There have been several discussions concerning hog hunting in Texas over the past couple of years, some concerning the concept that if hogs are creating the problem people claim, why are land owners not willing to just open their gates and turn people loose to take care of the problem.

Well, here is a first hand report on how hog hunts can and do turn out in Texas.

This past weekend, February 12 thru 15, we had a group of 7 hunters from Nebraska come down for their annual hog hunt. Now these folks have been coming down for several years now, and they know the score.

On this hunt, the weather was good, we had plenty of hog activity on all of the properties we hunt, and the first night, two new hunters to the group each killed a hog.

One weighed in at 153 field dressed, the other weighed in at 157 field dressed. This year there were 7 hunters in the group, all but the two newbies, experienced with how things go.

That first night I think all hunters saw or heard pigs, but not everyone was able to get a shot.

But, as often happens with free range pig hunting here in this part of Texas, no one saw or heard any thing over the next 48 hours. Just because there are lots of reports about all the damage pigs are doing, little is mentioned about how much acreage pigs cover in their wanderings, and when pigs are pressured, even slightly, they will/can move several miles in just a few hours.

So while there are large numbers of pigs in the state, and they do damage a lot of land, it does not take a whole lot of pressure to move them off a property, and it may be weeks before any pigs move back into any particular area.

Still not answered why landowners will take thousands of dollars in crop/livestock damage yearly rather than allow hunters free access.
The hogs one of my Uncles raised on his place had two litters (8-12 per litter) some years. Turn a breeding pair loose, and in a year you could have fifty or sixty running loose and creating havoc.

It may be just me, but I can't see paying a dollar for the privilege of bailing some rancher/farmer out.

First off south of Childress Tx where my lease is most of the properties just run cattle and grow oats. If it rains enough the cows do well enough no matter what the hogs do. Second there are lawyers and hog hunting is mostly done at night among the cattle. Night hunting is less safe than day hunting by nature and most are not going to let just anyone with unknown skill levels free access to their property. Add to this much of the property is leased for both grazing rights and hunting rights. For instance our lease has 5 hunters and we lease 1800 acres. Our contract says we can only have 5 hunters no more and the owner can't just let people hunt on our lease not even his family. The same with the grazing rights guy. The five of us in no way can control the hog population. But I can't even invite someone to hunt hogs on the lease that is not named on the paperwork.

Good reply Gunsmoker, and Rich you can rant all you want to. Landowners in Texas can do what they want to and there is not anything any one can do to change that.

Like anything else in this life, as long as there are people willing to pay for something, people will be there willing to take their money.

Point of my post is purely to illustrate that no matter how much propaganda is spread about hogs and the damage they cause in Texas, hunting for them is not a 100% guaranteed situation.

+ the fact that when necessary (such as ruining bird hunting preserve fields and wrecking gardens and such) landowners can easily hire professionals to remove the hogs for a while.
In south Texas shooting them from planes and helicopters has been done for years and there are even a number of companies that will take sport hunters up for a thrilling copter ride to shoot the on the run!
For nuisamce hogs and to sell on the hoof, trappimg is very effective.
TPWD gives seminars on controlling hogs and has been researching poisoning techniques that can not poison other animals, but have not recommended or implemented any such controls here yet. As of a few years ago, some promising hog poisoning results in Australia were being seriously investigated, but so far no formal use here.
http://tpwd.texas.gov/huntwild...nuisance/feral_hogs/

An thriving industry of hog hunting preserves has evolved and attracts an increasing number of local and out of state hunters. Siting in a deer blind and waiting for hogs can be fun for nature lovers, but is often not productive and can become a boring waste of time. Running them with dogs can be very productive and has yet to fail me. Even my local game processor has out of state hunters coming to North Texas to follow dogs after hogs with his sons. No sport for old men, but a lot of fun for those up to it.
Craig Boddington even wrote this article on the growth of hog hunting in the US -
http://globalsportsman.com/art...-lets-go-pig-hunting

Why won't landowners let people hunt for free?

Because others will pay to shoot them, its just that simple. If you are willing to let people on your property to hunt, might as well raise some revenue.

I am taking a group from work out this weekend with their children in tow, and they were willing to pay $200/day to hunt hogs. I will report on our progress Monday.

You can wear out a place real fast! I have done it to one place and another is flat right now. If you hunt and shot pigs often enough, especially sows you will remove them or they just get smart and stay away! Most of what you read is false! There are pigs and they do damage, but one pig can do a lot in one night! Feral pigs are here because we want them here! They have spread as fast as a gooseneck can haul them, not because they are that prolific!

