North Australian FISH FINDER forums

g'day thought I'd just share a photo of my very first pig. A nicely sized boar, probably about 70kg taken from 80m with a remminton 30-06 .

Now are boars usually solitary or will the stick with the groups? It was taken at 8am, are males more active in the morning or evening?

Cheers for any responses and any advice would be appreciated.

not a bad boar mate, we have alot of salt pans around were i am and we normally see mobs of pigs running around together especially in the mornings but they stick pretty close to the tree line. no dogs?

Na no dogs, we walked 13k over the weekend just scouting areas. Sometimes with dogs it seems to easy, I don't have dogs but I swear they would pick up scents every 2 seconds

swamp_donkey89 wrote:Na no dogs, we walked 13k over the weekend just scouting areas. Sometimes with dogs it seems to easy, I don't have dogs but I swear they would pick up scents every 2 seconds

Wish it was that easy mate...well done with ya boar. I usally do 3x25km walks with my dogs a week and get pigs every 2-3 trips. I am hunting where there is alot of pressure tho but it's good fun. Just got to watch the croc's...Ended up in the water with a 2.5m saltie last tuesday night with my dog and a boar bout the same size as yours in a dam no bigger than a 50m pool. I will never go without a rifle or solo again.

Nice , well done

Now are boars usually solitary or will the stick with the groups? It was taken at 8am, are males more active in the morning or evening?

In areas that have some sort of hunting pressure all pigs (boars even more so) will become virtually nocturnal. Hence why you seem to catch some out early morning, after their working the night shift so to speak Early evening likewise can be good especially on overcast days as the pigs believe it is later than what it it actually is.
In remote areas you will see pigs at any time, in hotter times of year always patrol water sources in the afternoon, they must go to water regularly to drink and cool off as they have no sweat glands so have problems keeping cool. Same as in the dry season, as the water sources dry up, you need to follow the receding water to find pigs.
Once the wet season gets here they scatter hell west and crooked if I can borrow Tom Cole's phrase. Personally I found it quite easy to find pigs in the wet season..you just reverse the principle. Pigs dont like to bed down in mud during the wet season so they generally seek higher ground,thicker scrub. Remember there is no shortage of water in the wet...

Older boars (about 5yrs onwards) get cranky towards other pigs (not unlike some of us old bastards ) and usually tend to live alone or in small groups consiisting of other boars of similar age. The younger boars will tend to stick with the mob until a certain age. All will however seek out the mobs come mating time to look for sows in heat

Hope this helps somewhat

Cheers for any responses and any advice would be appreciated.


Nice boar especially for your first..

fishfanatic wrote:In areas that have some sort of hunting pressure all pigs (boars even more so) will become virtually nocturnal. Hence why you seem to catch some out early morning, after their working the night shift so to speak

Interesting what you've said here. I'm mostly a sambar deer man these days but I've done a little pig hunting on a property in northern NSW that receives quite a bit of hunting pressure. It was a large cropping farm with a few sheep. You wouldn't find the pigs on the crops until night time, so they could be spotlighted but I always had trouble seeing a black pig against a black background. The trick was to go out at first light. At this time the pigs would be making their way back en masse from the crops to the bush along the river where they'd spend the day. If we saw a mob, we knew where they'd be heading (the river), so it would just be a case of getting ahead of them, stopping the cruiser directly in front of them, we'd each jump out from the driver's and passenger's sides and the mob would usually peel off and go past on each side. As they did that we'd and knock a few over, then jump in the cruiser, go go go and get ahead of the rest of the mob and do it again until they got to the safety of the bush. First time pig hunting and I'd knocked 7 over before breakfast.

During the day I might stalk along the creek. Sometimes you'd find family groups having a cooling swim in the river, but these were the times you'd also find the solitary boars. Usually they'd be sleeping in the lignum and come charging out and you'd have to be quick to get a shot at them. The biggest I got was one that charged out and then jumped into the river, giving me plenty of time to line him up as he trotted out the other side.

Then by late afternoon you'd see them wandering around a bit more. Still in the relative of safety of the bush, but moving around a bit and not just sleeping and hiding. So they were fairly easy to locate and get the drop on with their grunting and all. Ended up massacring so many it became a bit depressing, especially finding the ophaned hungry piglets the next day wandering around looking for their mum......

Yeah hunting up here is a little different to hunting harvested crop country !!!
Never really felt bad about eradicating a feral pest my self !!
They cause more damage than good on the crops down there so I wouldn't be sympathetic towards any ferals !

Yeah I wish I could massacre like that but nothing yet. I'll try everything to get em so early morning and late Arvo is the prime time to try so hats what I'm going to do