Texas Needs More Hog Hunters: The State Is Losing the Fight Against the Feral Pig Invasion

1. Hmm… what kind of income can a professional hog hunter garner in TX these days?

   • If you hunt and trap pigs as your only income you’ll make enough to, maybe, scrape over the poverty line. Maybe.
     Everybody I know that hunts and traps professionally has some other income.

     • Must not be that big of a problem then. If it were that serious the state would pony up for bounties or just hire hunters outright. If somebody would pay me $90,000/yr to hunt hogs I’d be there Friday morning. (I’d be there sooner but I have to pack up the guns and it’s a 12-24 hour drive depending one where I’m going.)

       I’d be curious what the total annual damage is and how much of that burden is born by the state’s taxpayers. I’m guessing they could find a revenue neutral way to fix the problem if they were honest about the costs of not fixing it.

       • Add monetary incentives to the mix, and you’ll double the number of hogs & hunters overnight.

       • See the Cobra Effect here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect

         tl;dr — offer a reward for something, and you will get more of it. Basic economics.

       • The problem here is big landowners that will not permit people to hunt and control them so these places in effect turn into sanctuaries , then the hogs get into the public roads and cause vehicle damage and tear up small land owners property.

       • Ed, that’s the problem I ran into when I looked into hog hunting. People either didn’t want anyone hunting on their land or they wanted you to pay $200-300 to shoot one hog. Thats it, just one. This was about 10 years ago, so things might have changed, but everyone seemed to be out to make a buck, while the hogs were trashing their land. I don’t think that’s a winning plan in the end.

       • Some areas do pay a per-tail bounty, but it’s usually on the order of $5. Not something you can make a lot of income doing.

       • There are “predator hunters” in many counties in Texas. They are State employees who work 40+ hours a week to trap and kill them.

       • Don’t worry we don’t need you here

       • Can’t keep up with the hunt well no wonder once people started making it a business,charging people to hunt them the hunters stopped being able to go onto people’s land and killing them for free and taking them out.Less hunters killing them numbers go up.Then the business company charges you to hunt them then you have to pay them to clean the hogs by the pound.Then they collect a tip for the guide who is getting paid to guide you.Mans greed is helping the hogs.

       • In the State of Texas alone, feral hogs do more than $52,000,000 per year. If you’re interested in a hunt, see the website below.

         https://www.gandtoutfitters.com/

       • Hogs are mostly nocturnal. They damage fences to get to the areas they want to root around in, they tear up gardens and planted fields, they carry diseases, and are carnivorus at the same time. Pets, baby deer, and any other type of animal with a little meat on it’s bones are killed, and eaten entirely, including humans. The problem just grows every year because of the speed at which they multiply, and the lack of sufficient ways to get rid of them. They are very nasty customers, and are very dangerous to get close to.

       • I’d do it for a lot less if they provide the ammo and a place to stay.

       • David Fisher: Guides are one of the biggest reasons we have so many hogs and you refer us to a guide?? Are you getting a finders fee or what?? The number of guides in general across this country has all but ruined most hunting opportunities for the general public. Texas should have a bounty and restrict anyone from making a profit on hogs until they are down to a sustainable, healthy population.

       • the biggest problem with large land owners is most of them have cattle on their land hog hunting is best at night but some people just shoot when they see something and a lot of times its a cow they shot not a hog and night vision can be deceptive too at a distance a cow could be mistaken for a hog (when an unexperienced hunter is looking ) i was in Oklahoma a few weeks ago and a large land owner had 14 cows shot in 3 months from hog hunters with night vision and that is why they dont want to open their property to hog hunters

       • The solution is not as simple as you think it is. A feral Hog’s natural intelligence makes them very wary of traps and hunters. Since most of Texas is private property, you can’t go out and hunt them without getting land owners permission, so you are limited to where you can hunt. Van Zandt County instituted a bounty for feral hogs a few years ago, offering $7 per animal, but the county ran out of money long before they ran out of hogs and it nearly busted the small East Texas county’s budget. The solution is just not as simple as you think it is.

     • You know hogs do alot of damage every year. If Texas Government would figure out a payment scales that would allow people like me whom are professional hunters to get payed for hunting them. Instead I have to go work in a freezer 18 hours at a time to bearing scape by. I wish I could have that for a full time job. I guess Texas just likes paying out money to replace stuff instead of protecting that stuff.

       • People would let them breed for the bounty.

       • They need to set up a Bounty System based on Weight. Something similar to what FL is doing to try and get rid of their Invasive Python Snake problem. They pay by the foot and you get to keep the DEAD snake (For Meat, Skin or whatever else) If Hunters got Paid by the Pound and then could sell them to be processed and sold as Wild Meat. That would definetly ramp up the Hunting & Killing of these animals.

     • Have a place that I can come down and set up camp for a week or two and I’ll be there.

     • With kinda of hog population why aren’t they slaughtering them and feeding the poor and homeless?

       • Hunters do kill and donate them to food pantries. But meat processors have to donate their time for that also. It’s expensive, but this is occurring.

       • I use to donate hog meat to the women’s shelters but fda shut that down, saying it had to be USDA approved meat.

     • I want to come and help out

     • I have a friend who is a master hog trapper. He sells them to a meat producer and averages over $3,500 a month.

   • What I’m wondering is if there wouldn’t be a lot of money in it IF one could come up with an efficient, harmless, trapping solution. My understanding is that wild hogs can be sold through the standard livestock yards, IF one can just once get them into a truck. But, like all livestock sales, injured, sick, or dead animals cannot be sold.
     That means if someone could come up with a method to trap them without harm, there are millions of pounds of pork out there that are free for the taking. Also, for whoever might come up with this solution, perhaps millions of dollars in patenting and selling the traps to other people wanting to get in on the freebies.
     Also, with the Chinese now destroying most of their pigs over the African pig flu, the price of pork is set to rise dramatically. A good, efficient, trapping routine in Texas could go a long way towards making up for that. But only if the animals are captured in good enough shape to take to market.
     JWT posted here, and he’s from Texas. Is that correct, or do livestock rings there operate differently from Montana? If one could trap them this way in large numbers, could they still be sold? If so, it wouldn’t really matter whether the landowners or the State would pay you to hunt them or not. The money would be in the animals themselves. With so much damage occurring, I imagine that getting permission from the owner to remove them for free should be as easy as pie.

     • “What I’m wondering is if there wouldn’t be a lot of money in it IF one could come up with an efficient, harmless, trapping solution.”

       The problem is, the hogs aren’t stupid. Unless you get the *entire* sounder, the survivors learn from the experience. Some traps, like drop traps, work better, but they are considerably more expensive.

       Another problem is, the land owners *love* to bitch about the damage they do, but don’t want hunters on their property. (*Clue* – train the hunters what not to do.)

       Well, the problem must not be that bad, then… (Cue JWT in 3, 2, 1…)

       • EDIT – It’s also manpower intensive to watch the traps. Remote systems using cellphone tech exists, but that adds to the cost…

       • Geoff, I looked into it a few years back, while I don’t hunt normally, I thought I could help with the killing if somebody else was dealing with the carcasses. At least as far as I could determine, landowners wish to charge around $500 per gun to hunt hogs on their property, just like whitetails. Sorry, that is definitely *NOT* a serious problem, they don’t need my assistance. When they allow hunting for free or even pay for kills, they will begin to see results.

       • I know some hunters have been assholes but my friend and I ALWAYS followed the farmer’s rules to the letter.

         One example was a property which we had a good success rate had one primary rule. NO SHOOTING in house paddocks. Before we crossed the grid into the house paddock, we would safe and clear the guns. One night crossing through one of the house paddocks to report to the house on our way out, we saw more pigs than we had seen all day. What did we do? NOTHING. We reported what we saw to the farmer on the way out and he said we did exactly the right thing. This is why we were invited to other properties the next year.

       • So far, hogs haven’t crossed under the fences yet. I think they can sense that I would exercise my combat marksmanship skills and mag dump on them the moment I saw them. Not just that, but I’m unemployed and got nothing better to do each night than to sit around and pound their asses with 30 cal.

     • Geoff:
       This is why I’m thinking some new kind of trap is needed. I’m imaging something akin to a large fence, with liberal bait inside, and then some type of gates that they can enter easily, but cannot exit. One could leave this for a while, and then just bring a truck in when lots are caught, and drive them into chutes and onto a truck, the same as one would any other hog.
       This could already be done right now, but the problem is; it would need to be easily and quickly broken down for transport to a new location after each capture. And hogs are notoriously hard on fencing with their constant rooting.
       So this would have to be quick and easy to move around, yet solid enough to hold many rooting hogs in, even if only for a few days. Also, the gates in would have to be designed to not spook the pigs(so large and quiet), yet also be easy to move. I think these could stand to be a little pricey, because they would capture many at a time, meaning the total cost could be amortized over many animals.
       Once some get in and start eating the feed, those ones won’t even want out, at least not until they get full. And all of the happy grunting inside the trap should bring even more a-running.
       But how to do this, and keep it mobile, and yet still strong enough, but still affordable? Even without anything new, individual landowners could still do this on their own property, just with feedlot panels. But after they’re dug in to hold hogs, it sure wouldn’t be very portable any more. They would just have to leave it up all the time. But, as you said, soon the pigs would learn to avoid it, and then it would have to be all dismantled and dug in somewhere else. A big job.
       But there should be some strong, cheap, lightweight, material that’s suitable, with current technology. I can’t see much choice but to dig it in, though, or else they’ll just root under. Perhaps some kind of base pieces, that could be just pressed into the ground with a tractor bucket, perhaps after just digging a small trench with a ditch witch, that feedlot or corral panels could then be bolted to?

