We got into some hogs over the weekend a small livestock holding area. We as we entered the field, we spotted hogs about 150 yards out and we started out stalk. I was 4th in the group as was able to watch as the guys in front of me either stumbled or stepped into the occasional hole, some of which were deep. Despite the drizzle that had been going on all night, the dirt was loose and mostly just a little damp and not muddy like it was in other areas. The rooting was very fresh. We set up and took our shots, killing two of the hogs, dropping one of them right in the rooting and she largely disappeared from view. We made our approach and this is what we found...



I am used to seeing typical pasture rooting where the ruts are just a few inches deep and the vegetation torn up. Occasionally, I will come across deeper rooting where a whole area is messed up, but I have never seen anything like these adjoining scalloped holes. They resembled wallows, but I have never seen dry wallows before. And that was part of what made this so interesting. Despite all of the rain we had that evening, all the mud we slip-slid through to get to this area, the excavations by the hogs were fairly dry, meaning that all the soil dug up came down below the level that the rain had soaked to and were still fresh enough to have not been turned into mud by the drizzle. So all this destruction happened in the last hour or so, it would seem.

Here I am in one of the holes for scale...


In this one area, we found approximately 30 contiguous excavations. These were approximately 3-4 feet long, 2-3 feet wide and were about 6-9" below ground surface with a couple being closer to a foot, but they all looked much deeper with all the dirt heaped up around them.

I corresponded with flintnapper and guess for their input. I had not see this sort of rooting before and was curious if this was representative of some other behavior. Both independently agreed that this is just rooting for some sort of deep resource such as roots or tubers. The fact that there were so many craters together just indicating a nice concentrated resource.

You can see in the background of the first picture that there is still grass growing in this holding area, but where the hogs have been, no grass remains intact. The hogs had done a lot of destruction that night to the extent that it is going to require the farmer to need to use a tractor to re-grade the area and to plant new grass.

Maybe they knew you were coming and and this was their way of saying they wanted a decent burial this time.

Digging fox holes....should have kept her head down....snipers about....

I have seen that exact pattern caused by hogs in a pasture I leased to run cattle on several years ago. It looked like a backhoe had been there. They worked that particular area for about a week or two and then were gone. I had never seen it before or since. I just figured there was a concentration of a particular kind of snack they were very fond of and once it was depleted, they moved on.

Yeah, the bastards are hitting a couple of my pastures just like that.
I have one area about 100 feet square in and around a patch of dove weed.
Almost loose my Honda 4x4 in some those craters.

Very interesting! I've been hunting the bristly beasties for 20 years or so, and I've never seen anything like what you have in your pics. Of course, where I hunt, we only have about 3 inches of topsoil before you hit granite gravel, granite, limestone, or some other layer of basically undiggable substance! I drive t-posts into the ground with the front loader on my tractor and have bent plenty of them in the process. Maybe some wildlife biologist can shed a bit of light on the subject. I would be interested to find out whether it's a mineral or something organic they're digging for. I've seen the hogs push a mineral block around but have never seen one actually break off a chunk and eat it.

Common where I live. One pasture on my FIL's place is loose sandy-loam soil. The hogs are able to root very deep into it and we see exactly that kind of damage there. My property is red clay and iron ore....so usually only the top soil is disturbed (6"-8" deep).

Hogs can/will dig that deep for roots/tubers (especially nut grass)... but we see this type damage most often after a recent rain which leads me to believe they are rooting for worms and grubs.

One spot in particular they hit over and over...is at the bottom of a hill. They will root at that spot and slightly up the hill. It isn't only roots they after because they will revisit the area for several nights after the area has been completely denuded.

Once it dries out...they move on.

But anyplace where soft soil exists...pigs can simply dig deeper (quickly and efficiently) so they DO. Once they encounter packed soil or rocky soil the return on their effort isn't worth it.

So when you hear of folks (me and others) describing an area as looking like a 'bomb field', now you know what we mean. That kind of damage is time consuming and difficult to repair. All vegetation that has had the roots exposed... dies and must be replanted. IF you simply allow it regrow....you end up with undesirable 'weeds' (which love to sprout up out of disturbed soil).

This is why hogs are a 'shoot on sight' animal for most land owners.

Next time we experience rootings like pictured here, I will drive my Land Cruiser into one the deeper holes to give everyone some idea the scope of the damage they can cause.

And this is why I like forums and getting to share insights and queries with folks who have different experiences. I have NEVER seen anything like this before. There is the occasional deep hole, but no systematic series of deep holes. I have seen plenty of pastures ripped to shreds by hogs, destructive over a much wider area, but only superficially deep by comparison.

So it is really interesting to note (for me anyway) that hog damage can vary quite in bit and that we may not all be seeing the same sort of damage going on.

In this field where we were, we may have walked through more of these craters and there may have been more in the field, but we didn't spend a lot of time assessing the damage. We took a few snaps and then were moving on to try to find hogs elsewhere. The drizzle had trailed off when we got to this pasture, but it was raining again before we left. It was a wet, cold, but fun night!

OK, so I guess they're digging for food, not a mineral lick for their delicate palettes! I still shoot every single one of them I see, on sight, with extreme prejudice; and I keep my hog traps baited and ready to accept guests. The darned things pollute the stock tanks and creeks, are devastating to ground nesting birds and mammals, and even in our thin soil the damage they do lasts for years if I don't get out and groom it a bit. NO QUARTER FOR FERAL HOGS!

