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Thread: Pavlov's Hog - Part 1
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17-05-2018, 22:20 #1
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Pavlov's Hog - Part 1
I thought I’d write a bit about my first successful bushpig hunt. For starters, I decided to do this the hard way, which is to find a hunter friendly farm, buy a feeder and trail camera, find a promising spot for the camera and feeding, sort out the lighting and then do all the baiting, driving back and forth to check cameras, restock feeders etc.
In the end, by the time I shot a bushpig, my budget looked a bit like this:
Trail camera R2200
Feeder R1100
Hunting light R800
Bucket and rope R200
50kg mielies R150
25kg Molassess R180
Maize meal 50kg R140
Petrol 300km R400
Total R5170
Total time 2-3 working days
So that little piggy cost over R5000, plus I still promised to share the meat in exchange for hunting on the farm, and do all the slaughter and skinning myself. In retrospect, paying an outfitter R5K to hunt a pig is not a bad deal, if you can just rock up, shoot the pig, and then collect the meat from the butcher.
I must thank all the people on the forum for their very useful advice. If I can add my 5c on this.
Trail cam – This was the most expensive item and surprisingly, not an essential item if you have some bush skills. If there are a lot of pigs rooting around under the feeder, signs like logs moved around, spoor and dung, then you don’t need a camera to tell you that they are regularly at the spot. If you do go the cam route, which is part of the fun in the first place, as you get to see exactly what goes on all night, and you get to record the habits of everything under the feeder. For this, all you need is a basic camera with night vision IR capabilities that can tell you what was there and on what days and time they came. A cheap black and white low res cam will work fine. If it goes for a walk you will be less upset. I didn’t go for one with a Sim MMS function, as its not worth paying an extra grand for this option, plus the SIM card and airtime. Plus, your wife will klap you if it goes off at 3am every minute for an hour taking pictures of a branch swaying in a wind storm. If you’re a techno geek with money to burn this might be your thing. For settings, simple low res picture mode with infrequent pictures is the way to go. I initially setup to take every 30 seconds, and on the first day I landed up with 850 pictures of baboons having a family picnic under the feeder. Every minute or two is more than enough. Also use the lowest resolution setting, you don’t want to spend an hour downloading your pics that you will just need a glimpse of to get an ID. Another consideration with buying a trail cam, is the trigger time, which is the time it takes from camera activation to taking the actual picture. This can be slow on some models, so for instance if an animal or person walks past, you just get a blank picture or a hind leg leaving the frame. You will only see anything if it stops in front of the camera to feed for a while. A few video clips might be fun to see how they feed, how much they move about, and how easily it would be to shoot one on the move.
Feeder - I ordered one of those Moultrie feeders from an online shop in CT. It has a clock with a timer function. You can set it to go off up to three times for any length of time over a 24h period. I attached this to a 25L bucket and a sturdy rope. (its hard work pulling 20kg of mielies on a rope up a tree). I set the timer to go off at 8pm. Enough time for it to get nice and dark before it goes off and early enough that you don’t have to spend all night waiting. The timer ran for 8 seconds, enough to scatter about ½ Kg of maize pips. I used the biggest tree I could find to hoist the feeder, and high enough to discourage the baboons from having a go at it. Other feeding included pest baboons dumped by the farmer, leftovers from dinner, grape skins, salmon heads and a variation of a recipe I found on this forum. Take a 10L bucket and add 1 cup molasses, 4L of water, 1 sachet of yeast and 10 cups of crushed maize. There should be just enough liquid to cover the maize. Let it ferment for a week to get a nice sweet yeasty smell and taste.