       • “Once some get in and start eating the feed, those ones won’t even want out, at least not until they get full.”

         Unfortunately, incorrect. Search YouTube for hog trap videos, and you will see they are *highly* skittish critters. One warning or danger ‘grunt’, and the whole sounder hauls ass outta there and avoids it in the future.

         There’s no easy answer on the problem…

       • This shows how skittish they get :

         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7L2CCljyCk

         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TB-6xAyUtnY

       • Theyve trapped them for years with efficient traps. Hogs are tough and dont get injured very often and they’re not real hard to handle loading them. I did it for years. As others stated, if you ask a landowner to hunt you’ll get a go to hell look or they’ll ask a fee to shoot one hog. I dont have much sympathy for them. A friend and I did hog control on over 100,000 acres. We did it for fun. Our schedule was three days on and three days off so our off days we spent riding around blasting away. We shot or trapped nearly a thousand hogs a year. That ended when the ranch decided to lease the ranch in portions to deer hunters. No more hog control. I bet they regret it in the long run. Texas ranchers dont have my sympathy unless they let people hunt.

       • Install an electric fence inside the trap afoot or so from the trap fence. Have it activate when the trap falls. Hogs don’t like being shocked.they will stay away from the fence, no more routing.

     • I don’t know what the law in Texas is, but in Kentucky, once a wild hog has been trapped, it cannot be released from the trap or transported alive. It must be killed on site.

       • We have some property beside a creek with a county road fronting the property. There was a person down the road a few miles that was buying live wild hogs but not small ones. People that had hogs left in their trailers that were too small to sell were stopping at the creek bridge and letting these hogs out. now we have the damned thing running around tearing up everything even though we hunt them. They became used to the traps and will not go near them now. Of course there is big land owners on 2 sides so it’s like sanctuaries on 2 sides.

       • Ive been trying to find a place to hunt hogs in KY but no matter who I ask they all give me stupid looks like I was going after unicorns. What counties in KY have open hunts?

     • Larry I came to say The same thing. There isn’t a hog problem. There is a land owner problem. They are still trying to make a profit off the hunting….

     • They should try hypnosis… If they can get a woman to act like a chicken, surely they can get hogs to march down to the local butcher shop.

     • KNUTE (KEN), large commercial hogs traps are already on the market. They are effective. My neighbor has one that is about 30 feet across equipped with a camera and internet capabilities. The trap door can be tripped with a smart phone when it is full of hogs. My neighbor has a 1000 acres or more where he traps. There is a good market for live hogs. That type of trapping if profitable.

   • You’re assuming you can find a land owner that’s not going to charge you trophy fees to hunt hogs.

   • Well, Guv’nah’,

     I don’t know what the hunter might make but I’ve seen some of the prices landowners are charging for the “privilege” of hunting wild pigs on their land and it’s a lot more than I’d pay to hunt an exotic critter instead of something which they have up the ol’ wazoo and which is damaging their property.

   • My question is why is this news? And why is this bad thing? Why should we be alarmed? Are the hogs rising up and killing people? Are they occupying resources and oil reservoirs? Are they killing off livestock? Are they pushing for a right to vote?

     No. So there’s a ton of hogs. Big deal. They’re tearing up the ground. Ok, so do ground hogs. I just don’t get the dire warning. At a certain point they’ll hit maximum living capacity and suffer a Malthusian catastrophe and be whiped out by their own success.

     • You clearly haven’t seen the biblical level of damage wild hogs can do.
       They are like a hurricane made of tornadoes full of broken glass…with a high IQ.
       You just can’t kill ’em fast enough.

     • I recall reading an article 20+ years about the westward expansion of the feral hog population, and how it was finally reaching Texas. Now look where we are. Those things breed too quickly for current methods to keep under control. And they’re very destructive.

       I agree with other commenters here who say the problem could easily be mitigated if landowners stopped trying to make money from hunters. Simply charge a nominal fee ($20 per tail or $200 all day w/o limit), and you’ll get plenty of action to clear those critters from your area.

       • I’d go for a flat fee, shoot all you can situation…however, I am NOT going to pay by the pound. If they truly are a nuisance, then if it were my land, I say come in and shoot them all. It must not be all that big of a problem if the landowners are trying to make a profit out of it.

     • I realize this article was written months ago, but in the last week or two a sounder of hogs did attack and kill a home health care person when she got out of her vehicle. This happened in TX.

       • They do kill and injure livestock. And destroy crops and fences. They eat ears off of lambs, etc. And they have attacked and killed (dined on) a person inside city limits in a residential community. It is not an easy situation.

   • Texas should open Hog hunting to out of state hunters on a no fee basis. Also, any person over 65 years of age resident of Texas or not should be able to hunts private or public lands without a license.

     • they just did.

       • no licence need to hunt hogs now. I charge a 100 a day to hunt hogs on my land, Kill as many as you want. The money covers the cost to grade the trails and replenish the feeders. Us land owners do not make make money on hog hunts, but the money is need to make it easier to kill them. I only have a few hundred acres and yes they are a big issues and we can not eliminate them hopefully manage them.

         • Ed Hamilton how far are you from Houston Texas we will be coming down there on June 2nd to the Md Anderson cancer and we’ll be there for a while and I would like to hunt while I’m there. What all do I need to bring with me.

       • I am looking to find a place to hunt hogs in an in Taylor texas hunting hogs with my pulsar thermal give me a call would love to hear from you my phone number is 206 305 1736 . I am old e tough to prefer a phone call. Have a good day.

   • What I don’t understand is why don’t they put medicine in there food to make them sterile it would make more since. They could go around in a helicopter and drop it where they find the most hogs. There’s a lot of places where people don’t hunt it’s to hard to get to. They could fly over at night and and find them with night vision binoculars and drop the food. With all that’s being killed and them being sterile that would get a better hold on the problem and it wouldn’t cost as much as what there spending for the damage there causing.

   • I would be happy to travel on my own dime, pay for my ammo and food to help anyone get rid of feral hogs on their land. However I am not willing to pay for helping you.

   • I would like to come to Texas and hunt your hogs and help do my part to control the pests . If someone would merely pay perdium I would be glad to kill them . I would provide gun and ammunition..

   • They get about 40 cents per pound. Six 200 lb hogs a day is $480. If you have several large traps you can make a full time living at it.

   • I agree! I’d hunt full time if I could earn enough to live on. As I goes, it costs me money to go on a hunt.

   • There are several solutions to the wild hog problem,thing is will the state of Texas be willing to do what needs to be done in order to get rid of all the wild hogs,the state of Texas could pay a bounty on each hog head and in one year the hog population would greatly diminish,the land owners want to charge people 200/300$ per hog, it’s either the state of Texas pay the bounty per hog and landowners allow people to hunt hogs without charging or just let the hog population explode,the state of Florida pays bounty on the python snakes that were loosened in a hurricane back years ago, Texas may want to follow suit or keep allowing the wild hogs to flourish,the way I see it,the ball is in the state of Texas court!!

   • And before you know it, some goon what to prove the problem by advertising their commercial hunt :
     avatarDavid Fisher says:
     March 5, 2020 at 08:14
     In the State of Texas alone, feral hogs do more than $52,000,000 per year.

   • I talked to a guy that hunts in the Abilene area. Land owners there ask him to reduce the hog population. He hunts at night. Sells the hogs to a dog food factory by the pound and has made up to $1500 a night.

   • What does it cost for a out of state license in Texas? and how hard is it to find farmers that need these pigs gone?

2. Get about 75 or so cattle car trucks and transport them all to Washington DC then turn them all loose. Solve two problems at once.

   • Sorry Rocketman, that won’t work. Half the hogs will be mistaken for Lobbyists and get paid to hang around the Capital Building. The other half will start collecting AFDC and food stamps while turning out two litters a year!

     • You nailed it !!

     • 👌🏼👍👌🏼👍👌🏼👍👌🏼👍👌🏼!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

   • Impose a property tax on them.

   • That will just add a bunch of pg shit to all the bullshit in DC

   • I like your thinking on this…

   • Nancy Pelosi will try to get them on the voter roles

3. License Free “hog only” hunting and baited pen traps are the only viable options so far, and, as the story points out, that ain’t enough. I would like to see fed rules on suppressors repealed (remove suppressors from the NFA) to give more hunters the option of shooting multiple hogs without the first shot causing a stampede. Encouraging high schools to form hog hunting clubs and training teens to be safe hunters might help, too. Those ideas, also, are still too little.

   • Oh, the possibilities are amazing. In TX there are essentially no rules, so far as I can tell. You can hunt from a helicopter, at night, using night vision on a suppressed machine gun, no license required, no bag limit, babies are fair game. Other than high explosive cannon fire I don’t see what else you could wish for. But I am still not paying a landowner $500 a day to help him with his problems.

     Machine guns should also be removed from the NFA, and then repeal it.

     • No hunting restrictions make it very accommodating, but the greedy land owners are making it unaccommodating with their trespass/hunting fees. I’d even pay a FAIR lodging fee in a lodge/bunkhouse since almost all larger ranches have such items. Botton line the hogs can eat the whole state untill the landowners see that they do have a problem & open up to hunting.

     • A license is required. See https://tpwd.texas.gov/huntwild/wild/nuisance/feral_hogs/#hunt

       • Gov. Abbott just signed SB 317, which drops the requirement of a hunting license to take feral hogs on private property (with landowner’s permission).

