Does any body still hunt hogs.

The ranch I use to hunt on near Carmon Texas
was what I call a semi commercial hunting area.

As it was not free but did charge a small trespass fee per day only.

It sounded like besides the rancher whacking one now and then we were most likely the only ones shooting hogs on the place.

The ranch rules were simple don't shoot a any cattle or the ranch dog, stay out of the buffalo pen.

Kill as many hogs as you wanted, shoot any varmints you found.

There were no feeders.

The ranch had fields, pasture and areas of brush

The rancher was concerned about raising stock and crops.

At daylight or dusk one could catch hogs trading around.

Other wise they would hold up in the thick stuff.

During the day we would go in after them.

I shot a lot of them at under 25 yards a few at under 10 feet.

Coyotes were a bonus a 416 350gr mag tip does a nice job on yotes.

On the last day or two of a trip when we were tired of killing hogs ( one can kill a lot of hogs before that happens) we would limited our self's to handguns.

A compass and then a GPS made sure you would come back out of the larger areas of brush.

It was great still hunting the hogs didn't give you a shot if you screwed up the wind or noise.

My brother came along and he was having trouble finding hogs. The trouble was he was wearing a very noisy jacket. After he got rid of that he shot a few.

It was some of the best practice for hunting other game and really fun.

Why don't more people go into the thick stuff after them.

The two main issues that have came in to play are liability and trespass.

Landowners, whether thru actual incidents or "tales" they have heard at the feed story have grown leery of allowing even locals loose on their property, finding landowners that will let total strangers just wander where they will even though they are paying.

So someone having an accident or crossing to the wrong side of a fence are just situations many landowners do not want to deal with anymore.

What Crazy said +1.

You seem to have had plenty of time(days) to hunt, but some folk do not. Tight schedules, like over a weekend, have led to hog hunting businesses/preserves which are similar in concept to bird hunting preserves (no time to drive to Kansas or the Dakotas for weeks) to shoot pheasant, so spend a day or two on a preserve with guide and dogs shooting pen raised birds.

With these feral hogs, you never know whether the hogs you shoot will look like a Russian or grandma's pet porker (Hampshire, Duroc, Poland China, etc). But you WILL see and shoot hogs. Especially if the operator uses hog hounds!

There are many variations on this theme in Texas - For instance, on a recent Axis deer hunt on the YO Schreiner Ranch, my group was invited to shoot, at no charge, any feral hogs we saw. I shot two and the guide cut off their tails to get the county bounty on them.

Hunt w/gun and bow, trap, trap, trap. I have 3 places where I am currently after them and see no progress unless you call increasing numbers showing up progress. Not unusual to have a sounder of 12-15 at a feeder. I have lights at a couple of the places and sit with bow or shotgun in wait.

$5 per tail bounty for me too.

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you WILL see and shoot hogs

Yep, I thought that till the last two hunters I had!

Only hogs we saw were in someones traps.

Now with all the rain and everything greening up the damn things are everywhere.

Let's not talk about access that is another whole argument.

For those of you who have access are there those who still hunt.

Even with access, still hunting/spot and stalk, is frowned on at least in this area because of liability issues.

Add to that, so many of today's hunters never had the opportunity to learn how to still hunt/spot and stalk.

When I killed my first deer in 1970, my prior hunting experiences had been mainly ducks and doves and a few squirrel hunts.

My first deer was an 8 pointer that lots of folks now would ask why didn't I pass on it and wait for a bigger buck, but at that point in time in this part of Texas, there weren't that many deer and any buck was considered a trophy.

So in this part of the state deer hunting was a couple of decades away from timed feeders and heated blinds and Boone and Crockett were historical figures played by Fess Parker!

From that first buck until 1997 or so, with the exception of two deer that I can remember offhand, every deer I killed was done via still hunting/spot and stalk, but after deer hunting became big business and liabilty became an issue, still hunting/spot and stalk became a thing of the past and was just not taught to the fututre generations of hunters.

Your right a lot of "hunting" consist of sitting in a box blind over a bait pile.

Still hunting, tracking a buck down, drive hunting are forgotten hunting techniques.

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Still hunting, tracking a buck down, drive hunting are forgotten hunting techniques.

Yes it is and a lot of younger guys simply don't believe that a human can walk up on a deer or pigs close enough to get a shot.

On one hog hunt I saw two sleeping hogs at about 20 feet.

I already shot a dozen or so.

I decided I wasn't going to shoot one of them unless I was with in 5 feet.

I was using a red hawk 44. Ever so slowly I advanced I got to about 8 feet when the wind swirled.

I stood perfectly still and watched one of them open one eye and look at me.

Then up and away they went.

