Polynesian Wild Boar on Camera
Tim Martinez
So I was finally able to get everything to come together. After battling my way through the learning curve with my game camera, I have been able to capture my target species on film. You can only guess how happy I was when I seen the first picture come through. My wife even commented on how big my smile was. And the truth is, I feel like a good portion of this puzzle just got figured out. It took a little over of year of research and a good 6 months in the field chasing these hogs around to get to the point yesterday where I was able to capture numerous hogs on film.
In analyzing the pictures I have come up with quit a few answers, but it still brings even more questions. I now know that it looks like three separate hogs are coming into the bait. They all seem to be good size boars. They only come into the bait station after the sun is down. The closest a hog came to being at the bait site when the sun was up, was at 4:30am. The legal shooting hours here in Hawaii are from one hour before sunrise and one hour after sunset. So the 4:30am time slot puts them at the bait site just before legal shooting time. So this brings to light the most important question, how do I lure the hogs in during legal shooting hours? I haven't quit figured this one out yet. It might mean adjusting the amount of lure I put, when I put it out or even mean that I need to go deeper into the jungle and further from the hiking trail. The hogs might become nervous in approaching the hiking trails during daylight hours as to not provoke being chased down by the dog and knife hunters.
I have included some pictures below of the hogs I captured on camera and the area I am hunting. Notice how thick the cover is, and imagine trying to track an animal that lives in it. Thanks for reading, hopefully I will be writing about a successful hog hunt soon.
I set the bait at 7:15am on 10/13/14. This was the first hog to come into the bait site.
This is an hour and a half later that morning. I think this could be the same hog as I show above.
This was the last picture taken before the sun came up on 10/14/14.
This is the first picture taken on the night of 10/14/14.
Looks like a boar.
Looks to be another boar on 10/16/14.
This picture was taken the closest to legal shooting hours.
This is a typical shot of the area I am hunting. This is what convinced me to buy a game camera and set up a bait station.
This is the river that was dry a few weeks ago.