         So when this goes into effect Sept. 1, you’ll still need a license to hunt hogs on public lands, but there are so few public land places in Texas where you can hunt hogs as to make the requirement meaningless. For pretty much all hog hunting in Texas (i.e., private land with landowner permission), it’s truly open season on hogs.

   • Suppressors aren’t silencers. The hogs will still hear the shots. What you need is a semiautomatic rifle with a large magazine. That is why ARs are popular for hog hunting.

   • Night hog hunting on public land would help out alot.

4. Well we might as well give Nancy about 100,000 and deliver them to san fran…

5. I know they have experimented with feeding stations that dispense foods that keep them sterile, apparently that didn’t work. Maybe have hunting tournaments with very nice prizes to attract a lot of participants… or a bounty , that works also…

   • Many counties already have a bounty. The going rate is $5 a pig.

     • And what do you have to pay the landowner to let you shoot it, $200?

       • If they have a hog problem most will let you do it for free. These animals destroy everything.

       • Don’t know, I’ve never paid to kill pigs.

       • FedUp echoed what holds me back. For whatever reason/s, I am under the impression that very few private landowners will permit outsiders to hunt without paying a significant fee to the landowner. Given my significant expenses for travel, lodging, lost wages (for the entire foray), and equipment, the last thing I want to do is shell out even more money.

         Pay me a nominal fee to hunt the hogs, however, and I will be all over it like a cheap suit. (The nominal fee could be something like $25 per hog killed.)

       • Downunder when you go pig shooting, you pay for accommodation on the property. About $250 for a week per person usually. A guided spotlight from the farmer may be $50 extra per night, but has a higher guarantee of results. As for pig numbers, as many as you can shoot and you have ammunition for. This is why I take at least 200+ rounds with me when I go pig shooting.

       • The problem is a lot of landowners want $500 to $1000 to hunt on their land some of them per day

   • Why would you sterilize the bastards? Just kill them.

     • A sterile hog will still compete with other hogs to mate, potentially taking more breeders out of the population than just killing the one.

     • Many years ago Purdue University was breeding super cockroaches much larger than normal , then sterilize them befor releasing them on US Navy ships. The oversized cockroaches would kill off smaller competitor male roaches , so the line would die off. I don’t know how successful it was. Any ex Navy guys remember that ?

   • That sterilization stunt was years ago, and for coyotes. I understand it was very successful, but haven’t heard of it for piggies.

6. I won’t kill an animal I don’t intend to eat. Not dogmatic about it, it’s just me. So, is it safe to eat them? I heard something about parasites making it risky.

   • They are completely safe to eat. It’s free range organic pork.
     As always, cook your game to a safe temp before eating it.

     • Thanks.

   • As long as you aren’t taking a bite out of the still-beating heart in the field, it’s not an issue. You cook game animals to neutralize parasites; common knowledge for some 500,000 years, now. Commercial sale of ‘free range’ hogs is banned largely to protect hog farmers (as if there’s a difference, lol), but yes, the presence of parasites & brucellosis in some measure is a significant ‘down grade’ from the standards expected from commercial food-grade pigs, so there is some justification for the restriction.

   • Phil, I have seen what hogs do to farmland, and heard about the first litter at 8 months old, plus walked on a 3-inch carpet of pecan shells covering more than an acre, where the hogs had consumed probably over $100,000 worth of nuts. That landowner told me his ethics went right out the window, take the shot at 500 yards and don’t even care whether you wound the animal, shoot them all! The threat from hogs is very different, apparently.

     • Thanks. I get shooting pests for control when that needs to be done, and am not going to wag my finger at anyone for doing it. I just don’t have much taste for it myself.

     • Gestation for hogs is 3 months 3weeks and 3days so they can have multiple litters a year. Our domestic hogs will birth 8 to 12 piglets each litter on average . So it’s no wonder they are taking over.

   • Does this mean that you are a canibal?

     Kill the pigs, gut em, skin em then make bacon and ham out of them to feed the homeless.

7. Well maybe if they’d let us poison the damn things…

   Oh, and make it illegal to charge money to hunt them; that’d dry up the supply so fast our heads would spin. There’s a whole industry of providing land and resources for commercial hog hunting (overlapping with commercial deer hunting to a large degree, in that both are sustained in ridiculous numbers by automatic corn feeders). Banning the sale of deer corn would also dry up the supply overnight.

   “But muh cheap gamey venison!”
   “But muh hog bacon!”

   • There is tons of evidence to contradict your hypothesis. Hog populations have flourished and grown outside of areas where hunting is common. They are extremely common in suburban neighborhoods.
     Banning the sale of deer corn would have absolutely no effect on hog populations, other than reducing the opportunities to kill them. Deer corn is not the majority of their diet, by any means. Agricultural crops often are.

8. The Number One reason more people like myself aren’t out there every weekend killing as many pigs as I can get my sights on?

   Because I don’t want to have to pay several hundred dollars for the “privilege” of shooting a property owner’s pests.

   Texas property owner’s love to whine about how terrible the hogs are but then are reminded that a few people might be willing to shell out money to come fix the problem for them. That’s fine – as long as there are a never-ending line of paying hunters out there to keep the pressure on the pigs. But there are only so many people with the time and resources to do that. And they aren’t going to be doing it every weekend either.
   You own property with pigs and want some help getting rid of them? Try not charging folks to do your pest control for you.

   • I made a similar comment below. I guess these landowners aren’t feeling the urgency they claim to be. Otherwise they’d be encouraging out of staters to come on their land and do them the favor they desperately need.

   • “Try not charging folks to do your pest control for you.”

     We don’t. Our friends and family hunt for free. Random people we don’t know roaming around our land shooting everything that moves? We charge for that.

     • @jwtaylor: Then landowners need to kwitcherbitchin about being overrun by hogs. There are contracts or agreements that can be drawn up between landowners and hunters spelling out exactly what can and cannot be done on the property as well as penalties for stupid behavior.

       If the friends and family are not enough to keep the hogs down, you can’t be bothered to get a lawyer draw up an enforceable contract between you and strangers who want to hunt, and you can’t find the time to walk the property with them to clearly explain what they can do and where, then I have zero sympathy for you and other landowners who share your views.

       I agree that there is very little public land to allow non-landowners to help knock back the hog population. That means the burden of the hog epidemic is on the private landowners. If they won’t allow people who want to hunt on their land without charging an arm and a leg for the privilege of helping control a dangerous and invasive animal, then they deserve all the hog-based damage they get.

       • +1

       • Enforceable contract? How much of a bond are you willing to put up prior to hunting to be released to me if you shoot my livestock? It had better start at 20k at least.
         Ok how much do you owe me for shooting one of my kids?
         Take time to walk the property? Are you serious or just that ignorant? At 800 acres I am a small landowner.

       • I appreciate your concerns JW,. Rancher friends of ours in Oregon were pretty selective about who they gave permission to hunt deer on their ranch. It was a constant battle to keep off the trespassers and/or vandals, while letting friends hunt.

         But then, our friends weren’t complaining about herds of feral deer eating up all their wheat, either.

         If the feral issue is as bad as claimed, then landowners need to come up with a solution. Charging a big entry fee still doesn’t guarantee that a hunter is safe. I hunted – once – on a fenced property outside of Austin. Not only did several of the fee-paying hunters scare the crap out of me with gun handling, but so did the landowners! The whole thing was a joke, and although I’d love to drive from Washington down to Texas again to eradicate some porkers, I’m not going to pay big fees on top of that.

         A contract is still binding, no matter how small the value exchange. Maybe the state can issue a voluntary hog hunting license that includes a liability insurance policy to cover any landowner’s damages. Say $20/year. Landowners could still let folks hunt for free, but only allow strangers that have the insurance/hunting card.

     • JWT, you “charge for that”? Why the hell would you even ALLOW that? I suspect exaggeration, sir, if that behavior is what you expect your land would be closed to hunting. Gouging strangers is, of course, acceptable to me, but making unlikely excuses in order to do so is unseemly.

       • That’s exactly what I did, close the property to any Hunters other than my friends.
         For other folks who have to set up specific places for hunters to hunt, safe lanes and fencing, as well as deal with hunter safety issues, charging them to hunt is completely reasonable.

       • I agree it is “reasonable” to charge people, after all it is YOUR land. It is also reasonable for others to point out that the issue can’t be THAT drastic if you set the entry fee so high it precludes many hunters.

         If I want to get rid of rats, but expect the exterminator to pay me, I shouldn’t be shocked if no one is lining up for the privilege.

         BTW, I’ve only hunted hogs in Florida, Georgia and Missouri, never Texas. If it was my land I wouldn’t let some random schmucks on my property- but I wouldn’t whine about it either.

         • But if the infestation is as bad as most say it is, and as a land owner was serious about eradication (they’re not), then it would behoove you, (in an effort to mitigate the legitimate concerns about allowing public hunters on your property), to supply (free of charge) an escort/guide to accompany their hunts. Heck, it could be a friend or family member. But these landowners won’t do it because they are too greedy to pass up charging outrageous prices for folks to hunt their land.

     • In Oklahoma theres a program set up that insures landowners, at no cost, against any damages if you allow people to hunt your land for hogs. It’s gathering dust. The state even set up a program so landowners with a hog problem and folks wanting to hunt hogs could sign up and meet each other to initiate one helping the other. In the 5 or so years it’s been in place it has a long list of folks wanting to hunt and not a single landowner. The liability issue is covered by the state here and the ability for hunters and landowners has been set up so what now?

