So what is pre-baiting, how is it done and why is it so important when you are planning to trap feral hogs? Pre-baiting is the process of baiting a feral hog trapping area for a few days prior to commencing trapping operations. Pre-baiting serves to condition feral hogs to your trapping area and to accept it as a routine food source.
(A feral hog trapping site pre-baited with shelled corn)
Ideally you want to begin bating before your feral hog trap is ever in place. You should track the feral hogs back as close as possible to their daytime resting cover. It is important not to place your trapping site at the location of the feral hog damage since you will be competing with the native food source the hogs are going after. Choose a trapping site that will allow for the incorporation of native vegetation into the trap. This will provide shade for the hogs and help to break up the outline of the trap itself. Once you have located your trapping site an easy way to condition hogs to the site is to place a feeder filled with shelled corn dispensed by a programmable spin cast motor on the site. Program the feeder to go off at a specific time each morning or evening. A wide variety of other baits can be used but you must ensure that they are consistently available each day during a particular time frame The picture and video recording capabilities of game cameras make them a valuable tool in monitoring feral hog response to pre-baiting. These photographs and videos will also prove useful in helping you to determine the size and style of the trap that should be selected based on the number and size of the feral hogs visiting your bait site. You will know when the feral hogs are conditioned to your bait site by observing the game camera photos or videos captured over a period of several days. When feral hogs are conditioned to a bait site they will consistently visit the bait within a similar time frame each day. You may even observe other behaviors such as feral hogs resting under your feeder. Once feral hogs are conditioned to your bait site the pre-bating process is complete you are ready to begin the trapping process. I will cover the trapping process in a future article.
(Feral hogs feeding on shelled corn at a future trapping site)
Pre-baiting is important because it will increase the efficiency of the trapping process. Since you have conditioned the feral hogs to associate your site as a food source, they will take less time to acclimate to entering your trap to access the bait. Although the pre-baiting process takes additional time and adds to the expense of trapping feral hogs it is worth the investment. Feral hogs are a highly intelligent species but they are driven to meet their daily caloric intake needs. Taking advantage of this by the use of a pre-bating process will help to tip the odds in your favor when you plan on trapping feral hogs.
(The end result of a pre-baited trap site)
The hyper-linked resource document below will provide you with quick access to many of our online feral hog resources including publications, fact sheets and videos.
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