I have a corral trap with a rooter door it also has the trip wire feature but I have tried it and I'm not a big fan. When I leave the door open hogs will go in and everything else but when I close it for them to push it open they just stare at it since it's closed. They havnt figured out they can push it. I have been thinking about propping it open with a stick about half way and when their back hits the bottom of door the stick falls but I'm not sure. Do y'all have any suggestions?

We had a spring activated double door with stick holding them apart with a trip wire tied out about 20 feet. We placed the corn to the side of trip wire so that the first ones in wouldn't trip. After a bunch got in with them scramble to get food it would get tripped.
When start shooting them some could jump a 5 ft. High fence, this was a round trap.

I was trying to trap them with a trip wire for 6 months and caught 8 but that was all at one time . That's why I'm not a fan.

But you said in your initial post that when you leave the door open hogs will go in. It would seem that you could prop the door open and string a remote trigger near the back of the trap to catch them. No?

^^^^^^^^^^ Exactly how I do it (pen trap).

One of the methods I have used successfully is tying a small hog log to the inside of the trap gate. I leave the gate open only about 2 feet, and scatter food around the inside of the trap. The hogs come in, vacuum up the loose corn very quickly and then start to prowl around for more, which then takes them to the little hog log. As they work it, they push the the gate by themselves. I've caught 30-40 hogs this way in the last 6 months.

Scatter corn all around the door....inside and out....if they can see the corn on the inside they will push to get to it....

research is showing the rooter doors are not as effective as once thought. a lot of people are going back to the guillotine door

I had one ran it for a year was a pain in the butt... coon kept triggering it.
my setup

ran a rope to the gate and would run it to the back of the pen.. at the back of the pen I had two steel bars ran about 14 in apart about 6 -8 in out of the ground and I used a 15 in 1x4 to go across the two bars and the rope tied to the 1x4 and I would put the corn all around the trigger. you would have to pull the rope tight to set it and once it got bumped the door would slam shut.


pain in the butt gave up on the setup due to the coons. I did catch about 15 hogs over time but wasn't worth the hassle

thought about running the kidney shape trap with no gate you just leave a opening where they can squeeze in but can get out

Over the years, I've tried just about every trap out there.

I'm still a big fan of the side swing door/gate above most others(except remote triggered doors)


On the root door traps, all the ones that I've had have had 3 doors about 14" wide on each one with about an inch or so of space between each door on the front.

What we did to get the hogs in was to take a short stick from the area and prop open one of the doors, just enough that it was about 2 or 3 inches farther back than the other two.

I never put any corn outside the trap, but did have a bad habit of pouring a little bit of strawberry soda on a small square of carpet and put it in the back of the trap.


They'll figure it out.

By the by, for what it's worth, I don't have any traps with guillotine or root doors anymore. I took the tools out and changed them all over to side swing gates.

yes aggie prop it open with a stick. catch all i want