       I get it, it’s difficult to trust people in this age but it used to be second nature for those of us who grew up in the country. How times have changed. As long as the people with the land and the hog problems turn away hunters, try to charge large fees and lease their property to commercial hunting companies (who don’t control hog populations as they claim and instead trap and buy trapped hogs to maintain high hunter success numbers) the hog problems will only get worse.

       One of the best things the state’s should do is outlaw commercial hog hunting organizations. They are making huge money while keeping the hog populations high.

   • I have read this same complaint at other sites: that the TX landowners may be their own worst enemy when it comes to pig management due to charging for access. I’ve never had a farmer in PA charge for access to their land to hunt deer, groundhogs, and other pests when I get permission from them. Just seems odd that this wouldn’t also be the case in TX of all places.

     • I had a pal who bought his own little piece of property in TX because hunting permits were so expensive, and that was in 1975! Until then I had never even heard of paying to hunt.

   • +1

     • I just moved to Texas in July,I am a avid Hunter for years ,I want to hunt hogs .I have read and watched videos of how hogslive down here ,but I haven’t heard where to go ,or. How to go about finding a place to go hunting.

9. Hunting feral hogs only educates them. Missouri Conservation Dept. takes a dim view of hog hunting and strongly discourages it. They have shown that hunting hogs will not eradicate or control hog populations. They have been very successful in trapping whole sounders in eradicating hogs on pwners’ property. Hogs tend to migrate north from Arkansas into southern Missouri counties where MDC takes a strong line on them.

   • But that’s not fun or profitable…

   • Killing them doesn’t control them. Unless the State does so? Some logic there I’m missing.

     Texas – turn in 5 hog tails and get a new Magpul with 50rd of 5.56 or 450. The ONLY meat welfare deadbeats can get is processed hog.

     • Is that true? Damn, I am proud of my state!

10. For those out of staters who’d like to come for a week and put the smack down on Wilbur and friends, the sad reality is that there’s very little public land. And it seems the private landholders don’t seem to feel the urgency this article portrays. They see feral hog hunts as another source of income, one they aren’t the least bit bashful about charging dearly for. I’m sorry, but if the article is accurate (that’s a rhetorical question), then I’m the one doing them the favor at my considerable expense, which includes taking time off, airfare, lodging, ammo, etc. When the biggest expense is hiring a “guide” to hunt your land, I’ll take a hard pass. If I’m paying for that, I’ll seek out more exotic critters.

    • Sounds like florida. 300 bucks a pig and no one wants to let you hunt private. Theres got to be a happy medium somwhere. 30 bucks a pig?

    • I hear this line often, exclusively from people who do not own land for agricultural use.
      What you are asking us to do is to allow strangers onto our property to start shooting. Think about that for a minute. Myself, and just about everyone I know who let folks they don’t know well onto their property to shoot pigs have ended up getting their homes, their barns, and their livestock shot. I have had all three happen on my property.
      To hunt pigs effectively, the hunting need to be mobile, and it needs to be done at night. So now you are suggesting that I allow strangers on my property to walk around and drive around shooting in the dark.
      Wild pigs suck. They cause a lot of damage. They don’t cause near the damage that random people walking around shooting things do. Wild pigs don’t’ shoot my kids.

      • JWTaylor makes great points. If I was a landowner I’m sure I would feel the same way. To that issue, what if there was a training program for people to get certified on how to safely hunt safely on private lands? (Mapping boundaries, etc.) This would also eliminate the weekend warriors who tend to be wreckless or crazy. The government could also establish a waiver of liability for the landowners, so that if someone gets hurt they don’t get sued (which would be my other major concern as a landowner).
        Just trying to think outside the box.

        • Not only that, but the state could organize the eradication efforts and farmers/ranchers could be contacted directly by the state DNR and informed of the plan and asked for their cooperation.

      • Per my comment above, perhaps if the state employed hunters or issued state licenses that required background checks, training etc. people would be less reticent to allow the hunters on their land at night, knowing that they were professionals and not just a bunch of drunken yahoos with guns and 4x4s.

      • I understand your position. I’d recommend not whining about the infestation then. Obviously, as the data shows, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. If/when the problem becomes so acute, the landowners should provide a guide (who could be a trusted friend/family member) and access for free. Seems that’s the most efficient way not to get your house shot up.

        • I’m not whining about infestation nor have you heard me do so. I control my hog population with hunting, pressure from competing livestock, and lots of big dogs.
          But that only works on a small scale. What I am in fact doing is pushing pigs to other people’s properties.
          Hunting alone, on a statewide scale, simply will not work. What you are asking landowners to do is to take incredible risks with their livelihood and their families in order for strangers to have a good time shooting pigs. When it comes to out of state hunting of wild pigs, we are simply providing a service to you. You are not providing any kind of effective service to us.

      • I shoot small invasive potguts in central Utah several times per spring every year. I have yet to shoot a person, livestock, barn, watering system, or anything else of value. We take thousands of these alfalfa eating critters. We also take antelope when in season and legal. Perhaps you need more responsible aquaintances or a vetting system? Surely the great state of Texas has hunters of the non-yahoo variety?

        I routinely get thumbs up from farmers while I’m working. I’ve been invited to 4 meals at farmers homes. Once I was given obsene amounts of ammo for my services. Utah farmers know how to treat a responsible and friendly hunter to keep me coming back.

        • Very different kind of hunting. Hog hutning often done in heavy brush, at night, with packs of animals on the move.
          Entirely different risk profile.

      • And yet, I don’t believe there’s mass-casualties every year on all those public hunting spaces –no worse than any other outdoor recreational activity, at least.

        So basically, this is –once again– NIMBY’s crying to the moon. Poison side-steps all those concerns you have…and yet it was unacceptable since it might ‘taint’ the hunted game. Because hunting the game is what it is really about at the end of the day, and not controlling the hogs. The hogs reproduce too vigorously for you to have it both ways, without hog-pens (and even then, they escape *constantly* wherever hogs are raised)

        • Our aversion to poison has little to do with “hunted game”.
          When the government tells us that they are going to drop poison all over our land, but don’t worry it won’t hurt our families or our livestock, we tend to be skeptical.

        • Are you a hog rancher, by chance? Because I don’t see how a rapidly biodegradable dilute poison like warfarin could possibly harm anything but scavengers (and even then, only scavengers that subsist almost exclusively on the tainted meat for a considerable time span).

          I remember the debates from a couple years ago; increasingly elaborate & unlikely scenarios being spun to show that the poison (any poison) couldn’t be acceptable, despite all the logical theory, historical, and experimental evidence. The only solution is no solution…oh, and more paid hunting. Because that’s the real motivation here; more & cheaper hog hunting, not controlling the population. “My dog could bite into a pig carcass & roll over dead…I mean, my dog could eat pig carcasses exclusively for a full week & then roll over dead…I mean, my kids might accidentally eat the hog-baits exclusively for several days & get sick…I mean, my paying customers might see streaks of lesions & gross blue meat if they cut into a hog they paid to hunt from my property, and decide to feed on it exclusively for a several days regardless & get sick” –it was as pathetic as it was obvious.

          Maybe we should implement a bounty system…so there’s even more incentive to keep hogs on your property!

        • barnbwt, goat rancher and farmer with an organic dairy.
          Your solution would have ended my business overnight.
          I don’t know what your business is, but you are spreading a lot of lies about why ranchers like me won’t tolerate the broad release of rat poison on our land.
          I don’t charge to hunt on my land at all.

        • Fair enough; I can certainly see goats eating anything remotely food-like, so I can see them eating hog baits. I forgot about that other omnivorous food-critter. I’m not a goat rancher, but I guess unlike most of the outfits I’ve seen, yours must encompass some very large unmanaged acreage as a commercial venture? It seems like most goat farms I see are fairly modest-sized pastures 10-20 acres) which could be pretty easily isolated from where the hog-baits are being placed, and the goat populations more easily monitored. They’re also usually pretty barren (from the goats) and don’t seem like the places hogs could bed down in without being shot at.

          The sprawling, largely unattended cattle & horse ranches with big wooded areas are where I assume the hogs are, and neither of those animals would be eating the hog-baits (they were supposed to be ‘meat flavored’ in order to specifically dissuade the bovine denizens, and IIRC the feeders also optimized to pig mouths vs. cows/horses). And of course, farms with produce for the taking…which I understand generally don’t have grazing animals working them over.

          Going back to what I said; the concerns I see appear rather overwrought & unlikely. The Aussies didn’t seem to have these issues, either. If the presence of warfarin baits “somewhere” on your property causes you to lose your ‘organic’ ‘status,’ I see that as a true business impact. But if the alternative is hogs running completely unchecked across all agriculture in the state?

          I don’t work for the bait company, if that’s what you’re insinuating. Honestly, I have more personal incentive for hunters to buy a ton of guns & ammo to go shooting hogs with. My incentive is the indirect costs I have to bear, whenever the hog damage cost is passed along to me, the consumer. And as the voter, when ranchers/farmers come pleading for my tax money to help remediate a problem they allowed to explode in the first place. And as the driver & hiker, when I suddenly come upon these stupid things in my travels and risk damage or injury. I’m not a hunter, though; that I will readily admit, and I feel it is why my opinion is not clouded by the cheap entertainment the animals clearly offer to those so inclined. Same reason I’m not elated to see so all the deer carcasses & destroyed vehicles on the side of the road in my area, despite the sausage & backstraps being cheap & plentiful.

