Has anyone had any success calling hogs with electronic or mouth blown calls?
Not hogs but I did call in a big hawk or owl one night. I had the speakers mounted on the wheeler and was jamming to, "piglet in distress". A dark shadow went swooping by a couple times and I figured I better shut it down before I got a face full of claws. Another night, I'm pretty sure my snoring called in a little boar.
Yes it works but it depends on the sound you use and the sounder. I watched all of Glen's videos to try and figure out how to stop scaring some of the groups off. The below video was taken four minutes after shooting the lead sow out of this group, they all came back. We have also had good luck on big boars with piglet distress calls.Has anyone had any success calling hogs with electronic or mouth blown calls?
Hearing the thumps of rounds hitting their buddies scares them off pretty badMy experience is nothing scares off a hog better than noise. Even whispering to a buddy, " there's a hog out there" and the hog will exit.
I bumped something in the blind one time and the hog left. Quiet is key. Switching off the rifle safety doesn't seem to bother a hog like it does a deer. Nothing calls a hog better than a pail of corn or cracked corn. I have seen sow urine work but not always.
I kill most of my hogs while hunting alone, not sure why.
Thanks for sharing the vast experience you have. Really helpfulThanks for the kind words guys. Calling hogs is just like calling anything else there are times when you can do nothing wrong and times when you can do nothing right. It is just like calling any animal. I've had nearly every species of animal coming on a string and for no apparent reason turn and leave. I had nearly every species flee like they just saw a grizzly. I will say this I've called just about every kind of animal Texas has to offer and my success rate with hogs is ten fold over all other species even coyotes and I've been calling them over 36 years. For those that are having hogs run away, I'm sure on occasion this will happen for no explainable reason. That has not been my experience, there is usually a logical explanation other than natural hog sounds spooking them. Guys calling the same small properties over and over start to have negative experiences and logically so. If you've taken the lead sow from a group of hogs and expect an aggressive response a week later, they will in most cases not respond positively. It takes a few weeks for the lead sow to be replaced. Wind and thermals are the number one reason for failure. I've been tinkering with the most accurate wind and thermal detector I've ever used. I'm learning some interesting things about light and variable winds. I've seen the wind go directly behind me for a few yards, rise and then fall in front of me. All my night hunting friends have had hogs that were "upwind" of them spook for no apparent reason thinking the wind was perfect, it wasn't! I have noticed adolescent boars either come running like idiots or seem to ignore calling altogether. One thing that I'm learning tinkering with boar specific sounds is that we may be calling too loud at times. Sometimes with really aggressive animals it doesn't matter how loud you get, but there have been several occasions lately where I saw hogs some distance off and either didn't have my speaker or didn't have time to set it up and was able to call hogs with just the phone and the last one I called from 75 yards away at 1/3 volume with just the phone. Calling any species is not an exact science and there are many variables, so the learning curve is a long one. I learn something new every year. All I can say is, if you can't shoot them where they are or if you are not seeing any hogs, what do you have to lose by calling? I'm seeing the same "hog experts chime in time after time that a bag of corn is $6.50, well first off I want to know where they are getting there corn, because I'm paying $8 a bag. Second off The app is $5.99 one time and if you buy the call{speaker} $250ish. I can guarantee, I can call more hogs in a year with that set up than one bag of corn. In Reality if you are baiting hogs year round at a bag a week at $6.50 a bag that is $338 + gas+ time spent watching paint dry. I will pit calling for 15 minutes per stand against corn any day for my $$.
All of this said calling is a tool nothing more, Bait is a tool, thermals/night vision are tools, dogs are tools, trapping is a tool. I enjoy most methods of hunting hogs. Sitting for hours watching bait is not one of them and yet I do it from time to time. The point is all the tools in the world do not replace experience and skill. Thermals come as close as you're going to get and even that's not 100%. Correct me if I'm wrong.....