Hog Behavior..

[Rancho Loco]

I went out to my bud's place yesterday after work - he's been having the same four small pigs come down to his pasture every afternoon, and we've decided to let them grow up a bit. This is risky, because of a depredation hunter and his dogs on the neighboring property, and a hungry neighbor on the other side.

But a few days ago he saw some larger ones come by, and by the looks of the craps in the pasture, he's got some mammer jammers showing up too.

Anyhoo - we set up like we always do on the edge of the pasture, and just like clockwork the four small ones show up way before last light. We agreed to let them live, waiting to see if the big ones showed...When they didn't, we decided to do some experiments.

As normal - their noses were working fine - any wind at our backs would freeze them, ball them up, and move them quickly into the brush. But then they would come back, and start feeding towards us.

Standing still and silent, with our backs to a machinery barn, the hogs without any hesitation fed to with 20 feet of us before one became uneasy, grunted and pulled them all back a ways.

We then moved out into the open and let them feed back to us again. Out in the open, again silent and still, the pigs fed quite close to us before picking us up and pulling back about a hundred yards.

And then with movement, the pigs would only pick us up quite close in.

And then we started experimenting with noise as they fed back again - whispering growing louder to normal talking voice. To my suprise, they were very sensitive to our voices. They would pick up our voices, alarm, and then move back, at a distant much farther than I would have thought. More than once they would get concerned and pull back at 50 yards when we were in a soft conversation voice - far from normal tone.
We sayed out pretty late, way past shooting time to just watch and experiment.

Conclusion - Granted, these were young hogs, but they do have some pressure out there..But I found: as always, their sniffers work as advertised, and their eyes are way on the opposite side of the scale at completely useless.

But their ears suprised me, and I'll be working on a much quieter level from now on.

 

[forkehornreggie]

Rancho, thanks for you observations. I think that is really cool to be close to wild animals and see what you can get away with. I've had this happen in a tree stand for deer. We would just screw around and stand up, etc. Thanks for the post! Oh yeah---good luck with the bigger hogs.

 

[beastslayer]

Rancho,

Thanks for the info. It will be helpful in "strategizing" in the next hog-hunting trip.

As to the hogs hearing capabilities, those big ears must have been put their for some purpose. I just don't know the domestic ones which evolutionarily are dropping.

 

[Rick]

Years ago, out on Turkey Flat Road near Parkfield, we'd have hogs walk right around our trucks with us standing outside them, if there was no movement or noise. I am talking 3 or 4 feet from us, but no large males. Then one would get a whiff of us and they'd all take off!

My brother caught a baby one time, about the size of a large chihuahua. Then he had a helluva time getting it back to its mama! He had an even harder time getting the smell out of shirt, that he had wrapped the piglet in.

 

[One Track]

Thank you Dr. Rancho. Good work. Will you be submitting your program for a grant? Imagine that huh. You might give it a try. Might end up with $100,000 working capital for hog studies. Crazier things have happened.

 

[BirdDawg]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div>

whispering growing louder to normal talking voice[/b]

whispering in a sows ear? still trying to get that date huh?

watching hogs is more fun than shooting them......don't have to mess with skinnin them.....sounds like you had a good time.

 

[Mel Carter]

That's way to cool, sounds like you had fun.

 

[BGH831]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (beastslayer @ Oct 9 2006, 03:26 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div>

As to the hogs hearing capabilities, those big ears must have been put their for some purpose. I just don't know the domestic ones which evolutionarily are dropping.[/b]

They are grab handles for dogs.

 

[beastslayer]