        • barnbw, no sir, I was not insinuating that you work for a bait company. You have a lot of opinions about Texas farmers and ranchers that are not based in fact, and I see now that is because you are not a farmer or rancher.
          A 20 or 30 acre pasture would be very easy to manage and would not require any kind of hog eradication program. Four big dogs is all you need. Those are Hobby Farms, not commercial Enterprises. God bless those folks, they’re great, but that is nothing like a real commercial Dairy. Those folks have maybe a couple dozen goats. Most successful goat farms will have at least a thousand goats. Hell, depending on the time of year, I might have 300 kids. We are talking about very different scales here. I said it above, but at eight hundred acres I am one of the smaller landowners.
          When you consider this, you might see how it really changes the arithmetic about poison, as well as about people walking around my property shooting. To be effective at all, either of those activities must be spread over a large amount of space that I cannot regularly observe.

      • That’s a choice you make ultimately. I can see the urge NOT to let people blasting randomly on your property, but at the same time if the pig issue is an issue then that means you’re going to end up being the person responsible for it.

      • JWT, wait a moment, you are taking a 90 degree turn from the gist of this post. The whole story is that “hunters are needed”, while your position is that hunters are beating down the door trying to shoot anything and everything, of course you must make them pay through the nose. Not both are true, you just need to say the story is not correct, hogs are completely under control and a great source of easy money from the suckers, and we can drop the worries about poor Texas being overrun.

        • you read that post very differently than I did. The original post makes it very clear that hunting is not the solution. All hunting does is reduce the increase of the problem and, as the original post points out, is a temporary solution at best.
          Given that, given that we know hunting is not a solution, it is not worth the very real, legitimate, and permanent threat of people who we do not know shooting our livestock and our family members.
          That is an extremely high price to pay for a solution we know is not effective. The juice is not worth the squeeze.

      • Mister landowner, Please feel free to enjoy hogs that you do not charge a single red cent to ravage/forage on your property (and I am sure they are gentle with your children). Hogs like to root and tear up the soil so they do your plowing too. But if they introduce some disease to your livestock, if you have any, then it would suck to be you.
        Having more respect for hogs than humans is how you come off here and some commenters are being polite to you while while you trash them.
        I won’t be polite.
        You can play God or all-knowing mint-muching landed aristocrat or go out and purchase 10 foot high chainlink fence like so many Texans do so they can import wildlife from around the world for canned hunts and big bucks. But do not forget to put up the signs that say “If you crash into this fence, do not move your car, call xxx-xxx-xxxx”, we don’t want your valuable killable gazelles to get out do we? Those fences and signs are all over the state.
        So, dear Texas, enjoy the pigs down there- and wild hogs too. The state should fine landowners for allowing and fostering pestilence. One more thing, what I would like to see here in Colorado is no more goddam Texans hunting elk and deer in our National Forests. They are a disgrace to behold.

      • Would it be possible to section your land say into 200 acre parcels? If so could you move your free range livestock to one section and open 200 acres to hunting? And rotate the live stock every so often for feed? maybe keep the 200 acres around the living quarters closed to hunting. I would think that 200 acres around your home would keep the family safe from any stray bullets ECT! Also what if the price was high for the first trip and if a hunter was proven to be respectful and safe then he could get a reasonable fee on future trips, that way everyone would go through a vetting process. I would be willing to pay a higher price for the first visit if I knew it would be much more affordable for future hunts!

11. Time to break out the silencers, night vision and subsidies for the Militia.
    It’s for the children, because fine pork is a terrible thing to waste.
    Collect the honorarium, slay the porkers, drop them off to be butchered at the food distribution centers, and repeat until there is no more pork.
    Of course Democrats are invited to trap, sterilize, and relocate the beasts if they can agree to do it. Of course they could satiate their blood lust by capturing only the pregnant females and aborting that tissue.

    • I had a neighbor a couple decades back, dunno whether she was a Dem or not, who hired a team to trap all the feral cats in the neighborhood, around 15, I think. Then she paid (!) for them to be sterilized, and turned them loose in the neighborhood again. That is some expensive commitments.

12. It’s more complicated than this article describes. First, there have been cases where “sportsmen” have released hogs including larger varieties. I haven’t read of that happening in Texas but it is a apparently common in the south east. With that being known, I’d be surprised if it wasn’t happening here.

    In the second place, many landowners have discovered that they can charge people who want to shoot hogs. Their property is not open for hunting unless they are being paid. Since many of them aren’t involved in planting crops, the damage done isn’t nearly so worrisome to them. If private property being prevalent in Texas and there being many hog “sanctuaries” because of it, we will likely not solve the problem.

13. What’s frustrating is that I can’t find an affordable place to hunt them. The ranches that are set up to let people hunt hogs aren’t cheap (I understand they are a business, so not knocking them at all) but I can’t afford to pay those prices and go very often.
    I think part of the problem that private land owners have is liability. Maybe if the state set up a program for hog hunting that limited the liability of the land owner (and responsibilities of the hunters) they could get more people out hunting them.
    Thoughts?

    • Those hunt-ranches also have exactly zero incentive to control their hog populations. Quite the contrary, in fact, unless they are very securely fenced installations (actually, a runaway hog problem in & outside the property makes it much easier to ‘supplement’ the herd without drawing attention)

      It isn’t like we don’t see this exact scenario play out with endangered animals, daily. Ban the profit from the hunt…suddenly it’s worth every property owner’s while to have these damaging animals annihilated by any means. Allow the use of slow-acting poison, and suddenly you have thousands of persistent “hunters” working 24/7 to put downward pressure on whole populations with little impact beyond the hogs (maybe it’ll hurt scavenging coyotes; so what?)

    • “Maybe if the state set up a program for hog hunting that limited the liability of the land owner”

      Texas has a Recreational Use Statute that does some of that. Maybe it needs to be expanded.

14. Expand the call for hunters to Texas from surrounding states by offering free rooms and lodging during the hog hunt.

    • Right! $1000 per day, lodging included!

    • Those of us living in the state are already having a hard time gaining access. Everything is privately owned.

15. If I didn’t live so damn far from there I’d spend a week hunting them. But it’s too much trouble to fly there with guns . And I don’t feel like paying to help eradicate them.
    Just my positions on the matter.

16. How to decimate a species:
    -convince the Chinese hog testicles are an aphrodisiac
    -get PETA to “protect” them
    -get e-thots to wear boar heads while streaming
    -have feds airlift in a bunch of wolves……that would be bad for the wolves
    -announce they voted for Trump

    • Pay Planned Parenthood to care for the young ones?

17. Without natural predators the pig problem has to be solved by us humans. We’re going to have to get creative. Maybe have hog hunting festivals with prizes for most shot, greatest weight, youngest hunter, kills with a knife, spear, pistol, shotgun, rifle, etc. I don’t bass fish but there seems to be a lot of hullabaloo over them. And hardly anything to eat when you’re all done! Start a Hogs Unlimited or something. But instead of trying to preserve hogs the purpose is to eradicate or greatly reduce the population. There would need to be rules and standards for being able to hunt them and training to undergo so that people aren’t shooting the wrong things. Make it a win/win for property owners and those who want to hunt. If you’ve got credentials from Hogs Unlimited then property owners would gladly allow hunters on their land. Donate meat to shelters. Heck, make homeless and welfare recipients participate to earn their food. European royalty used to hunt them from horseback using spears. Kinda like jousting. I’d pay to watch that in a controlled environment. Entrepeneurialism and capitalism can do it! I’m sure there are other ideas out there. What say you TTAGers?

    • We’re plenty creative; we drove a species damn near as clever as us to extinction (wolves). We just lack the will today to do what is necessary. Widespread poisoning is really what did-in wolves, and it is what will do-in hogs. Cheap, low-profile, low-impact, works ceaselessly for days or weeks at a time, easily controlled, inescapable. Use a slow-acting poison that builds up slowly in the target species, and you don’t really even need to worry about follow-on environmental impact to scavengers or the remaining ecosystem.

      Texas was ready to deploy such a poison (warfarin, aka rat poison) but spooked hunters because it might work too well. So instead they looked at less-effective sodium nitrite poisons, which –shocker of shockers– hung around long enough to cause damage to other species (who’d a thunk that a meat-preservative would persist in meat?) So now we are still unable to deploy any poisons, and are left trying to manually crush every last rat with a claw-hammer as a way to control the infestation like a bunch of morons.

      • Poison is the answer. It’s the only answer and we know it. The article above says as much.
        But it has to be a poison that won’t hurt our families or our livestock, and doesn’t kill the local native wildlife population. It’s not about deer. It’s about deer and foxes and coyotes and bobcats and quail and etc…

        • Gotta protect the coyotes (even more overgrown than the hogs) and the bobcats (SSS applies here in spades to chicken farmers & pet owners –oh wait, you don’t think their commercial interests should take precedent as do your own re: poison application?) and the mountain lions (SSS is the official stance of the USDA IIRC, since they don’t acknowledge the animals even exist here, lol) and the wolves/bears/panthers we drove to full extinction because they were so dangerous & damaging to keep around and still have no plans to reintroduce?

          Oh yeah, one of the other concerns about warfarin is that the hogs “would suffer” –no really, that was one of the main objections, lol!

        • No, that was not one of the main objections by any of the actual landowners, ranchers, and farmers. I went to a lot of meetings about different poisons, systems of delivery, and where and how they were to be delivered. No Rancher or farmer ever gave a damn about the pigs suffering.

        • Barn, we drove wolves to extinction for greed, not because they were dangerous. Likewise with coyotes, people shoot at them non-stop not because they are taking pets or livestock, but because of the shits and giggles. A lot of people find it fun to kill animals.

          If you want to play the livestock game, humans are a bigger problem than any pest animal could ever be. Go take two seconds to look at the USDA cattle statistics and causes of death sometime. Respiratory issues, Ppreventable disease, lack of shelter, etc, AKA human caused problems, are over half of cattle losses. Even theft (Human caused problem) all by its self takes more cows than wolves do.

