I went hunting Monday and Tuesday for hogs. I hunted free ranging hogs in the Hill Country. My trip was put off for a couple of weeks due to all the rain(20+ inches. We were on the plateau. Where the ground wasn't rock it was damp, if not squishy. Several roads in the valleys were closed due to flooding and signs of flooding were every where He hunts appx 500 acers and has at least 5 full time feeders and regularly corns the roads. I was the first hunter since Labor Day. I didn't see any pigs! I was hunting by myself, but the land owner, said that I was only the third 'group' in over three years that hadn't seen a pig over 2 days. I believe him and the references I had checked bear this out. Any opinions/ideas? capt david

I have a horse ranch that I take care of the hogs when they come, but ....they only come after a good rain when the ground is soft. Then they tear the place up and stay until the ground firms up and move back to their usual haunts I suppose. During that time I am sure someone is wondering where all their hogs went.
So, soft ground allows them to feed in places they normally can't so they will probably be back soon.

I normally have pigs in several areas around feeders, but this past couple weeks I think someone shut the door on them. Not a hog to be seen and no new tracks. I put out an average of 1,000 lbs of corn every month and not a hog to be had right now. I guess maybe some of the acorns have started falling or something, but they don't want my corn at all right now. You might be experiencing some of the same phenomena.

I think rain, especially a lot of rain, disperses the hogs.

If a lot of rain "disperses" hogs, what does that mean? We got a huge amount of rain over several counties. The hogs did not leave those counties. So where do hogs disperse to?

I don't think they disperse so much as change some of their locations relative to resources. Most hogs are not going to remain in heavily flooded areas as they will lose access to flooded foods. They will concentrate in areas where there will be more resources. I know that after all the rains we got, it was only a couple of days before they starting aggressively tearing up the leaf litter in my woods, undoubted going after the mold/fungus growth and all the insects driven to the surface that are under the leaf litter but above the waterlogged ground. Depending on what you have available, you may find that the rains don't so much disperse the hogs as much as it ends up concentrating them on your land.

Wild hogs have their favorite haunts (lairs) to be sure. However, pressured hogs will travel significant distances at the first hint of trouble. I once got into a sounder of hogs, shot a couple and hit one in the ham. The next evening, as I was headed home, I saw the sounder (including my wounded hog) crossing the road 15 miles away. Sometimes they are reluctant to leave an area, and you can get on them several times before they relocate to safer spaces, but not very often.

Normally hogs will settle in and around the creek/river bottoms, where no pressure exists (I refer to these areas as hidey holes) or a secluded area just off of a water feature where they can get the prevailing wind. If heavy rains or flood stage water chases the hogs out of these areas, they usually locate to higher ground where they can find the same level of security as before. If pressure forces them away, they will stay where they relocated to until pressure or lack of food (or both) forces them to relocate again.

Every landowner (well most anyway) believes that if they see hogs on their place, they are always there. This is seldom true, unless the land area is vast, the food/water abundant, and the foot/predator traffic is low. Unlike people, hogs do not recognize property boundaries. Hope this information helps!