3 Nights Hunting - Hog/Coyote Calling, Sounders, Loners

Brian Shaffer

Hog Hunter
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I got together with my regular buddy Dave and our friends Bryan and Brad that I have had the pleasure of hunting with several times in the past. We attempted a LOT of hunting. We saw a lot of hogs in many locations, often not on properties we could hunt. Always playing the wind, we still managed to get busted by sound (road gravel, crunchy grass) and by cattle, although cattle provided us with excellent cover on one hunt. More than once we managed to call hogs to us that were not on our property. We also called hogs several times where they could not have cared less and didn't respond at all. As frequently happens when hog calling, we called in coyotes. It was a blast of a weekend. We hunted an average of 12 hours from dusk to dawn and Bryan and Brad took home 2 coolers of meat.


 

der Teufel

Livin' the Dream …
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Just some plain 'ol good stuff!
Nice going all around.

Keep After 'Em!
 

Ratdog68

LSB Official Story Teller
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Outstanding! That gushing leaper was fun to watch! Fine trio of vids, thanks.
 

Homebrewer

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Great hog kills on vid Brian. Appears you guys had a great time putting pigs in the dirt.
The land owners will want your group killin' pigs full time!
 

Whosure

LSB Member
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Flip, flop and fly...Love the videos Brian
 

Jake

Bandera, Texas
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Awesome! Trigger happy baby, love it!
 

Middy53

LSB Member
Have you noticed any correlation between the types of pigs in a sounder and the probability of them coming to a call. In our limited experience we have had better than 80% success on lone boars coming to piglet distress calls. However the big groups of sows with piglets are mixed and it seems like the ones over 15 will rarely come in.
 

Brian Shaffer

Hog Hunter
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Good question. Typically, the hog that comes in first is a female (based on my limited number of experiences). Whether or not it is the "lead" female, I don't know. It certainly isn't always the largest female. It is just the first female.

Sounders tend to be populated and dominated by females and their offspring up until which time males leave or are driven out and sometimes females leave and start their own sounders. You usually don't have too many larger boars in a sounder unless you have females in heat. That is because the females will drive off the boars that are a danger to the piglets and will sometimes kill the piglets.

Size of sounder does not seem to matter, but sort of as seen, if there are fences, many or most of the hogs will hold off at a fence. I have seen this several times. The problem when I have seen it is that it isn't a cross fence within a property, but a property line fence where we cannot shoot through the fence. It is the pits to be waiting, like in the video, for the hogs to cross the fence, hogs well within range and often hogs that are readily visible, but they are protected by the invisible force of the property line. So I can say that the whole sounder came in those cases, one from over 900 yards away and in the video above, over 400 yards away.

I have no doubt that individual groups have their own personalities as do the individuals. That results vary is not a surprise or particularly condemning of calling. I had a guy write and tell me that he has had great success with boar fighting sounds and bringing in sounders. That has never worked for me like that, but if it works for him, then great!
 

Middy53

LSB Member
I wish we had a chart where we could say if you see X type or number of hogs to play sound A or B. That would cut down on a lot of the long stalks.
 

Guess

Hog Zombie
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To answer the question about the group coming. The first sow to respond is generally the "lead Sow" They are not always the biggest as Brian states, they are always the most aggressive. In some some cases there are 2 sows that share this position, they are usually sisters or mother and daughter. While this is hard to prove in the wild without DNA testing, that is what I've observed in penned feral hogs. They share the maternal responsibilities.
One very cool thing I've filmed while tinkering with new toys. I spotted 2 sows with very young piglets in an open field mid day. I called to them, The lead sow responded immediately. Since this was a test I had no intention of shooting either of them right away. So I let the lead sow come on in, which she did aggressively. The second sow took both litters of pigs with her to safety and then came to the calling. Both sows came in saw me in plain clothing and winded me numerous times and still responded to the call 7 times total on video. For contractual reasons I can't share the video yet, but it is coming eventually. very cool to watch.

Now after watching Brian's videos in the first video the hogs that wouldn't cross the fence. I've discovered hogs don't like to "jump through hoops" meaning if there are too many obstacles hogs will give up. It looked to me like that fence had extra wires, tight maybe, possibly looking for an easy trail. Also hogs have territorial boundaries in some cases. It is very unusual to see 2 separate matriarchal groups join together many variables to consider. They did respond very well to begin with, pretty cool! DANG FENCE, Good ethics my friend.

the second video where it appears that hogs are looking for other hogs. They are catching scent of something they don't like hence the heads up. Prime example of the wind playing tricks, this happens a lot near variations in the landscape or drifting thermals. I've learned more about this in the since August than I have in nearly 40 years of hunting thanks to a very cool wind detector. When hogs are looking visually for other hogs they lower their heads nearly to the ground as if looking for bait and bob up and down like a deer that has spotted something she doesn't like. If you watch my videos you will see both instances. Boars responding to my Boar Specific sounds head bob a lot!

Brian in instances like the 3rd video when hogs seem oblivious to calling keep changing the sounds and volume. If they don't respond right away you have an advantage over me, you are a patient man, Turn the sound off and stay quiet for a few minutes, then play a new sound quietly at first and increase in volume, repeat until your run out of things to throw at them. In most cases when they have been called the night before, nothing helps. But you have nothing to lose by throwing the whole bag of tricks at them.

Good videos and good teaching tools.
 

Bakester

LSB Active Member
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Brian, Curious what speaker your using and how far away you place it from your shooting location?
 

Brian Shaffer

Hog Hunter
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B, I was using a Foxpro Shockwave.

How far away from my place is my shooting location? My normal hunting area is an hour from home. The place above was two hours, but I don't hunt over there too much anymore.
 

Guess

Hog Zombie
SUS VENATOR CLUB
To make something clear, Brian was allowed testing opportunities before I signed a contract with convergent. The sounds are no longer available for other call companies other than as an app. The app will work with any bluetooth speaker.
 

Brian Shaffer

Hog Hunter
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LoneStarBoars Supporter
To make something clear, Brian was allowed testing opportunities before I signed a contract with convergent. The sounds are no longer available for other call companies other than as an app. The app will work with any bluetooth speaker.

That's true. Right place at right time and I got to do some early stage testing. Now called "Wild Hog Pro" from Convergent Hunting Solutions from the Play Store for Android. I assume it is the same for iPhone. I want to say it was something like $5 or $7 when I installed it on my phone...very cost effective given the utility.

FYI, G, the bizarre dinosaur-sounding call has NEVER produced a positive result with hogs or predators. I have tried it several times on the off chance that it might work. You didn't think it would. I had my doubts. Well, it doesn't, LOL.
 
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