          The only wildlife that I’ve ever seen take livestock in nearly 30 years of living in Texas, are bobcats and chicken hawks. Chicken hawk was a one off instance and the bobcat problem is limited to chickens. Next time I get chickens, they will be enclosed in a wire covered hoop house.

          I’m surrounded by coyotes and hear multiple packs howling every other night but only one yote has ever come out to be seen and that is because it was wounded by some piece of shit that should never be allowed to handle a weapon again. I have around two dozen barn cats at any given time, none have vanished. I don’t have any mice or grasshoppers where the cats hang out at.

18. I have a powered paraglider. Could I legally hunt hogs from it in texas?

    • Probably. With night vision and silencer at night! Question is can you fly and shoot at the same time? Could add it to my suggestions above.

19. If the land owners didn’t charge 2-3 hundred bucks a day to hunt them, I suspect it wouldn’t be that bad.
    Went there once, but was ripped off by an unethical outfitter.
    Until something changes, it’s just going to get worse.
    I won’t go back.

20. Wow! Never new a pig could touch such a nerve. I grew up shooting the odd pig. Most which we called piney wood rooters. They are decent camp meat when we were camped on the Ochlockonee River, but shooting one was considered a chore. We rotated the duty. Fast forward to today. Pigs showed up on the farm. They are destructive. Over the course of a year we shot, trapped or caught with dogs 300+ hogs on 1000 acres. We now have things under control. By far, the best method was the dogs. Hogs can not tolerate the harassment.

    • “By far, the best method was the dogs.”
      Exactly this.

      • How do you keep the dogs on your 1,000 acres?

        • Feed them all the hogs they can eat!

        • Raise Great Pyrenees with the flock. They will go wherever the flock goes and only where the flock goes.

21. Where we need to airlift them is the mountains of Afghanistan and Iraq. The American and European forces over there would surely love some whole roasted pig from time to time. Might clear out the caves as well. Get the government to partially subsidize the round ups and all of the transport costs. How many hogs fit in a C17?

    • Hogs don’t ‘root’ much in a sandbox…

    • Just shy of four hundred, if you want them contained.

    • Uh, wait, now. Doesn’t some religion over there have problems with pork? Still, airlift is expensive, how about a tramp steamer with 10,000 or so? Still, dump them 2 miles offshore is easier.

22. Put a $20 bounty on every dead hog (collect tails, or ears) and they’ll be eradicated by every working class Tom, Dick and Harry by the end of the year.

    Who wouldn’t want to spend a Saturday making a few hundred bucks shooting / spearing / drowning / bowhunting a bunch of feral hogs? Sure beats sitting around watching golf on TV.

    Heck, you could do at least a C-Note wiping out a litter of piglets. Plus you’re helping to reduce their carbon footprint!

    • That’s what I was thinking. If the government puts a sufficient bounty on them, they’ll be hunted, trapped, and poisoned down to nothing in short order. It’s only a matter of how much money they’re willing to throw at it.

    • Texas is mostly private property. Paying a bounty won’t help if the landowners will not let you hunt or charge large sums for permission.

      Now if the state was to start fining or otherwise punish the land owners for harboring an invasive species it would then be up to the land owners to deal with the problem.

      • The idea is that the landowners themselves could also make money from the bounty. Even if they charge a fee to let hog hunters in, the bounty would be well worth it for the hunters. Everybody gets some, and the hogs go down hard.

    • Ridiculous; a bounty when people are already *paying* to hunt is the exact wrong policy if you want to actually reduce the number of the things.

23. As someone who has also dealt with destructive pests that had high reproductive rates (in my case, ground squirrels and pocket gophers), here’s a reality I learned the hard way:

    Shooting them will never get you on top of the problem. Sure, you’re making a bit of a dent, but you’re not going to really slam them back. When I would poison for ground squirrels or gophers, I could achieve upwards of a 80% kill rate in one day’s time, maybe two days’ time, and then I’d clean up the rest with shooting or traps.

    Landowners/farmers simply cannot spend all their time shooting pests – there’s too much other stuff that has to be done a farm or ranch to allow the owners or employees to just go afield day after day with a rifle and shoot any pests they see.

    The only thing I ever found that would reduce a vertebrate pest population to a point where we could keep it under control with shooting/trapping was poison. I tried lots of different approaches. I attracted predators. I had hawks, eagles and owls on my place by the half-dozen. They helped, but after they’ve eaten a couple/three pests per day, they’re full up. This wasn’t a huge help when I needed to get rid of dozens and dozens of pests in an hour’s time, hour after hour. One year, we had a quarter-section of ground where we trapped out over 7,000 pocket gophers. I used a “gopher getter” to poison (strych on groated oats) the rest of them – which I estimated to be over 15,000 of them. We literally broke our county’s bounty system at $0.50/tail. They never offered a bounty again.

    The next year, we were still dealing with pocket gophers. More poison bait applied at the right time (just as they were coming out of hibernation) knocked them back for the season.

    The downside of poisons is the secondary kill issue – and in the case of wild pigs, the stench of that much flesh rotting in the fields (as well as what happens when a swather or combine happens upon a carcass in the field, under the crop canopy).

    • Maybe try a mink or a ring-tailed cat? I’ve heard they kill small critters just for fun, in addition to food, lol. Of course, both are considered pests, themselves, so we’d end up sending wave after waves of snake-eating gorillas to deal the snakes we sent to deal with the minks we sent to deal with the squirrels (the gorillas will die from cold over winter)

      • “Maybe try a mink or a ring-tailed cat?”

        There are folks who hire themselves out with trained minks and dogs to de-rat barns and farms :

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ymSBQDYjeM

        • It’s like a rodent Sam Fisher!

        • If you want to de-rat / de-mouse a farm, get a terrier. They’re outstanding ratters. Quick & efficient.

24. If republicans would stop breeding the feral hog problem would go away.

    • If Democrats would stop breathing, all other problems would disappear.

25. Make it illegal for land owners to charge to hunt hogs on their land. If they do charge give a reward to report them. Hogs are not Indigenous to Texas or the USA. So if a bounty is placed on them then you will see a reduction in hogs. Supply me with a night scope for my rifle and I will gladly do it.

    • Val, I have a problem with the government telling me what can be done on my land. It’s already bad enough. We once opened the farm to hog hunting. All comers. Next thing we knew we had people fishing in the ponds, sitting on the fields during deer season, people everywhere. We shut that down quick. Only one guy with his crew and dogs allowed and only when we knew when he would be there and we monitored everything.

26. You can build a feeder {24″ x36″) it has to have a sliding door at each end, with a bar at the bottom of the door, the hog can raise the door with their stout, It must have two stops where it can be set where you can put un- posion corn where the will get used to feeding. Then add your poison to the corn they then can raise the door to the second stop and eat, the small amount the leave will not be enough to kill deer and other will life. It is used in other countries and it is true you must remove 80% of the hogs each year to control the population. Texas will not allow this to be used.

27. It ain’t just Texas. It’s the entire lower half of the country, and spreading north. I live in MS, in a rural farming area, and we have the same problem as TX. Folks in the suburbs of towns like Jackson regularly see the damn things on their front yard.

    But until they get widespread in metro areas like NYC, DC, etc. nothing serious will be done about the problem. Trust me, it won’t be long before they are competing with the rats.

    • ” But until they get widespread in metro areas like NYC, DC, etc. ”

      They’ve been spotted in the southernmost county (Sussex) of Delaware. It won’t be long now.

28. Here just south of where I work, there’s a massive greenbelt that follows the Trinity River down in to Fort Worth proper, no telling how many hogs are roaming around in there. No hunting there, of course.

    In regards to landowners letting people hunt hogs on their property; if we hadn’t become such a litigious society, they might be more eager to allow it. But the way things are now, any person that sets foot on your property is a potential lawsuit.

29. Feral democrats. Is it open season on them yet?

    • Soon, give it another yr…right now, all the traps are being baited…

30. “More Hunters Wanted: Texas is Losing the Fight Against Feral Hogs”

    And over the yrs, landowners thought they could make a quick buck charging for hog hunts, and when it got ridiculously expensive, the hunters stopped coming, and then the problem dbl’d…now they’ve gotten themselves into a pickle, more feral animals, fewer hunters, and the $$$ well has dried up…this is what greed gets you…

    • I agree 100%!

31. Would not make any sense to me to go shooting on land I have not made an effort to gain some familiarity with. Where the roads and paths are, where other people may be. I have hunted on State Trust land for decades, you damn well better know where stock tanks are, be observant of cattle guards and keeping gates exactly as you find them. To me it’s a extension of basic gun safety rules. How can you be aware of safe places and directions to shoot if you have zero familiarity with the land? Made more complicated on private land with all the farming and ranching infrastructure? The pump houses and corrals and irrigation and outbuildings and routine workings of the business?

    Reading the land owner and hunter comments above, seems to me one solution would be in how land owners go about allowing hunters on their property. Require hunters come thru an organization, like a shooting club, that provides instruction and orientation on the ranches and farms in their area, approved by the land owner. Where the buildings are, the risks to livestock and people. Spend a day (or less, whatever is needed) driving around getting oriented with a local volunteer of the shooting club. Needs a very officious sounding title like “Volunteer Hog Whacking Tour Guide”.

    I see the complaints of both sides are real, finding a solution needs a bit of calm and creativity.

    State dollars for ammo would be good too. Which could be as helpful as a bounty per critter. Maybe do both?!

