After killing a few hog I just got off the phone with a Biologist for Henry County. We will be meeting next week to see about trap placement and getting these things off our land. They have ran the deer out this season.
Need or want any help before the traps come out? I know 3-4 guys along with myself that could be up there this weekend. Just an offer
You’d be better off to let the trapper take care of them. Hunters won’t kill enough to make a dent. I know that’s not the answer hunters want to hear, but it’s true. There’s a KYAfield Podcast about hogs that’s worth a listen. I believe they said something along the lines that hunters are good at conserving and managing wildlife, but make poor exterminators. Our great-great-great grandfathers were better at extermination.
Right. We are staying off the property until we meet to install traps so we don't alert the hogs and run them off. When my daughter shot the one the other week there was two other adults with the 10-15 piglets that came in. We definitely want them all trapped.
Spent a couple days with a professional trapper this summer. Hunted at night, ran traps during the day - definitely didn't get enough sleep. To paraphrase his words "if you want some fun, hunt them. If you want them gone, trap them". All sport hunting does is turns them nocturnal and moves them around. Unfortunate for us, but true. A well set trap will catch mutiple pigs, and one of the circle/drop traps will catch almost the entire sounder.
I think most folks would sing a different tune about hunting feral hogs if they actually owned the property the hogs were raising hell on. It’s the same with farmers who experience crop damage from deer. Hunters can’t or won’t keep enough killed to suit said farmer.
After they are trapped I'm assuming they euthanize them, is the meat still any good and or what do they do with them
From my understanding, you can’t transport feral hogs in KY, so they are killed inside the pen. The meat would still be good. I don’t know this to be a fact, but I assume the landowner would get an opportunity to utilize the meat.
From my experience with wild boar, if you get a sow the meat is great, if you get a boar throw it in the garbage. Me and a friend went hog hunting years ago. my boar was nasty and his sow was like pork from Krogers.
Trapped pig meat is just lean pork, not lean as deer, but not fat as farm raised. Up to about 150 pounds it is all good, after that, especially the boars, get rank. The trapper I ran with said he had a never ending list of folks that would take meat, even rank old boars. If he had a bang up week of 20+ pigs he was calling around and could get the meat gone quick. I grew up raising pigs, so when I hunted with him I told him exactly what type of pig I would shoot, and then did (50-75 pound shoat). One of the guys in camp wanted him a trophy boar with big tusks. He got it, and you could smell it as soon as he brought it in - pig version of billy goat stink that gets on everything.
They said they are killed on site and we can have the meat. After the kill they take measurements and blood samples and then they are done with them.
We ate the sow my daughter shot and it was real good. We fried the tenderloins and ground the rest for breakfast sausage.