Intelligence

By Dustin Bergen

Pigs are social creatures.  They have a pack hierarchy, social queues, and they communicate quite well.  Using vocalizations, body language, and pheromones they can determine the difference between feeding, an aggravated pack member, a fight, and an intruder alarm and can react accordingly all within a split second.  When you have 15-20 scouts using all their senses to judge the environment and everyone shares that information instantaneously, it severely decreases your odds of going undetected.

Another big difference is the size of their brain case.  Hogs have a smaller brain than deer.  “Great!” you think, “smaller brain means they’re dumber than your average deer and I can outwit deer any day of the week!”  Not so fast, grasshopper…

Let’s talk deer for a moment.

Have you ever noticed that when you’re deer hunting and you make a sound, the deer will typically turn in your direction immediately and perk up its ears as if to say, “What was that?!”  You may have also noticed that you can stop a moving deer by grunting, mooing or just by yelling, “Hey deer!”  Deer are intelligent creatures, but if you have seen this before, odds are the deer did not do so well surviving that particular experience.  They are just smart enough to be dumb. They possess just enough intelligence to be curious.

If you’ve ever been busted by a deer while hunting a stand, you may notice that in the future, that same deer will nearly always check the stand before it comes in all the way.  If it is with other deer, this experience is then taught to more students.  Deer remember.  At some previous point (probably when you were scratching your nose, or checking your watch while trying to remember what your lunar deer activity calendar said) it saw something out of the ordinary, was curious about what it was, stored that image in its mind and decided that it was unnatural.  So the next time it came in, it recalled what happened the last time it was there and decided to check for that particular threat before getting too close.  That’s pretty smart!

But, while curiosity can create a valuable learning experience, it also killed the cat (along with countless deer).  This is where wild hogs differ.

Typically, a hog will not think twice about running away from a suspected threat.  If you trip one of their senses – POOF, they’re gone. You’re standing there looking at that hog-shaped cloud of dust and wondering why you didn’t have a round in the chamber already.

With deer, you generally get one free pass (sometimes more if you’re sneaky).  Out of the three senses that they are most dependent on – sight, sound, and smell – you can generally trip one and not spook them.  If you trip two senses, it’s game over.  Snorting, wheezing, running, hopping, white tails bouncing, the whole nine yards…pretty embarrassing.  It’s a sort of sense-triangulation method; if they can see you but not smell or hear you, they may be on alert, but may not readily commit to fleeing.  But if they see you and the wind whips around for just a moment…suddenly you’re picking up KFC on the way home and the only thing you’re cooking up that night is excuses.  Sad but true.

Your Plan

Although wild hogs do not generally give out such free passes, their smaller brains do give them a shorter attention span, which becomes an Achilles-heel.  They are creatures living in the moment, for the moment, scarfing up as much food as possible as quickly as possible before their 20 other family members get to it.  But if one member becomes alerted, they are ready to split without hesitation.

That said, you won’t typically have minute-long stare downs with a hog.  If you’re careful, they may look in your direction or even at you directly but usually it’s only for a brief moment.

So, the goal here is to outwit them by using your patient ninja skills.  When moving through the woods, try to ensure that with each step, you could instantly freeze and be totally balanced.  Keep all of your weight over whichever foot is on the ground at the time until your next foot is firmly down.  Only then should you shift your weight forward.

Remember also to keep your foot noise to a minimum.  When stepping forward, watch where your foot will go.  Is there a twig or branch that is likely to crack?  Are there dead leaves that will crumble?  Will my foot shuffle the ground in a way that makes noise?  Is it a firm foothold or is it slick and muddy?  Could this next step potentially spook off my game?

A little trick I’ve figured out is to use the outside edge of my foot when I place it on the ground.  Step forward, twist your foot slightly so that the bottom of your foot faces toward the inside (as if you stepped in dog scat and were trying to avoid tracking it around) and ease your foot onto the ground, rolling slightly from your heel to your toes.  All of your weight should be rolling along the outside edge of your foot.

What this does is minimize physical contact with the ground.  Less contact means fewer leaves to crumple or twigs to snap.  You might notice that hooved animals (known as ‘Ungulates’) make far less noise than people, armadillos, squirrels, etc when walking through terrain.  The hoof has less contact with the ground and it’s sloping shape allows the animal’s foot to slide underneath leaves and foliage, rather than squash it (like our flat soles do).

Next — “Conclusion”