I recently went to a seminar put on by Texas A&m Agriculture Extension. Some of the things that I took away from the class was that cage trapping feral hogs is not an event but a process. The Texas folks usually bait a site for a month before putting out a trap. Once they have an approximate number of hogs they place a trap big enough to catch all hogs at one time. The theory is that all hogs outside of the trap would be educated once the trap was set off. The instructor stated that a feral hog is right behind the dog and dolphin as far as order of intelligence.I had a little trouble believing that but my experience with hogs is limited. Once you have your trap in place you bait with the door wired in the open position and continue to monitor with trail camera until all hogs are coming into the trap. Once all hogs are coming in at one time you then set and hope to catch most of them. He stated that the tricky part is that the first hog in usually trips the line before all hogs are in the trap. The best remedy he found was to bury a trip stick in the ground with a very desirable bait underneath. The hogs come in and a hog must "root up" the trip stick in order for the trap door to go off. Once you trapped most you could snare any trap wary hogs on the trails leading to the trap. Here is my question, I dont have a lot of money to spend on a hog trap nor do I have the welding skills to build one. So I bought some 10' 1/8" thick washer lock snares and was able to get three hogs for the freezer. Snares in Louisiana are legal but I asked a friend of mine who is a game enforcement agent about accidentally catching a deer. He stated that it would be up to the discretion of the game enforcement agent and the conditions in which the deer was found. As in was the deer found by the agent, did someone else find the deer in the snare, or did the trapper make an good faith effort and call the game enforcement agents themselves. I don't know about you all but I would hate leave a situation like this up to the discretion of a game enforcement agent. Any response would be great but I would love to her from someone in Louisiana who has experience snaring hogs. Also, Kirk I am not trying to sound like a know it all because I know little but I thought the instructor gave some sound advice on what to do and not to do. Also, I really like the wide door on your trap but it seems like hogs might could climb out on the slight corners where the trap door connects to the circular portion of the fence. I don't know, you probably have already caught hogs in this trap.
