following: fever, low appetite, chills, fatigue, sweating, joint swelling and pain with positive purulent aspirate, headache, and muscle pain. The triad of fever, muscle and joint pains are hallmarks of the disease. Rarely, symptoms may occur as late as six months after exposure. Diagnosis is made based on symptomatology and patient’s history and is confirmed with a blood test. Brucellosis is treated with a prolonged course of antibiotics, occasionally longer than six weeks. Be sure to take the complete course of antibiotics because relapses are not in- frequent with inadequate treatment. Recurrence can result in serious infectious complications to bones, joints and the heart. Prevention is multifactorial. Avoid all contact with vis- ibly ill animals or those found dead. Use clean sharp knives for field dressing and butchering. Wear eye protection and rubber or latex gloves (disposable or reusable) when handling a carcass. Avoid direct contact (bare skin) with fluids (espe- cially from reproductive organs) and solid organs from the hog. Burn or bury disposable gloves and inedible parts of the carcass after butchering. Clean all tools and reusable gloves used in field dressing and butchering with a disinfectant, such as dilute bleach. When preparing a meal, clean surfaces often with hot soapy water. Wash your hands often with soap and warm water for 20 seconds or more. Cook pork to an internal temperature of 160 F, using a food thermometer. Chill raw and cooked pork promptly. Because of potential disease transfer, special precautions are necessary in pro- cessing hog meat. There are only three feral hog processors in South Carolina; the vast majority of wild game processors process only deer meat.
As with all game, shot placement remains the most im- portant factor in harvesting feral hogs.
Texasboars.com has an excellent article concerning pig anatomy. Hog kill zones are small. The paunch of a hog, which of course needs to be avoided, extends to just behind the shoulder. The shoulder blade and muscle surrounding it covers 85 percent of the heart and lungs on a standing broadside hog. Thus the kill zone is well-protected. The top of the heart is directly in line with the shoulder crease and directly over the top of the elbow joint. In order to keep from ruining the shoulder meat that results from a heart shot, we normally place our shots just behind and below the hog’s ear. Remember, hogs are good eating. We usually err on the side of overkill in selecting a 338 caliber or larger when hunting in the Congaree swamp. With adequate cartridges, we do not believe hyper-velocity or premium bullets are necessary. Below 284 caliber, we recom-
mend premium bullets. In addition, we always recommend heavy-for-caliber bullets for all cartridges. From a size of animal point of view, hunting feral hogs is a lot like hunting plains game in Africa. In Africa one needs to be prepared to take a trophy eland, when hunting klipspringers. Similarly, though most pigs taken are in the 60-lb. to 100-lb. range, one needs to have enough gun to harvest a true trophy 600-lb. boar if the occasion presents itself. We find that beyond 100 yards it is difficult to judge the size of hogs. A 3-foot hog easily can appear to be a 4-foot pig, thus resulting in over a 100 lbs. difference in weight. Therefore, it is easy to take little, “Weber grill sized,” pigs when you are expecting a 150-pounder.
Though some of the shooting lanes at our hunt club measure more than 400 yards, we leave those shots for the deer hunters. We limit our hog shots to a maximum of 200 yards. Remember, the kill zones on hogs are small and we need to anchor our prey on the spot. Away from the cut roads and trails, year round the undergrowth makes tracking injured pigs nearly impossible … and dangerous. Injured hogs bleed primarily internally and via exit wounds (if present), making tracking doubly difficult. Injured hogs are known for their feistiness; they will turn and attack their trackers. Feral hogs are formidable and will attack people. Hunt- ers have been treed by an aggressive sow that senses that her piglets are in danger. We have been charged by both wounded and uninjured hogs. Handguns and shotguns with buckshot are used to end these aggressive behaviors. Since large en- trance and exit wounds are desirable, handgun calibers should begin with at least .40. We believe that “enough gun” should be employed to anchor a charge and/or kill an injured hog. Typically, we drive to the Kingsville Hunt Club in the late morning. Adequate equipment should be available. Insect protection and snake proof boots and/or chaps are needed in the swamp. A high powered headlight is necessary for evening and night hunting. After arrival, work at bait sites then proceeds for the next few hours. We make sure there is bait (corn) in the feeders and that the site is being “hit.” Move- ment activated cameras are checked for feeding behavior. We attempt to answer the following questions: What breeds of animals are coming to the bait? Were there daylight feeds? Were any of the animals trophies? Do we need to night hunt, to harvest that trophy boar? Are we likely to see the trophy buck during legal shooting hours? These data allow us to plan our attack. One never knows when hogs will be seen so we always carry our side arms and/or our rifles when we are checking bait stands. Feral hog hunting is a group effort. Once down, pigs are hard to move and the work starts again in earnest. Everyone converges on the kill site and helps to attach the pig(s) to our ATV(s). Because hogs are herd animals, it is not unusual for them to be present for multiple kills. Twice last month, three pigs were taken over bait sites. Hogs kept coming back, after scattering with each shot. We transported the hogs to the club’s camp where we skinned and gutted them. The meat is stored in a walk-in cooler until being transported to the processor. Bon Appétit!
Page 140
Spring 2013
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