Boar hunting training set-up?

Heidi

Okay, Shigeru and Gen, @TheWalrus @shishiinu I've been thinking that I might buy some boar piglets and set up some kind of training pen on my in-laws' property. It would have to be fairly short term, as they're an hour drive from me and I would be caring for them myself, so that's a lot of driving back and forth. So, I'm wondering how one goes about setting up a boar training pen and trains dogs on boars.

I'm not really sure I can pull this off yet, but it seems like everything should be fine. There's already corral there that was meant for loading sheep onto a truck, so I think with minimal touch-ups, it could hold hogs fairly easily. Maybe some hog panels and straw bales. It's got a freeze-proof hydrant right there for water. When I lived there, I was working on making it into a great big dog yard, but then the donkey moved in. But now donkey has his own pen closer to the house.

Anyone who wants to visit me and pitch in is welcome, assuming this goes ahead! If someone who's done this before *cough* Gen *cough* wants to show up, that's awesome, too! I'm also still hoping I can make it down to the training day in SoCal, but that's looking more and more like it won't work.

shishiinu

Right on! Well its not too difficult to start up a training pen. There's lots of info on the web on how to set one up so there's lots of info out there to fall back on. Few things you'll need to know when building, hogs dig a lot! So number one rule is to make the pen dig proof. I did this by burying stainless steel mesh and rocks and burying the fence into the ground.

The height should be 5 feet or higher, hogs jump and can jump really high. My last pen was about 4 feet high and the boar was able to clear it to get to the avocado tree. You always want to have a separate pen for training. Since hogs can become extremely stressed when encountering dogs, always have a pen where the hogs can sleep, eat, wallow, and de stress.

Care is surprisingly easy, feed is fairly cheap and I usually fed my hogs two to three times a day of mixture of oat, table scraps, acorns, and corn. Water is the key item to have at all time. Hogs do not have sweat glands so they have to cool down in wallows and cake them selves with mud.

Hope this helps, once you get hogs and they are at the 50 to 80lb range you can start gradually putting a dog to enforce the baying part of the training. The first and most important thing is to teach a pup or dog to bark as much as it can and keep its distance from the hog. Once the dog's comfort level goes up, the dog should gradually get closer to the hog.

shibamistress

Out of curiosity, what happens after the dog has learned to bay the pig? Is there more training involved? And do just slaughter the pig for dinner then, or what?

It's all very interesting to me! I love pork, but I do think I would have to have someone else come in and slaughter the pig...that would be hard for me.

shishiinu

Well once the dog is comfortable with the penn training, the dogs really need to get experience chasing hogs out in the wild. Wild pork act much differently then penned pork so you have to some how take the dog out of the confines and comfort of the penn.

For me, the pigs got much bigger then what the enclosure could handle so I slaughtered them when they reached a prime weight. Oh and the meat was 200 times better then store purchase pork.

Heidi

Yeah, I was hoping to do this pen thing and then go to an outfitter that does penned hunts. Much bigger enclosure, obviously to simulate wild conditions. Or maybe I could set my hog loose in the countryside, lol. Anyway, the outfitter is who I plan to buy the piggy from. I've also talked to them about buying hides and pig parts. Then we'll head out to the real wild. I keep reading that there are wild hogs in Alberta, they're just hard to find because people are tight-lipped about where they are. Well, I'LLC figure it out. Apparently, there are some in Saskatchewan, too

shishiinu

Sounds like you have a great plan. Wish I could go out there with my dogs. Best thing to do is spend lots of days out looking for signs of pigs (rootings, rubs, wallows) and map out areas you have found pigs signs. What I do is take a forest service map and mark every area that I have found signs and then set up trail cams in the locations with the freshest signs. Pigs are really hard to pattern since they travel so much in search for food. Once you have some what figured out where the hogs are bedded, you can take a some what started dog and put the dog down wind of the hogs and let the dog hunt.

souggy

Talk to the people who don't agree with game farms. They will tell you where the boars are.

The ones who are in favour of penned hunts don't want to tell the SRD they ****ed up by accidentally releasing a regulated potential invasive into the wild. There are a lot of resident hunters who want to see the hogs exterminated and game farms banned.

