Basics to Hunting Wild Feral Hogs.

When you start thinking of feral hog hunting where do you start? For anyone just starting out hog hunting ( like myself ) probably the best place to start is at your local wildlife agency. Asking the right questions can give you alot of useful information to getting you headed in the right direction. For most of us just starting out probably the first and most important thing to hog hunting is locating a place with a substantial group of hogs on it. Most wildlife agencies can tell you all the management areas with feral hog populations on them and may even give you a list of farms or ranches. Almost every management area is open to hog hunting during the deer hunting season only and ranchers charge a fee to hunt game on their ranch so if you can, try to locate a farm that borders a management area with feral hogs and ask the owner for permission to hunt wild feral hogs on their farm. If you get permission to hunt hogs ask the owner if he can tell you any places he's seen hogs consistently or if there's any fields that the hogs are destroying. Once you've located a farm to hunt and created a good repoor with the owner your next objective should be to look over the farm and decide from the signs and sightings the best place to ambush the hogs. Decide whether you want to hunt from a stand, a blind or just standing by a large tree. If your going to be using tree stands be sure to get permission to use them and never attach them to the trees with nails or any other damaging hardware and the same goes for using screw-in steps, get permission first. Now that your set-up is complete, make sure you acquire all the proper licenses for hunting wild feral hogs. Here in Tennessee, law requires a hunting license and a big game license (either gun, archery or muzzle loader depending on the weapon you hunt with. ). Once you've taken a feral hog it's not mandatory to check it in at a checking station here in Tennessee however, the wildlife agency would appreciate notification of the location and quantity of hogs taken. Okay now, you've taken your first feral hog so now what? Do you take it to a local processor or do you process it yourself? This would depend on you and your abilities, do you have the right equipment? Do you have the knowledge to properly process and package the hog you've taken? Is there someone that can guide you through the process and help you? If you have any doubt about processing your hog properly then perhaps it would be best for you to carry your hog to a processor until you can gain the knowledge to do it yourself. Well your now armed with some of the basics for getting started into wild feral hog hunting so get out there and help thin out the feral hog population and enjoy yourself while in the woods and fields this year and good luck.

Hunting--Work and Woodland Escape

This weekend I was busy replacing a floor for a client in his bathroom. The floor had been replaced before by someone who didn't know what they were doing.They had used all different kinds of scrap lumber to rebuild the floor and had three different heights when he finish which caused the linoleum to crack and the toilet to rock every direction you moved. Being this house was built in the 1930's I knew this was going to be a chore that would take some time to replace. The existing floor had to be removed along with the toilet,a new floor system put in due to wood rot,the plumbing had to be worked on some to bring the toilet flange down on top of the new floor, then replace the linoleum and toilet along with the trim. The floor is dropping causing a swag which is going to have to be raised. All in all I finally finished the job Sunday evening around 2:00 p.m. then was supposed to help my dad with a roof leak which got put off till next weekend. All in all the floor replacement took me approximately 13 1/2 hours and will end up costing the client $425.00 for his new floor.You can make some decent money doing this kind of work but sometimes it can cause alot of headaches and get into some serious problems if you don't know what your doing or look at the entire job before you give an estimate for the work. I love doing this kind of work but sometimes I get myself in a pickle with my time scheduling.Figuring your time for a job is probably the most important factors of your estimate which is where so many people lose their profit. If the job takes longer then estimated then there goes their profit. Of course my theory is to figure extra time then give the client a refund when possible which makes the client happy with the work they received and you get call-backs for more work. Today I have to go work on my dad's roof,work on another clients roof( just extend the overhang for gutters to be installed which I'll be doing),and of course collect from the floor replacement job then anything else I can work into my schedule before the end of the daylight hours. So much work and so little time to do it all in with little help makes me tired just thinking about it but I have a cure it's called woodland escape. When I get worn out from my work I try to head for the woods to regroup if only for a couple of hours then I'm ready for another long haul of construction work again. Good thing hunting season is close then I can do so real relaxing even though my time in the woods will be limited.I probably have to bring in some help to get the work caught up by next weekend(Sept. 22,07) which is the first day of bow hunting season but if that's what it takes then so be it cause I've planned Sept. 22, 07 as my day to do nothing but hunt those dang ole smelly deer even if it kills me. I do my best to keep everybody posted on my hunting adventures and the outcome of each one but with all the work coming in right now looks like I'm going to be really busy this fall and may not get to go as much as I'd like too. The first deer is usually to fill the tag(which I figure pays for the tag) then after that it's all mainly trophy hunting for a nice rack to put on the wall. Even though the meat does cut down on the grocery bill, it's all about being in the woods just relaxing for me.