Caught Some Pigs, and a Little About Coyotes

Good morning friends, how are you today? We hope this finds everyone doing just fine, and you guys are gearing up for another weekend! Deb and I are hanging in there!

First off this morning, Deb and I would like to thank our good friend Gary. Gary was kind enough to put Deb on the prayer list at his church quite a while back. Just recently, Gary had contacted us in regards to a possible problem he may be facing.

Well, Deb and I spoke with Gary, and offered what little advice we could share, and we asked all you guys to pray for Gary as well. By the way, thank you all for your prayers, in Deb and Gary’s behalf.

Anyway, that scoundrel sent Deb a thank you card, signed by everyone in his Sunday School class. Thank you Gary, and your entire Sunday School class for doing this! Words cannot express our appreciation for such a kind a caring thought. God Bless ya’ll!

Well, I’ve spoken before that from time to time here at our place the dern hogs show up every now and then. There’s a pretty good chunk in the back of our place that is thousands of acres of State land. Across the road in front of us is much of the same.

With this being the case, it provides us with wild game that drift back and forth. This is one of the reasons Deb and I like it here so much. You guys have seen our videos of the turkeys that come up to the house daily, and we have deer and a ton of little critters around all the time. We don’t always see them, but they’re there regardless.

Well, with all the good, there has to be a little bad mixed in, just like anything else in life. The bad in this case being wild hogs and coyotes. The coyotes are really beginning to be pretty rampant down here, and at the ranches my brother has had to hire trappers to help to at least keep their population in check.

I’ve posted this video on here before, but I’ll share it again today. I’m speaking with Ralph, the trapper who’s helping my brother Shane with the coyotes. He’s State certified, and very knowledgeable in their habits, breeding, lifestyles, and the damager they’re inflicting on our native wildlife here in Florida.

There’s even case of coyotes in larger towns, Tampa comes to mind, where they have literally attacked small dogs, on their leashes while being walked by their owners.

I know the coyotes are becoming a larger and larger problem nationwide, and I’m told we can never eradicate them, but hopefully keep their numbers down to at least a manageable number.

They are very, very smart, and are known to hang out around deer and not mess with them…just being around, getting the deer get used to them being around, yet causing no trouble. This lets the deer assume they’re not threatening.

Then the minute the doe’s drop their babies, the coyotes come in and feed on the fawns. Pretty slick if you ask me. They’ve been documented on our beaches, digging up and eating the sea turtle eggs. They get into our baby turkeys, and other small game.

Here on our place we’ve got where we hear them pretty often, and see them on rare occasions, and when we do, they’re gone before I can get the gun out the truck to shoot em.

Well, let’s check out the video, and hear an expert speak about their influence on our wildlife. Ralph’s a great guy, and I appreciate him tasking the time to spend with me and discuss the dern things.

The other problem we have in regards to our wildlife is the wild hogs, or pigs. Down here, we have the ole black, piney wood rooter. The population of these things have just exploded. It’s not unusual to see them even in yards in subdivisions.

These things can ruin a place in a very short period of time. Here at our place they’ll come in from time to time, and get off in the pastures, rootin up everything in sight.

I’ve kinda got a little soft-hearted in my getting on up some in years now, and I really don’t like to shoot much of anything anymore, but a dern pig I will. If they stay off in the scrub or swamp areas, or rarely venture off into the pasture, I’ll give a free pass most times. But once they start destroying pasture…I’ll bust em.

We built a trap/pen combo awhile back, and caught some the first night it was set. But, we’d left a dern stump in the pen, and I knew better, but said, “Aw, to heck with it.” Well, by my doing so, every pig we caught got up on the stump and cleared the sides of the pen….gone!

So, we dug the stump out, reset the pen door, and baited it back up. Nothing…day after day, nothing! They eventually drifted back off, but NEVER came through that pen door again. We’d cut palmetto fronds, stuck them in the pen sides to camo it up, but still nothing.

I’ll say this about a pig…they’re not stupid. Once they’d been trapped, they’d have nothing else to do with the pen…corn on the ground or not.

Well, this past week, we baited it again. This after months of not baiting it up. It was November when they got out.

But, like I say, they will drift off and you not see them for months at a time, then one dasy, they’re out there again.

We caught a boar, and a sow with piglets. The piglets though are so small, that they can run right through the bull panel sides of the pen walls. Little fellers I mean! They can come in a get a drink of Mama’s milk, hang out and visit a spell, then skedaddle when they see us approaching.

We built the pen in two sections. The whole pen is 16’ x 32’, but we put a divider down the middle with a gate, making two 16’ x 16’ pens. This allows us to catch pigs one night, and then run them into the back section the following morning.

We reset the trap once again, this time with caught pigs in the back pen, and the front part re-baited. By having pigs in the back pen, this helps draw other pigs into the trap. We did this last night and caught another, sow.

So we’ve caught three pigs the last couple nights. We’ve fed em up and keep them watered well, but we’ll wait another couple nights prior to baitin it up again.

Here’s a couple videos of the pig pen and its inhabitants! LOL!

You guys have a great day, and God Bless! Deb says to keep a smile on your face, and one in your heart!

Dub and Deb

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3 Responses to Caught Some Pigs, and a Little About Coyotes

  1. JohnMinn says:

    Dealing with some of the wildlife is a bit of a problem. We have some really outstanding “long range” shooters in the area and they are very helpful with the coyote problem. I do wish they would visit more often, but they know that once you shoot a couple of coyotes in an area the coyotes will abandon the area and “look for” more friendly areas.

    Speaking of the coyote types, I have a suggestion. With the systematic inflation of the currency, now the prices of foodstuffs is reflecting that inflation.

    I would STRONGLY advise everyone to get busy and plant a “Victory” garden.
    I now have a 70 X 140 garden. Which is protected by an extra heavy duty Bull Dozer electric fencer with 3 strands of very HOT wire. I will guarantee you don’t want to touch that fence. The first strand is 8″ off the ground, the second is at 18″ and the third is at 50″. The bottom strand is “a pain in the neck”, and I have to spray the grass under that wire with an 18″ wide band of roundup. I really don’t like pesticides of herbicides around my foodstuffs, but without that lower wire the critters will relieve you of the work of harvesting a crop.

    For those who live in a smaller grounds area, I would recommend a pyramid garden. There are many plans for those available on the internet.

    The cost of a garden is a wonderful hedge against inflation, and “Home Grown” just seems to taste ever so much better than “store bought”. Ardy makes the finest tasting “tomato juice” I have ever tasted. She uses other garden produce to give it that special flavor.

    A big garden is a big burden for us old folks, so we have some younger ones involved in that garden.

  2. Sandra says:

    Gee Guys. Coyotes and wild hawgs! Good ole predator wild dogs eating hawgs gone wild and disruptive to Nature. Balance of Nature disrupted for too many years.
    Answer: Kill the dawgs and sell the hides (still countries willing to buy) kill the hawgs
    salt them down and smoke them. Yeah that’s the ticket D&D another project. Smokehouse and tannery. Just kiddin’. But, that’s exactly what the peoples of this great nation did to survive when they came here. Hello JohnMinn, you have helped me greatly with my health issues and you don’t even know it. Thank you.

  3. Sandra says:

    Apologies to all for my post about settlers of this Nation ( Europeans). We cannot forget the Native American population on these shores that helped many to survive the sometimes harshness of this land. Sorry.

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