I have tried a couple dozen different recipes and commercial products along with various other things like fruit/vegetable scraps, fryer grease, etc. Based on that and what I have seen online, hogs will be "attracted" to everything from dead cows, dead feral hogs, fish head, crawdad leftovers, whatever manner of soured corn that is made, apples, watermelon, tomatoes, diesel corn, transmission fluid corn, etc. About the only thing that they won't eat that I have tested is pumpkins, but some folks have had luck with pumpkins. People seem to think fruity smells bring in the hogs.
I understand that hogs absolutely love watermelon, but every time I tried watermelon, the deer and raccoons ate all of it long before hogs would have gotten a chance.
From what I have seen, either you have hogs or you don't. If you don't have hogs, it doesn't matter what you put on the ground, they aren't going to show up. Based on my experience, hogs I have had hogs show up numerous times to locations I was simply watching, but I would be hard pressed to say that my presence really brings them in, although I have been rather successful in that regard.
In the grand scheme, I don't think a lot of hunters actually understand or know whether their bait is actually bringing in hogs or if hogs were just passing through the area anyway. Nobody I know will go out an intentionally bait a location where that have no hog sign in the area and expect hogs to show up. Everybody wants to bait where there is hog sign which means hogs are moving through the area anyway as part of the normal activities, or they set up a feeder and wait for hogs to eventually find it and make the feeder one of their stops.
Will XXX concoction bring in hogs from across the fence? Maybe. You have to convince the hogs that what you have is better than what they have on their side of the fence such that they will leave it and come your way. Convincing hogs to leave other resources isn't that easy. They may eventually make it over, but then again, if they are that close, they are probably coming over eventually anyway. Magic bait won't necessarily make them come faster. If it did, we would all be using it and there wouldn't be a hog problem.
However, if it makes you feel good making stinky, sticky, nasty stuff and transporting it in and going through the process of deploying it, go right ahead. It probably isn't hurting your hunt, not too much. However, keep in mind that a sudden change in the environment can result in hogs not showing up for a while, even if it is tasty food. Some animals perceive change as being potentially dangerous or threatening until they get used to it. It is a lot of fun to experiment, however.
My next step will be to put a feeder out and train them to show up at the same time every day.
This is a bit of a fool's errand unless you are in an area that is lacking of forage for hogs. I have read countless tails of people (and been the victim of) patterning hogs and showing up to hunt them when the patterning indicated only to have the hogs not show up. The stories often include a statement about not understanding what went wrong because the teller "had them patterned." The only thing predictable about hogs is that they are unpredictable.
So you set your feeder to go off at 8 PM each night. Are the hogs going to come at 8 PM each night? Probably not. If they have any hunting pressure on them, they will come after dark and they may not come immediately after dark. For example on my property, I have a feeder that only goes off in the evening time which is when I am most likely to be able to hunt it. Last month, I had a hog that came in every night, but it was anytime between 1:00 AM and 5:00 AM and he would snarf up whatever was left under the feeder.
Hogs tend not to "train" very well for a lot of reasons. Most notably is that hogs tend to make a circuit each night and that circuit changes based on availability of resources and hunting pressures that are completely outside of your area of control (although you may control the hunting pressure if you own a huge amount of land that is inclusive of the total range of the hogs). On any given night, when they stop off at your feeder may change.
In 12 years of running feeders, only a few times could I say that I had hogs that were coming in right before the feeders went off or immediately thereafter (like they were waiting for the sound). More often than not, if they are going to show up, it is within the first few hours of the feeder going off. Sometimes, the hogs will show up regular for a while. I may have a feeder going off at 8:00 PM and having hogs coming in regularly between 11:00 PM and 1:00 AM...and then something happens and they change their pattern.
Don't expect the hogs to conform to your schedule. Your hunts will be dominated by disappointment if you do. It is up to you to be there when they arrive. Remember, they don't wear watches or use a day planner.
They will come when they come, if they come.