Just to add another parameter that really has not been touched upon, is there are many landowners that do not want hunters on their property, so they lease it out to trappers that do a number on the hog population, because the concept is, if it gets caught, it is killed.

You Do Not let a trapped hog go free, because they will NEVER go into another trap. When the buyers are paying premiums for hogs, those Premiums are paid on 100 pound plus hogs. Unless the trapper has family or friends that want those littler animals, they become coyote bait/buzzard food.

Fact of life here in Texas is, if it was not for my job, I would have given up hunting and sold all my guns 10 damn years ago. All hunting in Texas has evolved into a business, and if I owned several hundred or thousand acres, I know damn good and well I could find people MORE than willing to lease it for hunting.

quote:

Originally posted by Idaho Sharpshooter:
It may be just me, but I can't see paying a dollar for the privilege of bailing some rancher/farmer out.

Say, haven't you hunted in Africa?

It's called PROPERTY RIGHTS - The land belongs to them, what's on it belongs to them, including the cows, horses, chickens, tractors, stands, water, houses, well heads, etc etc etc -- we call these, in general, chattel.

no one in their right mind would let ISS on their land anyway, so no worries.

Well, we've certainly had our differences over the years, but if ISS wants to drive down to NE Tx to try to hunt hogs, he is more than welcome to come try my place. I feel certain he knows the differences between a cow and a pig. He can camp out on place or stay in a motel about 25 miles away. We're seeing bunches of hogs almost every day. One of my hunting buddies kills one every time he comes to my place to make sausage. He's a butcher and the last one he killed, a smaller sow made about 30 pounds, probably weighed about 100 live wt. This was last weekend. He should have killed more but drove up on them and ran them off after killing and cleaning the sow. This time of year, from now until about the end of April is the best time for killing hogs as food is more scarce and they move more in the daytime.

Before ISS jumps into the car or truck, I want to tell you that we're not feeding corn so you'll have to stalk or sit for hogs and, while right now, I'd be really surprised if you don't kill one or more, there are no guarantees. As CHC pointed out, hogs can move miles over night. From my POV, it's a damn long ways to come kill a hog, but if it floats your boat, come on. The weather has been unbelievable nice for a while, highs in 60s to 80s and forecast to stay that way for a week or so, with rain possible early next week.

Before every one starts emailing or PMing me saying, "Let me come", this is a specific invitation to ISS ONLY. Please don't ask unless your name is Salm or handle is ISS.

I don't have any problem with folks charging whatever they can get. But my reality is I have been priced out of the market. That's my calculus - it just isn't worth paying the going rate to shoot a mediocre animal. I checked into a Hill Country lease last weekend. 700 acres, 4 guns, $3,000 each. I'm still with you. Then the kicker - 1 buck, 1 doe, and 1 hog.

If I'm the landowner, I'm encouraging the hunters with exclusive rights to shoot every hog on the place. I also know enough about deer management to know that taking 4 does off a low fenced 700 acre ranch per year is probably not helping the herd.

Not telling the landowner how to run his affairs, but it doesn't make sense to me. I know the devil is in the details, and maybe there is more to the story, but it looks like the business model is exclusively focused on the income rather than the resource.

Every land owner/lease manager uses a different strategy on how they set up their properties. Most do base things on recommendations of a biologist, either a TP&WD biologist or one of the private biologists that have gone into business after working for TP&W or after earning a degree in wildlife biology/management from one of the colleges offering the courses.

There are so many parameters involved in leasing land, on both sides of the fence, that the old "Hand Shake" and your good to go is no longer practical.

Thanks for posting this Chc. Some buddies and I drove down from Montana a couple of years ago to hunt south of Childress on a low fence property. We had a great time on a three day hunt and everyone either killed pigs or had opportunity but we weren't swimming in pigs either.

There is a perception by some in states without hogs that they are so thick your hunt is not successful unless you are filling a semi with them every night. I was talking to one guy up here about our hunt and he couldn't believe we were paying to hunt when he was under the impression Texans were paying hunters to kill them. Maybe true but definately isolated situations.

I think I enjoyed the hunt more because we weren't over run with pigs. We had to work for them and that made the success sweeter. If they were everywhere we might as well have stayed home and shot prairie dogs

quote:

If they were everywhere we might as well have stayed home and shot prairie dogs

I shot a lot of prairie dogs in the Texas panhandle as a teenager, but there was not a lost of meat on them. How does their breakfast sausage compare to that of feral /wild hogs?

