This season I had a mission to fill my freezers by stalking hogs to help train for ultra-marathons. It’s been a major success so far, as I harvested 31 pigs in 18 days of hunting on R. K. Yancey Wildlife Management Area and Bayou Cocodrie National Wildlife Refuge. I used small game-sized tungsten ammo in my single shot and over/under 12-gauge shotguns for 25 of the pigs, my new crossbow for three and my recurve bows for the remaining three.
As they say in hunting, once the shooting stops, the fun ends and the work begins. If you’ve ever field-dressed a deer, you’ll have a rough estimation of how to do a hog, but there are a few key differences in quartering a pig for the processor.
Kaput is the brand name of a toxicant approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for use as a lethal bait for feral hogs. According to the label, the active ingredient in Kaput is Warfarin, an anticoagulant medication sold under the brand name Coumadin. Not much information, I know, but enough for us to understand that Kaput kills when consumed by hogs AND wildlife.
Wade Seago’s pet Schnauzer, Cruiser, is nothing if not brave.
Wade Seago’s pet Schnauzer, Cruiser, is nothing if not brave.
Wade Seago’s pet Schnauzer, Cruiser, is nothing if not brave.
Rich Shiree has packed a lot of living in his 43 years. All he seemed to do was hunt hogs and deer, 12 months a year, with a totally independent lifestyle.
The big guy sat down fluidly and easily in the ground blind with his Weatherby Accumark Custom rifle over his knees.
For his 275 pounds, he was nimble, if not spry.
Though we struggled through a down deer season on the Delta, it’s not in our nature to give up, so we chased after the hogs relentlessly and finally scored on a few big ones late in March.
Many hunters get “buck fever” — the adrenaline-induced, heart-pounding excitement experienced when you finally see that monster buck you’ve been after all season.
But what about “hog fever?”
I harvest many hogs each season on Louisiana public land, but ever since I became self-taught on how to backpack deboned pork out of the woods, I never think about shooting a smaller pig: I always go for the biggest one to get the most meat.
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