I could have easily killed one or both but it didn't meet my self imposed restrictions that time.

I went on to kill more hogs that trip. Those two went on to live a bit longer.

Good fun.

I used to share the cost of leased hunting rights on about 450 acres in south Texas with a couple other fellows. Though a lot of hunting was done from blinds, I frequently still hunted the river bottom for hogs. I loved creeping through the brush trying to find bedded or rooting hogs to kill. I'm also a huge fan of "creeping" at night - sneaking up on common pig feeding locations, either natural or man-made and shooting whatever hogs were there. Good times those, I do miss that...

I love to still-hunt hogs. That's the way I hunted them every morning on Gato's place. It felt like what I grew-up on; mule deer hunting in New Mexico. I never failed to see hogs and have good shooting opportunities. That's all you can ask for. The shots were from 25 yards out to about 300.

If I was feeling more like 31 than 71 during the heat of the day, I would still-hunt the brushiest cover I could find, near mud/water. That was not near as productive, but when it happened, it happened fast. (Gato tended to discourage those sorties as it was hard to recover some of those hogs.)

Sitting in a box waiting on a mechanical feeder to throw corn on the ground doesn't give you near the satisfaction of still-hunting.

While I grew-up hunting public land still-hunting. I would not do it again. I also would not still-hunt hogs if I knew another hunter was on the property outside of eyesight, and if I did not know the hunter very well.

In Texas there are not nearly as many hunters as there are shooters.

Sorry that Gato and I hever could put aside our personal differences, seems like a lot of folks thought highly of the man and I am sure he earned and deserved such respect.

On the other side however too many "Hunters" simply are unable to be turned loose on their own and hunt unsupervised.

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On the other side however too many "Hunters" simply are unable to be turned loose on their own and hunt unsupervised

Could that type "hunter".

Are more likely to go to these type of operations.

I really wasn't trying to or meaning to offend anyone with my response, but over the years I have met and hunted with Hunters and "hunters".

It is one of those things that most or many landowners or the folks that work for them don't really have time to deal with, so it is just simpler to put an unknown quantity in a situation where there is minimal chance of something going haywire.

This is magnified when you have hunters that are not familiar with the area and in some cases not all that knowledgeable or experienced as they pass themselves off to be.

It is sad that so many folks have not or most likely will never get the opportunity to get out and actually still hunt/spot and stalk because until my health started becoming an issue, I loved that form of hunting.

There is something about easing thru the woods watching the world wake up and possibly getting a shot at a critter that is so many levels above setting in a blind waiting for a feeder to go off, hoping something shootable walks in, that I can understand why some consider the way things are done in Texas as not being actual hunting.

i think that somewhere up there charlie is still hunting hogs

While I have not hunted hogs, I love spot and stalk hunting. Moving through woods or brush country and even open range land, for me a big part of the thrill of hunting is closing in one's quarry by foot.

I’m finding this an interesting read from a “down under” perspective.

Tree stands, blinds, and feeders are not among the usual tools of the Australian pig hunter. In the past 10 years there uptake has slowly increased among deer hunters but they are still unlikely to be sighted for sale in a gun shop outside of Victoria.

I’d dare say numbers wise dogging still accounts for the most pigs - no matter how many times govt agencies decry it as ineffective there are enough people who are familiar with there hunting grounds doing it with capable dogs on a regular basis that they make up for the suburban amateurs that most see.

Many of those hunting with guns drive 4+ hours to an 50,000+ acre property and feel the best way to explore it is in the same rig they got there in, in the hope of spotting something from the cab because they don’t really know where the game trails, gullies and watercourses are. If they don’t see them in the day then the spotlight is fixed to the roof.

I’m know there are those of us who live walking up a familiar creek line as dusk turns the sky orange a purple but I fear the car hunters are the majority.

As properties get smaller, more intensively managed, and have either mining land, agribusiness or anti hunting “tree change” retires as neighbors the tolerance for dogs that follow and bail up a boar on a neighbors paddock diminishes. However there doesn’t yet seem to be any real likelihood of an epiphany among pig hunters that the traditional European approach of sitting over a feeding area with an 8x56 scope on a full moon night will get you a shot at a pig. Even those who’ve adopted trail cams still seem to think the drive by is the best way, you just adjust your time based on the camera, if indeed you remembered to set the cameras clock properly. There is currently a movement petitioning for deregulation of, and greater access to, suppressors with the rationale that it’ll increase the pigs taken per trip as the mob won’t scatter - signing a petition and dreaming is a lot more affordable to most than investing in thermal and night vision.

Is it no surprise that there is now more pigs on the urban fringe, and more work for trappers and contract cullers?