Feeding area – On the farm there is a stream with a narrow strip of forest along it. On the edge of the forest strip runs a road with an embankment on the other side with a fence and paddock leading up the hill. I placed the feeder in a huge tree on the edge of the forest along the road. That way the pigs went just 2-3 meters out of the bush to get to the feed. It is also a convenience thing that I could drive to the feeder with 50kg bags of maize in the car and recover the imagined pigs easily. The problem was finding a suitable shooting spot, as the embankment was too close to the feeding pigs. The slightest shift in body or crinkle of grass or cloths would spook them. On the farm valley winds tend to shift all the scent down the valley so that they flow like water. My concern was that if the pigs follow the scent up the valley, they are likely to smell you and the feed, as all air movement flows downhill. To avoid this I figured I needed to be a distance away, so I went about 50m up into the paddock above, at 45 degrees to the prevailing wind. If you lie down and clear a path of all vegetation in line of sight, you can just see a narrow strip of the area under the feeder. The difficulty in seeing under the feeder is offset by the difficulty they have in seeing you. At least, that was my thinking at the time. I initially dumped a lot of logs and branches under the feeder, and buried some of the scraps, to try keep the pigs at the feeder for longer. This worked well, but they soon shifted every single log out the way to get at the mielies more easily – almost like farming, so they could graze off a clear flat piece of ground (clever). Before you want to hunt, scatter some light branches around, or throw some of the feed into some bushes so that the pigs make a noise when they arrive and start feeding. I know of a farmer that put a piece of corrugated iron down to alert him that they were there. The klank klank klank of their feet would wake him and he’d jump out with his shot gun and torch and nail them.
Lighting- the forums are packed with contradictory information about what will scare the pigs away, and what works, from basic duct tape a MagLite to your stock to some fancy remote control lights with dimmer switches, lights with motion detectors, connected to solar panels etc. In the end I used what I had. A green light LED torch that clips above the scope. At this point I thought it worth mentioning that you need to practice with your night set up. What I found the first time I used the torch was that the reflection off the back of the silencer was so bright I couldn’t see a thing. I then added a tube (duct tape and a roll of sandpaper) which narrowed the beam to miss the top of the barrel.
Rifle- I used what I had, a 7x64 with my standard load consisting of a 120g Barnes TTSX that I use for everything. My only concern was that 2950ft/sec is a bit fast to shoot something from 50m away, but more about that later…
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18-05-2018, 05:39 #2
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Re: Pavlov's Hog - Part 1
Good writeup, looking forward to the next part!
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18-05-2018, 06:16 #3
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Re: Pavlov's Hog - Part 1
Same, liking where this is going!
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18-05-2018, 06:43 #4
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Re: Pavlov's Hog - Part 1
Great write! Trailcam gives you a rough idea when they are feeding. This works well if you are pressed for time and don't want to freeze your backside of waiting for them the whole night. I also found it much cheeper to use dead calfs/cows/donkeys etc. Pigs don't eat the rotting meat but loves the white maggots. (Enjoy skinning a pig that was in the stomach of a rotting carcass)
Can't wait for your next post. Goosbump stuff!
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18-05-2018, 06:48 #5
Re: Pavlov's Hog - Part 1
Nice info. Thanks for the write up.
Recent studies show that 1 out of every 3 liberals are just as dumb as the other 2
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18-05-2018, 07:54 #6
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Re: Pavlov's Hog - Part 1
Nice write up.
Ja,i have shot lots of pigs and your costing sounds about right.
It is far more satisfying to do things your way than it is to shoot a pig with a pro. set up.
Only problem is that you become addicted to doing this,and it requires a fair investment of cash but mostly time.
One thing...i have found it vital to start off a new feeding spot with a whole carcass of a horse,donkey or cow.
Anothe aspect is the total unpredictabillity of the pigs. As soon as you think you have them figured,they will change tactics eg. refuse to stand for any light,no matter how subtle.....come into bait across 300m of open ground from the 'wrong' direction ect.
Anyhow,enjoy. The meat is also very good.
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18-05-2018, 10:40 #7
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Re: Pavlov's Hog - Part 1
Keep writing!
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20-05-2018, 13:35 #8
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Re: Pavlov's Hog - Part 1
Great write up, thanks.
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20-05-2018, 15:20 #9
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Re: Pavlov's Hog - Part 1
Great reading. Nice to read someones first hand experience
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