Heidi

From what I read, the game farm in Mayerthorpe had its fences slashed open by someone who thought it would be a good idea to have wild boar in the area. I haven't heard of any other boar escapes other than the one in Mayerthorpe, but there's also a game farm with boar in Caroline, so I wouldn't be surprised if there are some in that area. Leader, Saskatchewan is another place I heard has boar, which is closer to me than Mayerthorpe, even though it's in a different province. There are some slight inconveniences with hunting in a different province, but no biggie, especially since boar aren't technically game animals. The boar in Saskatchewan also come from a game farm which had escapees.

I not-so-secretly want the boar to spread so I can hunt them, and I know a lot of hunters feel that way, but the farmers, not so much. If history has taught us anything about boar, though, it's that they don't go away very easily. They seem to be spreading over the whole continent. I mean, if they're thriving in northern Alberta, Texas, and everywhere in between, where can't they thrive?

Gen, I should buy a started kishu from you. That would be awesome. Oh, and do you use those protective vests for your dogs? It doesn't seem as necessary for a bay dog as a catch dog, but still seem like a good idea.

souggy

They are in Manitoba too.

Apparently they are just as hard to track as their counterparts in Europe in comparison to the ones down South.

Heidi

Well, that game farm in Mayerthorpe where they came from boasts of having pure European boar, not mixed with domestic boar like the ones in Texas. The real deal! Actually, all I hear about is that these are NOT for novice hunters. I guess I'll just have to keep trying until I'm not a novice hunter anymore, lol.

shishiinu

The whole high fenced hunting thing is a really touchy subject. It takes out the whole fair chase out of hunting although I have seen some high fenced hunting where its really challenging. But at the same time, its a great place to take a first time hunter or even disabled hunters. It has its place in the world of hunting in one way or another.

I do have vests for the dogs but I mostly use it for Taro since he will catch pigs weather they are 80lbs or 200lbs so its a nice piece of equipment to have for him. If your using small sized hogs that do not have 3inch cutters, you'll be fine without the vest although its great to use during training so that the dog can get used to the vest.

Hogs are really adaptible to almost every type of terrain minus a sand desert. Eurasian hogs are more suited to the european climate with plenty of water. They also do not populate as fast as feral hogs (eurasian/domestic hybrids) since a average young count of about 3 to 5 depending on conditions. The feral swine usually have much larger number of young usually anywhere from 5 to 12.

The more time you spend hunting them, the more experience you will build. It took me a LONG time before I even was able to get game with Riki so for the first few years expect to not kill any thing. But the most important thing is stay safe and have lots of fun!

Heidi

Yeah, I imagine this endeavor will take a very, very long time. The more I inquire about the whereabouts of the boar, the more I realize that I have to make connections with the right people and make friends with lots of landowners. They don't like to spread the word that there are boar on their property, because then they'd have hoards of hunters on their property every weekend messing things up. I have some connections with farmers, so I will see if I can network with as many people as possible and find out a place where I can even do this.

This whole boar pen thing will probably be on the back burner until I get the appropriate connections. I don't mind using game farms for training purposes, but that's not my end goal. If there's no wild population, then I'm not going to get into it. The other option, I suppose, is traveling long distances to where they're plentiful, but that's not feasible for me and likely will not be for many, many years. I don't have the time or money to do that much traveling right now.

Or, I'll just wait until the boar take over the whole province. General opinion is that it's too late to stop the spread now.

souggy

To be fair, I wouldn't mind going hogging with a Finnish Spitz during the off-seasons where neither bears, cougars, lynxes nor ducks or grouses are desirable with a Russian bloodline. I have been told dogs can differentiate what game to hunt based on the rifle their masters choose to bring.

souggy

I think your biggest problem is whether or not there is a wild population. I found out much of the population within an hour drive of Edmonton and Calgary has been decimated due to the bounties. There is supposed to be a few around Sundre though.

Heidi

Yeah, I'm putting the word out there with all the farmers I know, so we can only hope.

shishiinu

Farmers are the best source since hogs will gravitate toward farmland for easy food. If there's a farmer with hogs, most likely they will allow you to hunt them since its costly to repair damages from hogs.

If you find a land owner with hog problem and get permission to hunt, don't tell anyone else.