Now, let's say that you have access to private land where hogs are known to be, but don't really know how to go about hunting them. Well, don't feel bad, most wild hogs harvested in South Carolina in any given year are taken incidental to deer hunting. That is, someone is out deer hunting and a wild hog walks in front of the stand. It is a whole different thing to specifically go after wild hogs.

Here are a few basic hunting tips for those new to the sport. First, a hog is not a deer. Deer have a home range and will move about that range on a daily basis. A hog has no home. "Home" is wherever a hog is at any given time. Where a hog is at any given time is wherever the food happens to be. Find the food and you will find the hogs.

Keep one thing in mind when scouting for hogs. Fresh hog sign is where the hogs used to be. This is something that goes against a deer hunter's instincts, but it is important to keep in mind. If you see fresh deer sign under an acorn tree in the fall of the year, there is a high probability that the deer will be back to that tree, probably within 24 hours. Wild hogs, on the other hand, are struck with wanderlust. It is just in a hog's nature to wander around and investigate potential new food sources. You may go into an area that is all torn up with fresh hog sign, and yet the hogs may not return to that spot for a long time -- maybe never.

So what do you? How do you pin them down to a place where you can hunt? Well, there are two ways. The most productive is bait. Where legal, you can bait hogs with corn or one of the commercially available hog baits. The mistake that most hog hunters make when placing baits is that they put the baits where it suits them. That is, they put the baits out where it is convenient for them to hunt, usually out in the middle of a wide-open food plot. They can't believe it when they sit in the stand for hours and no hog shows up to gobble up the conspicuous pile of corn. The problem with that strategy is that the hogs have all day and all night to come get the corn, and the hunter only spends a couple of hours during daylight in the stand.

That brings us to the second most effective strategy for hunting hogs. Find the travel corridors. If you spend enough time scouting around an area where there is hog activity, you will eventually begin to see a pattern emerge. There may be random tracks going this way and that, but if you really pay attention, you can pick out the perennial trails and travel corridors that hogs use when they are in that area. Look for trails with tracks coming and going, both fresh and old. Look for tracks from big hogs and little pigs, and everything in between. Finally, focus on trees coated with mud where the hogs have rubbed up against them. If you find a place with all of the above, you have found hog central, and a sure bet if you climb up a tree and wait long enough. When you find the right place, bait becomes less and less important. If you're in the right place, the hogs will come.