If you're having a tough time pig hunting, try these 5 proven tips to better your chances at seeing more wild pigs. If you're new to pig hunting, it may be beneficial for you to read our complete guide to hog hunting; once you're successful in harvesting wild pigs you can then read our tips on how to skin a wild hog!

5 Proven Pig Hunting Tips

1. Wild Pigs Go to Water

The first place to look on your next pig hunt is near water sources. Wild pigs like to wallow in the mud because it cools their bodies. They do not have sweat glands, so water and wet mud is their primary source of cooling. This is true regardless of the time of the year, especially when pig hunting in Texas where the winters are warmer than in northern states. 

2. Identify Natural Food Sources for Pig Hunting

If you're hunting new land, it's best to identify natural food sources for wild pigs. This can be any open farms fields, clover, or other areas with greenery. Wild pigs are opportunistic omnivores, which means they eat a wide assortment of plant matter but will also eat small mammals, birds, insects, worms, etc.

3. Prepare Before Your Pig Hunt

Preparation is the key to success. Pig hunting is no exception; when preparing your land for a future pig hunting trip, then it's best to start feeding corn near a natural water source on your property. Even if it's a dried up creek, wild pigs will commonly travel from property to property through creek bottoms. 

If you're looking for fast results, baiting may be an option for quickly bringing in wild pigs. Here are some great pig hunting baits that have been proven to work by a variety of pig hunting outfitters. 

4. Wild Pigs Are More Active at Night 

The best time to hunt wild pigs is at night. They are more active and more willing to come out of cover and into open fields, making it easier to spot them. The easiest method for hunting pigs at night is to utilize lights designed for hog hunting to illuminate them, without spooking them. 

The best hog hunting lights must be the appropriate color, or wavelength, to prevent from spooking wild pigs. They also must have an adjustable intensity depending on how far away the wild pigs are. Here are some key features to the best hog hunting lights. 

Some night hunters prefer night vision or thermal optics over lights, but after talking to several pig hunting outfitters, we found that quality night hunting lights are far more effective than low-end night vision and thermal. The reason being that low quality night vision and thermal have problems with freezing pixels, while a light gives hunters camouflage and is more budget friendly. They recommended going with quality hog hunting lights, or saving up the money to spend $5,000+ on a quality thermal scope. 

5. Look for Signs

When pigs come through an area, they will leave obvious signs. The most common one is large craters in the ground where they root sometimes as deep as 3 ft to get as much plant matter as possible out of the soil. If you see these signs on the property that you're pig hunting, look around for a trail and follow the trail to see where they come and where they're going.

A trapper once taught me to follow the pig trails to find where they enter and where they leave the property. If there is fencing, check the fence for hair to see where they go through the fence. Most farmers and ranches have stranded barbed wire fence, which does a pretty good job at holding onto a couple wild pig hairs when they push through it or climb under it. This is how he determined where to set his traps, but it can be beneficial for you when determining where you should start pig hunting. 

The easiest way to illuminate pigs without alerting your presence is to utilize a purpose-built light that falls within their color blind range, has adjustable intensity for short and long range distances, and is capable of broadcasting enough illumination to light up an entire sounder of pigs at once. That's the minimum criteria on the Predator Cannon Hunting Light Bar. If you want to see more pigs without alerting them, a Predator Cannon Hunting Light Bar is a must-have for your next trip. 

Outrigger Outdoors is your trusted source for all things pig hunting. To learn more about hunting wild pigs and all things outdoors, we encourage you to sign up to our blog to become the Ultimate Outdoorsman.

If you have any questions about setting up your pig hunting rig, feel free to contact us today.