    • How big is this bounty? It might be worth the resources to breed the hogs for the bounty.

32. Time for Makin’ Bacon….

    • That’s whats causing the problem.

33. There would be many more hunters if the landowners didn’t want to charge so much! It’s ridiculous! We will go for free! On our dime! Just for the meat! And we will kill only hogs. But nope, they want 500.00 a day per person and give you a kill limit of 2… They act like it’s such a problem but don’t want anyone killing them without a profit.

    • The kill limit, especially, is downright comical.

      I understand charging admission, simply because it dissuades shitheads. Personally, I think the foolproof system would be to charge a 500$ deposit, which is returned a week after they depart when it’s been verified the hunters caused no damage/broke no rules.

      But yeah, it’s clearly all about the dolla bills on this one, no matter what they say. Hunting groups were even saying poison was too cruel for hogs, lol. It’s obvious that they are worried poisoning would be so effective, that it would be rapidly required to combat hogs even on these ‘free range pork’ game ranches, and that would cut into the bottom line (and or course the cheap, easy fun-factor that boars provide hunters)

      • I tell people that I’ll manage game cameras/feeders/blinds for their deer season. I’ll even help clear trails and all that stuff just for access. Got power and water? I’ll pay to use that, if not, I’ll pop up a tent or sleep out of my vehicle. Hogs are an industry.

34. I’m a little busy right now killing spiders, but just as soon as I can me and my meat cleaver are heading South. You guys better git em while you can

    • Possum, I bet to this day you have nightmares of that video Strych posted of that big-ass spider eating that baby possum… 😉

35. Feed ‘em to Wu’s pigs.

    Deadwood FTFW

36. They killed all the Buffalo , in 2 years what ever, with junk guns, but great shooters. So how long is this gonna take? Set up some hot dog processing plants, and kick some ass against these Russian donated hogs, get a contract with McDonald’s and serve mc ribs year round. And native raised grass fed smoked Chicago style dogs, yellow mustard, sweet relish, fresh onoins, pickle stick, sweet peppers, celery salt, 2 tamales, and a beverage of your choice. The hides will make great work gloves, or feral pig jackets, with a skull and crossbones painted on the back for the head bangin, metal heads. Warm and yummy, it’s an American original, what are we waiting for ? AOC to ink it. F that I’m hungry and cold.

    • The bison slaughter started in the 1830’s, and wasn’t done until 1883, when the last large bands from the Northern Plains Herd were extirpated. By the time the Winchester 1886, the Browning High Wall, and other buffalo rifles came on the market, there were no more bison left to hunt.

      One big difference between the bison and pigs is the number of offspring. A bison calves one calf, maybe two, per year (every 9.5 months). A sow has 5 to 6 piglets per litter, and can become pregnant very quickly after giving birth.

      There’s a reason why pigs were called “mortgage busters” by farmers.

37. Sporting Shooter Association Australia runs the Farmer Assist program where shooters are covered to 20 million public liability. It includes short safety course with exam and more importantly practical marksmanship test. Basically under 2 moa for all stages. Targets checked and verified by SSAA range officer. No fees changed by land owners for access.

    There are also poisons developed in Australia just for pigs.

38. Except living in Texas, it is difficult to find a place to hunt if you don’t have access to private property. I recently moved to Dallas from the Midwest and am an avid hunter (long gun, not archery). Caddo National Grasslands is the only public place that is near and it’s not large. It is closed to hunters ATM and is usually dripping with novice hunters on the weekends. A hunting lease for my significant other and I would be thousands of dollars. All of the other places for pig hunting that I’ve found want me to pay to hunt hogs on them. Hog Hunting is an industry down here. Don’t believe me, find me a free place to blast hogs and coyotes all year ’round (except maybe deep season to be courteous) within a 2 hour drive of Dallas. I’ll send you a $200 finder’s fee if you can set me up.

39. I’d be all for arranging to cull feral hogs, but so many property owners (mainly farmers) with hog infestations act like they’re booking 5 star vacations to work out access to hunt. I’m not going to shell out hundreds of dollars or more for the privilege of using my own equipment and ammo to cull the ferals that are tearing the bejesus out of your fields of soy, corn or whatever.

    That’s not to say that I’m expecting to be able to go out and just blast away at anything that moves, I’m more than willing to work with landowners with regards to where I can drive an ATV or truck and where to set up a blind or a stake out and not tear up crops or other infrastructure on their land, but to expect people to pay you a weeks pay to get thin out the pests ravaging your crops. At that point, you can hire professionals, and I’ll find someone with a deer lease who’s willing to work something out.

40. The global change that needs to occur, is to correct the influence of baiting in Texas. Baiting is huge in Texas for deer and exotics, and hogs both directly and indirectly. Unfortunately the prolific use of corn and bait feeders in the State pretty much coincides with the explosion in the feral hog population. A state law requiring hog poof fencing at all feeder stations would help if it could be enforced. The organism is quite simply adjusting propagation to the availability of nutrients in its environment and it is damn good at it.

    • This is exactly what attracted the hogs out here. Bloody deer feeders. They hear the feeder dump on a timer and out they run.

41. I live in West Texas. We have Hogs but not that big a deal yet.
    My Problem is I cannot get onto any land to hunt period.

    Tell me where I can go Hunt & I will kill them for free.
    Center point for my location is Odessa Texas.

    • I’m with you Dave, I live in ND and have been looking into bowhunting hogs in the winter months up here also to get my boy to cut his teeth bowhunting also. My problem is the amount of money for only a few days hunting and you can only take just a couple and your done, if they are such the problem and no bag limits why am I limited to taking 2.

42. I would love to hunt hogs here in central Texas … but land access doesn’t exist w/o paying too much money for me (from Austin). Paid $200 to hunt for one night out at a place out toward Dripping Springs … way over-hunted, didn’t see a single thing. Waste of time and money. I understand land owners not being crazy about the idea of letting strangers run around on their land at night, particularly if there are cattle or other livestock. How can one go about making connections with folks who will let you hunt and not charge an arm and a leg?

    • Zackly

43. make it a national emergency and let them access to go anywhere. for room and board from texas ill do it for a year, hook me up with some night vision and ammo and its on

44. It would help move them around if the private land owners would start letting people off-road on their land, make the pigs feel like someones always around. They would either move somewhere else or become used to people slip up and get shot in the face. Many property owners here dont even let people hunt on their property many dont hunt themselves either if they did this wouldnt be a problem, you dont even need a hunting license to depredate on your own property. Funny thing is i havent seen a pig or coyote on my property in ne texas in around 2 years id do my part if they would show up i planted corn this year so fingers crossed they will show up

45. If texas parks and Wildlife would quit putting dollar signs on us. We might come up with more creative ways to help hunt hogs. I have a drone that i can use to help spot the damage area’s. But Texas parks and Wildlife say you have to pay for a permit to fly and use your drone for hog hunting. I don’t remember Texas parks and Wildlife helping me pay for my equipment. I think it’s crazy that we have to buy a permit to hunt private land for hog hunting.

46. Sounds to me like Texas needs a $50 bounty on wild hogs, Texas needs tourist hunting and killing wild hogs, So invite me and my buddies down and let us help. If you toss in a tank of gas would be nice. But no matter would like to hunt Hogs in Texas let me know when, where and how?

47. Here in Oklahoma there are plenty of people who want to hunt pigs but have no access. Landowners either refuse hunters outright, demand large fees or lease their land to commercial hog hunting groups who charge hunters. They then trap or buy trapped hogs to keep their numbers high so they maintain high hunter success rates. The commercial guys with the highest hunter success rates book the most hunters and the cycle continues.

    I live in central OK where we have one very small section of public land to hunt but it’s obviously packed during hunting seasons and so far isn’t known to harbor wild hogs. I’ve wanted to hunt hogs for years and years but unless I want to pay big bucks I’m out of luck. My purpose built hog guns have never seen a day in wild since their birth.

    If you have friends with land, access to hog infested public land or have pull in the industry you can hunt pretty much at will but the rest of us have essentially been shut out. Makes me cringe every time I read stories talking about how easy it is to get out hog hunting. It’s not. Even those of us who live in “Hog country” don’t have the option available to us without a fat wallet.

48. I’d love to go and take my sons with me – and we’ve discussed it – but when it will cost me several thousand dollars for travel and ‘spacious’ lodging and then more for ONLY one or two hogs TO SOLVE THEIR ‘PROBLEM’, I have to say “NO”! Basic economics dictates there must be an incentive, and ‘just for the fun of it’ doesn’t cut it. And many ranches and outfitters restrict guns (no pistols) and calibers (M1 Carbine which has as much impact @ 100 yds as a .357 @ muzzle) that some people would have to buy a new gun just to hunt. In summary, the State of Texas and the private landowners better think this out more thoroughly and come up with a unified and comprehensive program if they truly want this problem solved.

49. Big landowners not letting anyone manage/hunt these hogs on their property sets up sanctuaries for them to go onto highways and cause auto damage and wrecks. State should require landowners to implement a hog control plan and report the number of hogs removed per month. This would help the small landowners whose property is torn up by hogs originating from these ” hog sanctuaries”.

    • We don’t need more government interference.

      If you want to interfere with something, go after ranchers who leave their fences down year round and let their cows and horses out onto everyone else land. Go after livestock people own. Once you start punishing people for wildlife on their land, you open a whole new can of worms that will never end until owning land is out of financial reach.

    • Damnit, TTAG BRING BACK THE EDIT BUTTON!