The ranch I hunted was a spot, stalk still hunting property only. We would show up the rancher said go kill hogs that's is what we did.

I hunted 5 or 6 years in a row then my connection moved away and I lost access

If was great fun going into the brush after them. That is the only way we hunted them.

The 4 of us over 3 days would kill hogs until we were sick of shooting them. The rancher wanted them gone.

It was a great time for using all kinds of firearms and seeing the effect on live animals.

One 3 day trip I shot hogs with an 44mag 45-70 308 30-06 416T and a 460WBY. I shot them from 5 feet to a couple hundred of yards. That weekend I shot 15 hogs myself. North woods whitetail hunters know how to sneak around the woods,

We killed several dozen of them all together meat was taken from the choices ones.

We would have contests who could shoot the biggest who could shoot the smallest who could come back with the longest tail.

While we were sneaking through the brush we would also shoot several coyotes each trip. I can tell a 416 350 Speer mag tip at 2450fps at 30 feet from the muzzle kills a Texas coyote just fine as does a 220 308 bullet at 2300fps makes short work of a running coyote at 110 yards

I always wanted to take my pickup and camper and stay on the ranch but my contact wanted to motel it. So that what we did the only warning we got from the rancher was live stock are not pigs and don't go into the buffalo pen.

We never shot a cow or even came close to it and we didn't go near the buffalo.

The best trips were when we flew my friend
twin down cut the 24 drive to 5 hours each way. The only trouble with that was we couldn't bring a pickup load of meat back.

Still hunting hogs is a great time.

I still try and talk my friend into going back but he lives in Canada now and that adds another 12hrs onto the trip. so he hasn't done so.

P Dog,
Thanks for the interesting story.
It is amazing what a still hunter can see in the woods.

Lucky find for sure p dog hunter. I wouldn't know where to start to look for a generous rancher like you found. May I ask how you came across this rancher?

I didn't find him a friend did thus not my contact.

The friend went on a paid hunt and was so put off in how it was run. That he left early and went asking around. He stopped at the local feed mill and asked does anybody have and hogs that need to killed.

They told him that this rancher who was always complaining about the hogs eating him out of house and home and the damage they do.

So my friend went over to the ranch and introduced himself and the rest is history. I was invited along as a guest and never felt I had the authority to ask the rancher myself. For the same permissions that my friend had.

He and the rancher had built a good relationship up over the years.

Great story pds. I'd be tempted to ask him in person if they are still a problem for him these days. He might be grateful for the help. Thanks a lot for sharing.
CHC- Many landowners in Pennsylvania are turning to pay to hunt. They consider the whitetail population an asset. You make a good point there in that it is their land and they can do whatever they want.
ISS: I have no first hand knowledge why only pay hunting is allowed around a good bit of Texas.
Take into consideration that (at least around here) free open hunting has the tendency to draw some real low-life's, making land owners a bit leery of just leaving the gates open. Sometimes the buttholes and dumb asses ruin it for everybody. The last 20 times I asked for permission to hunt, I was turned down and the word NO can be frustrating. In 3 cases, some person ruined it somehow from leaving their trash drop anywhere they please to shooting the farmers prized bull. One guy pointed a rifle at pet goat while the owners' Wife was leaning over 10 feet from it, working in the garden 30 yards from the house. Just something to consider ol' boy. Not all folks are as considerate are you or I when they are guest on someone's land. Seems a possibility in Texas as well.

As much as paying hunters make up part of my annual income, I truly wish that things had came to be as they are.

I grew up in north Texas during a time when there were NO feral hogs and deer numbers were not that great.

The changes helped the states economy, but it came at a price. People, locals that had been able to hunt and fish on these properties were suddenly shut out.

It is hard to blame landowners from making money from a source that basically was costing them money. The down side being that long time local friends/acquaintances lost the ability to access a resource that in reality they could not afford to pay for.

The local economy simply does not afford area residents the money required to lease places they had hunted and fished on for free for years.

Once things changed, and it still happens, locals vandalize the camps/equipment the "City Folks" are able to afford.

I love being a native born Texan, but I wished there were options available for those Texans that can not afford the lease fees.

More than half of Oregon is public land, so finding places to hunt is no sweat. Unfortunately, the quality of the hunting is about what you would expect under these circumstances. So far, we are mostly keeping the wild hogs out, thanks to shoot on sight orders from the Oregon Department of Agriculture.