I haven't seen anything quite like the 'bomb craters' your photo shows, even thought the soil where I hunt is quite soft and sandy. In fact, we have to be careful where we drive. I've gotten stuck more than once by veering off of the usual driving track into soft sand. That's some impressive digging by the hogs.

More often, we get the typical rooting disturbance that can easily go more than a foot deep, but not the well-defined 'craters' you observed.

Here's what I find. This is a worse than average example. The landowner has only a small tractor, and he had to hire a neighbor to come in and smooth out this pasture after the hogs tore it up. Just another reason we shoot them on sight.

Typical on my dad's pasture lease in east texas and it can happen quick. can wreck a field in 1 day and takes tractor work to repair or it is very rough/long day on shredder and bailing is next to impossible if not repaired. Agree, shoot on site even if watching deer!

Quick is right. Overnight in fact (with a group of large, mature hogs). Exactly what they are after might vary from one location to the next. But what we see is EXACTLY like what DNS experienced.

The rootings literally look like foxholes with dirt piled up around the perimeter.

If you've ever witnessed large hogs rooting in soft soil then you know how quickly they can dig a hole. The topsoil (with vegetation) gets hurled into the air 3' high in big chunks and then soil is rooted out in front of them. Amazing what they can move using just their snouts.

Tremendous strength in their necks and shoulders. They can easily move large logs, rocks and even stumps (with a little work).

Is that the hole story?

Wow

What the heck...

I saw that in one property I had the luck to hunt one weekend in Oklahoma. There were pecans with nothing dug around them and then an open pasture closer to the red river which was so bad I could barely drive my 4x4 truck through, deep and continuous root hole after root hole. Don't know what they were after in that pasture, but whatever it was didn't entice them in the pecan stand.

Hogs are property destroyers for sure. Seems when they need to dig they will, but when they don't need to dig they won't (meaning there was a reason they dug for sure, it wasn't just for chits and grins). Hunting over a lush wheat field I have never seen a root hole. But adjacent to the wheat field there were signs of rooting. Opportunistic property destroyers.

I like the idea of going after worms or grubs, seems to make sense given the recent rain and then when predation occurs they will run deep and the hogs will go after them...could be some sort of root or something too though, no way to know unless you shoot and cut open belly to see whats in it. Maybe next time.

I've witnessed this in different areas that I trap. Thought about it some. Weird how some areas pigs graze like cattle and others they destroy.

You like to get your hands dirty, did you open the stomach to see contents? Colder weather driving food source deeper in ground, maybe...grubs and worms and such.

Hogs have literally torn my food plot up. I can't imagine what they're after.

Necropsying is good stuff when there is time. Once in a while, I will cut open the stomach to see what is inside and check to see if the females are pregnant. We were hunting in the rain/trying to be out between showers, but that wasn't always the case. We didn't even take time for a good group photo on this one, as the rain started again, LOL.

Except for Corn and certain other grains (or acorns/mast) the bulk of what you would find....would be unrecognizable (mostly vegetation). Not really worth the mess and effort.

With respect to worms and grubs, yes....both will move deeper into the soil as the weather gets cooler. Grubs (mostly June-bug larvae) move deeper and go dormant most places. But I have found them near the surface under rotting logs and areas where matter was naturally composting as late as January.

These were found underneath large 'rounds' of oak that I had cut for firewood earlier in the year. The rounds were all standing on end in a pasture. One day...I noticed that most of them had been knocked over. Curious...I went over to investigate and found hog tracks and signs of rooting around them. So I turned over some of the remaining 'rounds' and found these large 'grubs' under every one of them. Several under each 'round'. The hogs had discovered the food source and turned over the rounds to get to them.





Earthworms are going to be where the soil is moist and a tolerable temperature. They like about 60°-80° F for temperature. But of more importance is moisture.

Earthworms breathe in air/oxygen and expel Carbon Dioxide just like we do, but they don't have lungs. So in order to process the oxygen (through their skin) it must be dissolved in the mucous on the outside of their body. Hence the need to always be moist. They will be at whatever depth affords them moisture and relative warmth. That could be anything from right on the surface to several feet deep.

In any case, hogs love both worms and grubs and both are usually found in concentrations, so when easily accessible, hogs will take advantage of that.

Another consideration is soft soil is just easier to dig in. Even if hogs are not targeting a specific food source...if it requires no more effort to dig deeper in soft soil than compacted soil then it behooves them to do so. The more dirt they move... the more apt they are to find something, though I think they already have a good idea of what IS and ISN'T there.

Also, if hogs are not pressured...they will spend more time in an area feeding.

IF they feel comfortable in a spot, they will literally spend hours there.

Lots of things that 'could' account for deep rootings, but the above are some of my thoughts on it.

That could be it!

You can see the damage from google maps satellite view in my area

Truck can be used to judge size of rooting areas


Another field

That is absolutely insane! Oh and the size of those grub worms...DANG!

We have an area that has some very deep holes from the hogs. They seem to concentrate in that area and we typically see hogs every time we sit in the tower blind that is within 150 yards. They have been rooting this area up for the last 2-3 years. I almost lost a tractor tire in one of the holes last month when shredding the roads. I filled most of them in over time but will try and see if I can snap a picture next time I am out there.

I have had people question why I shoot on sight. This is why!! I have to fix this kind of stuff on the farm. It takes time away from other nessesary work to fix the problem. Shooting the culprits is quicker and a lot more enjoyable.