The Eyes
By Dustin Bergen
22 May 2012
Those little beady eyes are definitely nothing epic. They are not honed for distant visual acuity like those of a pronghorn antelope or a red-tailed hawk and they are not picking out detailed patterns like a whitetail deer. However, Mother Nature does not let a less-than-adequate species survive for long. So what gives?
In a word: movement. Most wild hog activity takes place between dusk and dawn and those tiny little specks between the ears and snout are great at picking out motion in low-light conditions. After all, there is little need to pick out color when there isn’t much light to be seen in the first place.
Interestingly, some believe that pigs are incapable of focusing their vision on any singular object. However, hogs are capable of observing movement in a 310° perimeter as opposed to our 180°. And although they have only 35-50° of direct frontal or ‘binocular’ vision, this allows them not only to pick up moving objects at night time, but also light and shadow changes through thick brush and cover, increasing their odds of detecting an intruder by movement.
If you’ve ever walked around your house at night time, you’ve probably noticed that you tend not to focus directly on any particular object, but rather use your peripheral vision to determine your location or where the door knob or light switch is. This is because of the different photoreceptors in your eyes, known as rods and cones. While cones are accustomed to picking out color traits, the rods’ specialty is on light and detection of movement.
Pig retinas have many more rods than cones (anywhere from 3:1 centrally to 16:1 peripherally), which puts the night-time situation in his advantage. Low-light is his playground. While other animals whose bodies are adapted to daytime operation are asleep, the wild hog is fully awake and can monitor anything and everything sneaking up in his immediate vicinity.
Your Plan
Your advantage should come through slow, deliberate movements, trying hard not to break your silhouette. Minimize your lateral movements. At most, you want to become just some dark spot in the background that doesn’t move. If you have to move, do it slowly and gradually; hogs can have a short attention span and don’t do much to keep track of the positions of distant objects. They are very in-the-moment type of creatures.
Observe your surroundings to judge what you can and can’t blend in with. Can I make an approach from behind grass, trees, or rocks? Will I have to low crawl to get past a large open area? How can I minimize my appearance? Be aware of shadows and reflections from a setting sun on the horizon. These can be very telling of your location when gleaming off of your barrel, scope, face or glasses.
If on a pasture or large open area, you might attempt to slowly walk directly toward a pack of feeding hogs. If they are used to cows, they may not be able to tell you apart from any other heifer on the field and you can pull off the old wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing trick.
Also, use only your eyes to look around instead of swinging your whole head. Monitor your next footstep while keeping an eye on your quarry. You’d be surprised how much your head moves when looking up, down, and around.
When making an approach with more than one person, walk in single file. The name of the game is minimizing your visual presence. Five hunters looking like a single, smaller object are going to fair a better chance of getting in range than 5 individual shapes spread out laterally or moving around individually.
Get within your comfortable range and stay there. If you are comfortable making a 100 yard shot, don’t try to sneak up to 20 yards. You have a good chance of spooking the animals and you will end up taking a shot on a pig running at light speed; not a great shot to have. I would rather stop further out (within my comfortable range) and be able to take my time getting a good, steady rest which allows me to make the first move…with my trigger finger. I can always reload and take a follow up shot if necessary, but I’d rather take my time and have a perfect setup for the first shot.
The devil is in the details. Little things that you can take notice of and prepare for will give you better odds in going unseen and coming home with your own self-provided pork chops!
Next — “The Ears”
