Can I make a rabbit box big enough for a wild hog? I grew up making boxes that I set out for rabbits and possums and was fairly successful with them. For rabbits no bait was really needed. But I put old apples from the local school cafeteria, where my dad was principal, in some, and possums loved them.

I could get 75 cents to a whole dollar for a live possum back in the late 1950s and early 1960s when I was catching them. Rabbits usually bought 50 cents. All was good money, I could buy a whole box of 50 rounds of .22 long rifle bullets for one sale of either!

And even at 12 years old, I could buy .22 bullets.

It was weird, in 1968, just before I turned 18, I suddenly could not buy .22 bullets I had been buying for years because I was not old enough! A new federal law that had nothing to do with hunting, kids or common sense banned selling .22 bullets to anyone younger than 21 since they could be used in a handgun. That was the first time I realized how stupid gun control laws were.

I always kept my rabbits and possums alive by shaking them out of the box into a croaker sack, tying it up and taking it to town to sell. Back then a lot of folks did not have refrigerators so they bought fresh meat every day and cooked it that night.

I could stand in the parking lot of one of the six local stores that sold groceries – and everything else you could ever need, from bullets and hooks to boots and overhauls (overalls now). Anyone seeing a kid with a croaker sack in the parking lot knew what they had!

Rabbits were eaten that nigh but possums had to be cleaned out. They were put in a small pen and fed food scraps until they were deemed clean of the possibly rotten food they had eaten in the wild. Then they were baked with sweet potatoes!

I have been told there are hogs running Buck Creek where I have some land and have a possible place to hunt out there. I have done some research and found out the only problem is that hogs are nocturnal and you need to hunt them at night unless you have hog dogs. So I am thinking about trying to build a trap for them.

Wild hogs are very smart and I have been told their sense of smell is much better than a deer’s, so you have to be very careful when hunting or trying to trap them. And if you set out a trap and catch one you have to move it. The rest of the passel of hogs will avoid it.

I was happy to hear about a processor that will take hogs locally since I want the meat but really don’t want to have to butcher one if I get lucky.