Spring and summer are pretty slow in the hunting department. Not much is in season. One of the big exceptions is pigs. As an invasive species, it is generally open season year round on wild pigs in the US.My friend and former student, John Durant, emailed me today to ask for advice about a pig hunt that he was contemplating. John took one of my two day deer classes a few years ago and that got me thinking about the experience of approaching pig hunting from the perspective of a deer hunter.
First, I'm going to look at some of the ways that pig hunting is similar to deer hunting.
In both cases we are dealing with an animal that may be either noctural or diurnal, as circumstances warrant. Pigs and deer share many food sources. Grass, acorns, and many crops. They both have very keen senses of smell. Your deer rifle or bow will work just as well on pigs as it does on deer and there is no need to invest in a lot of new equipment.
Even the butchering can be pretty similar. If you know how to gut and quarter a deer then you can handle a typical pig. The meat will taste fine if you process it simply with nothing more than a knife, but if you want to learn how to produce pork chops and bacon and the other cuts that require more technique then there are plenty of resources. Storey's 'Guide to Raising Pigs' includes a chapter on butchering. Hank Shaw's 'Hunt, Gather, Cook' includes a chapter on wild pig charcuterie.
Like deer hunting, you can either hunt from an elevated stand, from a ground blind, or while stalking on foot.
Your basic hunting and woodcraft skills will carry over very well. Tracking, stalking, working the wind. If you are good at hunting deer then you will probably be successful very quickly when you start hunting pigs.
Hunting pigs isn't the exact same thing as hunting deer, though. While deer and pigs share many food sources there are also a lot of foods that one can exploit while the other cannot. Pigs are not tall enough to reach a lot of the same browse that deer do. Pigs are more readily carnivorous when opportunities present themselves (although deer will sometimes eat meat. I have personally witnessed and filmed this). Pigs also eat a lot of tubers, insects and mushrooms that deer have no interest in.
As good as a deer's nose is, a pig's sense of smell is even better. The pig's sight and hearing aren't nearly as good as a deer's. If the wind is in your favor then you can usually sneak right up behind a pig feeding in the middle of a field without it noticing you until you are within a few dozen yards. That rarely works with deer.
Pigs are much more intelligent than deer. On par with domestic dogs. They respond more rationally to hunting pressure than deer do. When deer are heavily hunted they will change their schedules and behave more warily but they remain in their core home range. A pig will often respond to hunting pressure by deciding to run as far as ten miles away and not come back for weeks. Pigs can be a lot harder to pattern than deer, with the exception of situations where there are extremely high densities of pigs.
The dangers of hunting swine are frequently over-stated. There is a slight but real element of danger in hunting pigs that is not present when hunting deer. If you go pig hunting every week for a few years then you will eventually be charged but the odds of this happening on any particular outing are low. Usually the pigs are going to try to run away from you. They are only likely to attack when cornered or wounded.
A spooked pig behaves somewhat differently from a deer. Whitetails tend to run downhill towards cover when frightened. Mule deer run straight uphill. Pigs usually head straight for the closest thick cover available without apparent preference for whether this is uphill or downhill. Note that if you have positioned yourself directly between the pigs and the nearest thick cover then the animals might, by definition, run straight towards you after you fire the first shot. This can be desirable. A target running towards you keeps getting bigger and easier to hit.
Shot placement is a bit different. Head shots are more practical on a pig than on a deer, owing to the shorter neck and less independent movement of the head. A pig's heart is located farther forward in the upper chest cavity than the hearts of any species of deer I am aware of. It is well-guarded from the side by the heavy bone of the humerus.
Laws and regulations governing the hunting of these animals are usually different. Some states allow pigs to be hunted at night, while prohibiting nocturnal deer hunting. Sometimes baiting will be allowed for pigs and not for deer. Pigs may be trapped while deer may not be. Sometimes there will be restrictions on things like magazine capacity and type of weapon used that apply to deer and not pigs. Usually there is no bag limit on the number of pigs that may be taken. All of this varies widely from one state to another so look at your local rules very carefully.
These difference between hunting pigs versus deer with firearms are relatively minor. If you've been successful as a deer hunter then you will probably be successful as a pig hunter.
[Photo copyright 2011, 2012 by Jackson Landers]
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