Staking out fresh pears could mean fresh pork!
For many years, I had access to hunt and fish on a couple hundred acres situated about three-quarters of a mile from my home. The place is an outdoor paradise, rough country with plenty of water and an ample supply of wild hogs I dearly love to hunt, butcher and turn into tasty meals.
I lost access to my hog hunting paradise a year ago, but fortunately one of my great friends has a place with even more porkers where I now hunt. I figured I had hunted my last close to home porkers, but recent developments might just prove otherwise.
This past week, while mowing on the few acres where we live, I noticed some serious wild hog rooting along the edge of a 50-yard strip of woods and brush I leave for wildlife habitat. On closer inspection, I discovered where hogs had roto tilled the ground inside the wooded area, their rootings extended outside the heavy cover onto the edge of the yard.
Being a serious hog hunter and having a working knowledge of wild hog patterns, I knew there was some reason the wild porkers had traveled from the remote area they called home to my place. We have neighbors within a few hundred yards of our small acreage, and it’s just not wild enough for wild porkers. At least that’s what I’ve thought the two decades we’ve lived here. When I pulled our area up on Google Earth, I discovered the wet weather creek that traverses the boundary of our place leads through heavy cover and ultimately to a couple of stock tanks that I never knew existed. From the stock tanks to the woods I used to hunt is a heavily wooded area and only a few hundred yards away. Obviously, the hogs had found something that drew them to my strip of habitat and a safe route to get there. But what?
After much head scratching and following hog signs, I found the answer to the riddle. We have a pear tree not far from the edge of the woods and squirrels have been dislodging the pears, leaving many on the ground. I’m sure the smell of a rotting pear can be detected a long way by hogs. In the fall, I am amazed at how hogs instantly locate isolated persimmon trees when they begin to drop their fruit. They will come from a great distance to eat the fruit, immediately after it hits the ground.
On close inspection, I noticed not one rotting pear was on the ground. A closer look divulged hog tracks, tracks that appear to have been made by eater size hogs weighing somewhere around 75 pounds. Hogs are smart, they wait till the squirrels pick the pears during the daylight hours and them drop by in the cool of the evening to scarf them up!