By Chris Monhof
Published: Southern Outdoors Magizine: February 2015

Saturday, Brian Monhof and I went to deliver a JAGER M.I.N.E. Trap to a farmer in South Georgia. We then continued to Thomasville, GA to service a few hog bait sites and conduct hog control on a plantation in the area.
We had every intention of spending the night on the plantation conducting hog control when my phone started receiving text messages from one of my traps 15 min southwest of Perry, Georgia. The first picture, of a single sow in the trap, came in at 6:21 P.M.

I was expecting the sounder to show up as they are on about a three day visit schedule. 10 minutes later I received a picture with 3 adult sows in the trap.

This is the first time that I had seen these three adults in the trap in the month that I have been working this area. Normally there are two adults and 9 shoats in the trap and four adults that stay outside the trap.
We started monitoring the I.C.E. camera I have mounted outside the front gate and made a decision to close the trap if the fourth adult showed up in the trap and there were no other hogs around. At 6:51 P.M. the M.I.N.E. camera sent me a text message showing four adults in the trap, 3 pregnant sows and a boar.

We turned the truck around and started heading to Perry, Georgia. The trip was going to take about 2 ½ hours and I was concerned that the other 11 hogs might be in the area, so we waited to close the two JAGER M.I.N.E doors until I felt we could wait no longer. At 7:05 P.M. I received a picture showing all four adults in the trap and most of the corn gone. The time had come for Brian to close the two gates by sending a text message to the M.I.N.E. camera. Brian then sent both the I.C.E. and M.I.N.E. cameras a text message to command them to take a picture. The two cameras sent us a picture showing both gates were closed, four adults in the trap and no other hogs in the area.
We pulled in to the field about 9:30 P.M. I wanted to take a look at the field to see if any hogs had come out to feed prior to going to the trap site. I walked up to the top of the hill. The wind was out of the southwest so we had a great crosswind. I glassed the field through my 100m thermal optic and found the trap site. One hog was in the wood line at the trap’s front door. I went back to the truck to get my AR 10 .308 rifle outfitted with the Armasight 640 x 512 75mm thermal optic. I told Brian we had one hog and he said “I know, I saw the text picture that just came in at 9:51 P.M.

I told him I was going to shoot the single outside the trap with my suppressor and then we would get the hogs in the trap.
When we made it back to the top of the hill, we saw that the one hog had turned into 8 hogs trying to get into the trap and 2 adults and a shoat feeding in the field.

I told Brian to go get his rifle and come back. When he returned the adult boar feeding in the field had walked back into the woods leaving a sow and shoat feeding. The eight shoats trying to find an opening in the trap were feeding to the right of the trap in the wood line, but were still visible through the thermal spotting scope. We moved in to about 150 yards when I decided to take the adult sow and shoat feeding in the field. The first shot impacted with a thud and the sow hit the ground and let out a loud squeal. The shoat started running toward us. I pick up the shoat in my scope and let the second round go, two down. The remaining 8 shoats were still hanging out to the right of the trap. I told Brian we were going to wait and see if they would come out into the field so that we could get a better shot on them.
About five minute went by when the boar that had gone into the woods came back up to the right side of the trap where the 8 shoats were. His presence caused the shoats to sprint out onto the field giving us the opportunity that we had been waiting for. I told Brian to get set up and target the left shoat in the field. I was going to shoot the Big Boar in the wood line and would then assist him with the shoats.
We started the countdown at three and on zero the two rifles erupted sending .180 gr bullets toward the hogs. When the firing stopped we had killed all nine hogs on the outside of the trap. We moved up to the trap and dispatched the three sows and one boar still inside the trap.
We recovered all the hogs scattered throughout the winter wheat, reset the M.I.N.E. gates and camera, then headed for the house. We had effectively combined the trapping and shooting operations to take out an entire sounder group of fifteen hogs that we were targeting for about a month.