EAST TEXAS HOG DOGGERS FORUM

What do ya'll do with your caught hogs (kill, sell, release)?  The guys I hunt with usually tie them alive and try to come up with a little dog food money.  I always make sure I have a freezer full of meat.  I have been on hunts where the consensus was to let them go.  Personally, I have a hard time letting anything I pursue go no matter if it has fins, feathers, or hide.  I don't like activities where there is not an objective result.  In my area there is no shortage of hogs.  They have been shot, trapped, and dogged around here for quiet a few years and there are now more than ever before.  Does anybody out there think that there is a correlation between releasing caught hogs and the increased population of runners?         

I say cut and release ever boar hog you catch. Take what sows and guilts you want for meat or trainer hogs. If you dont want them released on the property your own relocate them somewhere else.

i can see your thinkin and what your gettin at but honestly what i think causes runners is the guys with the dogs who don't know what their doin my opinion... and i do all 3 catch release , kill , sale

I think that there are several people on here that can prove that releasing hogs doesnt really effect running hogs.  I would say killing em and letting em lay could make them run too.  "Larry stopped and they stabbed him, I am gonna keep running next time!" haha

My personal opinion is getting on big groups of hogs creates runners. That is for the ones that get away. I do all three too kill,sell,&release! But who knows some run & some stay!

I do it all, but as far as knowing what makes a hog run or bay, I think you can take the same hog one day and he will set up if hes in the right situation, and you can find him another day and him run because of the mood he is in, how many dogs is on him and where you found him at...JMO

I really didn't mean to start a runners thread.  Mainly just wondering what folks do with their hogs, and their thought process behind what they do.

i release just about everything i catch, i may keep a big barr a year to make sausage...Highwater i could agree with you more i think its all in what the hog wants to do, if he wants to run or if he wants to stand there and bay...i dont think its from releasing them or bad dogs some hogs just wont bay

I hunt to catch the biggest hogs in the woods. Dont get me wrong I like to catch numbers but what really keeps me going back is the thought of catching a monster. On the places that we have hunted for several years I dont see a decline in the numbers of hogs but I can see a difference in the number of big hogs. One way to make hogs grow bigger and faster is by cutting them. So the idea of turning barr hogs loose is not for numbers but for better hogs in the woods.

For me, it's landowners what the landowners want that rules.  So they end up people food, dog food or buzzard food but none of em walk away. 

Same here, usually the landowners choice comes first but I like to recycle them into the enviroment.

alot easyer to handle dead!!!  " larry stopped and they stabed him "   lolol.. tell the dogs to turn the hogs around ? its hard for me to run with a dog hangn from my boys !! :o

We usally gun hunt and when we kill a hog it depends on the distance in the brush it's in, the size,the sex , trophy head/cutters,thickness of the brush ,health of the hog ,and here were hunting cuz sum farmers want 2 get rid of hog so bad that they start posining crops 2 kill them , time of day along with what the landowners want but ifwe do takem there not gana go 2 waste

In hawaii on kauai I know of very few would release we hunt for food now more than ever      every week fokes stop buy for smoke meat    The runners here the hounds train them to run    this is common belief hear

All hogs we catch are killed. None leave the field still breathing LOL. Almost all of them are dumped in the farmers "hog pit" as he calls it for buzzard and yote food. I will keep sows 100 pounds are less. I used to give them to folks untill they got to the point they wanted me to butcher it all the way(cut and wrapped). I have found it to be hard and getting harder to give the hogs away.

kill a few for freezer. put a few in my pen. mostly turn em back loose somewhere else

We kill every hog we catch, or take em back home to the pen for later killing or puppy training or dog food. We do whatever the landowner wants us to do which usually means killing hogs or taking them away. NEVER RELEASING. we have a big family so the meat is never wasted. We definately dont believe in spending time pursuing something to just release it in the end unless we really had to.

Stick em and leave them their. I want to start skinning them all or releaing them but its such a pain in the rear.

One way or another, it ain't going to reproduce on that property when I'm done with it ;)

eat sows, pigs for pups, feed the boars to the locals.

Cut, mark and release to hunt another day.

same here

Where we hunt in south GA, the landowners want all of them killed. So that's what we do and we've gotten pretty good at it on the places we hunt fairly often. We have about 12-15 in the crew most days, we use standers and they kill most of the hogs. Our dogs will catch most any hog they can handle but the guys I hunt with just about all have hounds that are open on track so we have a long race pretty often, but it's enjoyable to listen to and we usually get the hog before it's over. I don't know for sure what creates a runner in a hog but I've seen the hogs start to run a lot more in the years since we started hunting down there. I too believe it has a lot to do with the individual hog, since hogs are so smart, that means that they have more diverse personalities than say deer or other large mammals. We process all the hogs we kill and divide the meat up among the crew and the landowners if they want any. We have access to a walk-in cooler which is a HUGE benefit to us, lets us gut and hang all the hogs until the night before we go home, we cut them up and get what meat we want, it works out great for us that way.

Kill em all and never release any. I believe it has almost everything to do with the current explosion of "runners".

RIP LARRY!!! Sorry Matt I had too!!!

 We pack out what we want and leave the rest lay for the other critters

All of the above.

It depends on were I am hunting. Runners? :-X

We mostly leave them laying take what we want, take some alive but i'm not letting one go. The famers want them GONE.