I mentioned earlier that I primarily live and hunt in California. This may shock some folks who don’t really know much about this state, but the hunting opportunities here are pretty awesome.
The premier hog hunting areas in the state fall into the “Central Coast” area, from Santa Barbara north to just above Monterey, then eastward to the San Joaquin Valley. However, there are huntable populations almost all the way from Bakersfield to Redding, and I’m starting to hear more and more about pigs in the Sierra foothills!
However, if someone were really interested in finding a good hog hunt in CA, I’d suggest looking in the counties of Monterey, San Luis Obispo, and San Benito. The last time I looked at statistics, these three counties accounted for most of the hogs killed by hunters. The added benefit to this area is that these counties contain most of the huntable public land available to hog hunters.
Of course, there are plenty of other productive places to hunt hogs here. If you go north to Mendocino and Sonoma counties, there are good pockets of hogs as well. Given the rapid spread of these critters, we’re likely to be hunting them from LA to Oregon in the near future.
I’ve kept the majority of my hog hunting focused to a few smaller places, though. Since I’m not a wealthy guy, and don’t own property of my own, I’ve spent a lot of time on public land. There’s a lot of public land available to hunters in CA, but only a small portion of it holds hogs. That small portion often has to sustain the impact of thousands of hunters. Simply to spot a hog on public land is like winning a small lottery. Actually taking one is more the equivalent of finding the Holy Grail.
That being said, the handful of real hotspots on this public land are closely guarded secrets which I would be loath to share in a forum as open as the World Wide Web. Well, I would be loath to share them if I had any public land hotspots… which I don’t. In fact, over the ten years since I started hunting hogs in CA, I could count the number of hogs I’ve spotted on public land on my fingers. The number I’ve actually killed on public property totals exactly, zero.
With that in mind, take what I’m about to tell you with a certain grain of salt. I’m pretty sure I know what I’m on about, but my results haven’t shown it.
If you’re out to hunt hogs on public land in CA, you have to get away from the roads. I’ve found that hiking a mile into the canyons tends to eliminate the vast majority of other hunters. Of course, hiking a mile into most of this country is not the simple feat you may expect. To put it mildly, the terrain on this public land is rugged. It takes motivation and some physical conditioning to get away from the roads and jeep trails. This point is driven even deeper when you realize that for every mile you climb and descend, you have to plan to come back out with the additional weight of a wild hog in tow.
As an alternative to public land hunting, there are a good number of guided operations, as well as some “tresspass fee” hunts in the state. Guided hunts for hogs used to be pretty rare and downright economical. That was before wild pigs started edging up against deer as the number one big game animal in CA. Nowadays you can expect to pay upwards of $500 for a fully guided pig hunt. This can still be the best way to put pork in the freezer, since the guides tend to have access to great private land along with the time to get out and learn where the pigs are hanging out.
As this blog develops, I’ll discuss a few more of these in more detail. I prefer to talk only about the operations with which I have first-hand knowledge, but I will also relay a few second-hand reports from trusted sources as well.
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I had just watched hog hunting for the first time last night. I am surprised at how large the hog population is and it is important to thin the numbers.