), but found where they had come through and grazed and rooted right past where my truck was parked about 300 yards from the stand, my sweaty work shirt, cleanup towel and tennis shoes (that stank) were sitting out on the tailgate.

We can spend the day shooting at my place until dinner time and have hogs show up a couple hours after dark. We have even had hogs hitting the feeder (maybe 100-125 yards distant) while we sighted in rifles and chrono'd ammo. Last week, I took our small tractor through the woods with the small brush hog and cleared trails that were getting overgrown with the spring rains including mowing around stands, feeders and the periphery of the food plot and hogs apparently were hitting the feeder before I had left the property. I have decided that they do this to taunt me.

About the only patterns that I can say that I have seen is that hogs generally like corn and like having the corn resource to visit at any time, but corn will be completely abandoned when the acorns fall in late October. Also at my place, hogs are sometimes crepuscular, but are generally nocturnal. Beyonnd that, everything seems to fall apart when it comes to expected or desired consistency.

My experience has been that moon phase doesn't matter. I only hunt at night and my experience has been that they can show anytime between dusk to dawn with no predictable pattern. For this reason I hunt all night. I will sleep most of the time but I use a hunter alert system to alert me when something comes to the feeder.

Roger

I typically see more out during the day from 10-2 with a full moon.

The main thing is what do they have to fear? maybe a small 100lb hog by itself but when your talking about a sounder of 15-25 hogs or a big 175lb+ boar there really nothing except us thats gona mess with them...a yote would get torn up if it tried to mess with a boar

I have always tried to distinguish a link between the moon phases when I see hogs on my trail cam, but it is always way to random to notice a pattern.

Hogs are like teenagers. You never know what the heck they are going to do!

well... moon or no moon, We didn't fire a shot all weekend. We hunted hard Friday and Saturday night till almost midnight. We saw one small pack of piglets. rumor has it on the ranch that the Sow was shot about a month ago and the piglets survied. They were alone. about 4-5 of them they wouldn't come out of the shadows because of these ladies. There were 4 doe 1 small 4 point buck and 1 tiny fawn running around them. we didn't have my wife's super camera with us so I had to make due with my phone and my scope. The pics that i took came out better than I expected thought.

Here's another one of a doe and her nursing fawn. I don't think I have ever seen this happen out in the field in front of me... Really neat to watch them all acting like a family. there was always one of them that had her head up checking things out.

All I know is pigs come in when they want food...

Full moon my pigs stick to the shadows.
1/4 moon that is up when the sun goes down making it never get completely dark is, my favorite time to hunt.
Full moon I don't even bother going out any more unless you have a heavily wooded area with a Feeder in it.

ahahahahhhahaha man those pics look good i like them

yup

It's all about luck that's why it's called hunting not sitting and killing lol I hate stands and blinds I like to stalk with my ATN Thor thermal vision.

Nice pics, and ingenius thinking of using the scope and phone.