      Most people don’t want the liability of randos coming onto their land and shooting off in the wrong direction. One stray bullet and it comes back to the person who was shooting and to the person who hired them too. Inviting people to shoot on your land is a disaster waiting to happen.

      • Bows and crossbows would help solve the problem of shooting kids, cattle, or buildings. Doing what land owners want about where and when to go, these hunters are more likely to do them.

50. Others have said it ad infinitum, but I’ll say it again. Texas landowners have a problem, and not city folk, not renters, not small holders, but big Texas landowners. While any significant number of landowners are charging, rather than paying, for hogs to be killed, the only real problem is that they can’t attract enough suckers to pay their fees to hunt hogs.

    These impassioned pleas to come do something about the hog problem are starting to sound like sales pitches, and pathetic ones at that.

    I’ll throw down the gauntlet: I’m a healthy 42 year old man with 35 years hunting experience who can qualify expert with a rifle on any sensible course you may choose, who will relocate to any part of Texas to hunt hogs for any portion of any year, or for years on end for the cost of travel room and board and expenses, food ammo gasoline and the like. Willing to live in apartment, spare room, bunk house or shack. Will supply my own weapons, 4×4 and 4 wheeler. Will hunt 6 days a week as well as nights in any weather allowing success, and willing to guarantee results.

    Anyone interested can reach me via TTAG, they have my email.

    • Make sure you have liability insurance and have incorporated into an LLC before trying something like that. Your LLC should be the one offering the services with you being an employee.

    • Double post, don’t forget your Texas sales tax permit for collecting sales tax on your services! Professional hog removal may or may not be a taxable service. Collecting tax without a license is fraud. The person contracting you will also need to issue a 1099 form.

      It usually more trouble that most people will put themselves through and want an easier option.

51. Same here in Georgia. Have to pay $3-500 to hunt, with no guarantee you will get a hog. I want the meat, by the time you pay to hunt and have it processed, it is cheaper to go to the store.

52. Tell democrats that the hogs can vote and most would end up in California, New York and DC

53. If it wasn’t so expensive for our of state people to hunt I guarantee there would be more hunters. I for one would love to hunt hogs but I can’t afford to pay that kind of money. Lower the price and it will come into play for killing more hogs.

54. this is a problem from Large land owners they imported the hogs as a way to make money, having hunts and it got a way from the greedy Bas***ds, a land owner wants a piece of the action charging X amount of dollars per pig to hunt his or her land

    • Its a good business if you got a lot of land that you aren’t doing anything with. A large degree of the human population are sociopaths and psychopaths. People like their killing. legitimate hunting and killing pest animals like hogs are socially acceptable outlets for such types. Hogs will never get any tears, even from animal rights extremists.

      Once upon a time such people were highly valued as warriors and hunters. Some still are. In modern day, there isn’t a whole lot of room for them and their need to fight and kill is still there. They are a profitable market, naturally people will cater to them.

55. This is a job for Sarah Palin!

56. Or you could, you know, introduce predators and not allow hunters to hunt those predators.

    Nature has a funny way of balancing itself out if we leave it alone and don’t interfere.

    Worked for several parks where wolves were reintroduced.

    • Yep, retards want to go shoot up all the coyotes and bears, for nothing other than the shits and giggles. Its something living to shoot at rather than boring paper/cans/tannerite. Then we all wonder why the deer, rabbit, hog, and bobcat populations are out of control. Well shit, no predators for the deer and rabbits, and no competition anymore for other predators.

      BUHHH MUH PRECIOUS GAIEEM ANIMALS!!

      • Have you seen what Wolves have done to the Northern Yellowstone Elk Herds? You need to educate yourself.

57. Another issue is that most hunts are done on private land and that costs. Public lands are available, but then you have others taking advantage of those lands to enjoy, and hog hunting is done at night also and most public lands close or stop hunting at a certain time. So now we’re back to private lands. The owners charge crazy prices for the hunt, to dress the hog and sometimes the weight of the pig is charged an extra fee. So, if you want to knock down the numbers, then stop robbing hunters with crazy fees. By all means make a profit, but be reasonable.

58. Nuke them from orbit….it’s the only way to be sure…

59. ADVERTISE THIS IN GERMANY!!
    Hunting is a VERY expensive undertaking there.
    You could get German tourists lining up to be outfitted and guided onto a hunt- no problem!
    (If you hunt hogs in Germany, they have to check the meat for radioactivity from Chernobyl- if it’s too hot, you can’t keep the meat.)

60. I have been in Texas for 5 years now. I’m originally from Ohio. Hunting in Texas is a joke. There is so much private land that people lease for over 1k and during the week let others take game that would have been for you. Hog hunting is a commercial sport here. They fence them in a farm them. The going rate is $1 per pound you get charged at these farms.

61. I have hunted feral hogs for 20 plus years,all over North and East Texas.I have several ranchers that I hunt for every year,with a friend.The key to hunting is making relationships with ranchers and farmers,and gaining their trust in that process.Now I have their friends and neighbors calling me,asking me to hunt.I don’t have time.I am retired and hunt 3-4 days a week.People want to trust you,if they don’t, you don’t hunt.I don’t shoot their cows,goats,sheep,deer or dogs.I offer them the pick of the hunt,as many as they want.I give some away,harvest some for myself and burn the bigger hogs.The rancher/farmers let me use their tractors and equipment to transport if I ask,and are very appreciative of what I do. I haven’t paid for ammunition in several years,as they all know what ammunition I use and prefer,or they have reloading supplies when I go hunting.I don’t over hunt and rotate where I hunt for a reason.Relationships and trust.

62. me and my grandsons would to go hunt .but the farmers charge way to much for me. I am on ss and can not afford $5000.00 to hunt them.

    • Yea all this worry but the farmers are not complaining that just means more money in their pocket

63. Would love to help out but like many have said way to much money for a 3 day 2 night hunt like 600 a night per person provide your own hotel or place to stay and provide your own ammo but your only aloud 1 or 2 hogs I’ll pass on that deal basically if I wanted to go it would be about 2000$ for 2 pigs

64. The state shouldn’t have to pay people to hunt them. If it was actually a problem then the land owners wouldn’t charge people to hunt them. Just another story blown out of proportion. I’d go hunt them for free but like others have said people want to make money by charging you a lot to hunt them.

    They’d get it under control once they pass a law saying owners can’t charge for hunting them. I know literally hundreds of hunters that would go hunt them for free!

65. If it were a real problem Texas would welcome hunters from across the country without charging expensive out of state licenses fees. I’m not paying the State of Texas or a land owner to take care of their problem.

66. As long as land owners want to charge me $200+ to kill a hog, they can keep the darn things and deal with the losses they experience. If the problem is really as bad as they claim, offer free hunts.

67. I find it funny that there is this problem with hogs in Texas and the alarm is out that more need to be eliminated, yet you go on the internet and you have these ranches charging hundreds of dollars to hunt the hogs….these farms that have the problems need to advertise hunting on their property. If its such a problem seems there is a real solution.

    • The Texas hog hunting outfits do not want to kill all the hogs they are making big money charging people to hunt. They make deals with ranchers and charge $600 or more to shoot a trophy boor hog and $200 to $400 for a regular hunt. The hog is the Texas golden goose. If they really wanted to get rid of hogs they would put a $10 bounty on hogs and make paid hunts illegal.

      • LOL I just had to reply to this idiotic comment. You can’t introduce money to hunters to get rid of hogs. All that will do is incentivize breeding of more hogs and the cycle will get worse. It’s painfully obvious you’re completely clueless to how this works. Second I love people who don’t want the government involved into euro life but are more than willing to get them involved into others life to get what they want. You want the government to force landowners to allow you to hunt. You don’t have a right to my land you waffle. They way hogs will be controlled is through a program akin to how screw flies were destroyed. It won’t have a single thing to do with hunters who will never be able to make a dent in the populations. So to recap. You don’t have a right to my land. You don’t have a right to hunt anyone’s place. You don’t have a right to decide what people can and can’t do or charge for on their property. You sir are a jealous baby. You can do what every landowner has done and buy your own land but I’ve got a sneaky suspicion you’ve got the credit of a frog and the income of a gnat so you want big daddy gubmint to make those greedy landowners let you hunt.

68. Anybody need help hunting and killing these creatures? I would love to help you out. Contact me

69. $25.00 per hog bounty that only landowners who allow free hunting can collect.make the hunters pass a certified hunter safety course,and buy a state hog harvest license.shotgun or archery only could be an option for first time hog hunters to provide a bigger safety margin.$50.00 per hog for second hunt bounty,maybe allow rifles to 2nd time proven safe hunters.encourage landowners to set safety zones .the hunter can’t collect any money from the bounty but could keep any hog they harvest.
    The government could collect licensing fees and insure the hunters were as safe as possible,the hunter could hunt at an affordable rate,and the landowner could collect bounty money for their trouble.this may not be perfect but it would allow some hog control,some hunting opportunities,and income for landowners willing to participate.outlaw pay to hog hunt.

    • Feral hogs can roam up to 35 miles,as an average, while foraging for food.Unless you know farmers and ranchers who coordinate with hunters and agree with general rules involved concerning the hunts,it isn’t realistic to expect all of those parties to agree and let you hunt their property,simply for any number of reasons.The hunters that hunt regularly on properties are know by farmers and ranchers and have been doing it for a number of years, for a reason. Simply put, they can be trusted not to shoot houses,dogs,people, farm animals.The hunters that hunt with me,are known to each other and the farmers and ranchers in any given area,and they are trusted because they have been proven to be able to hunt and not endanger,property.people and animals.Trust is the key to hunting feral hogs on a regular basis.You have to work, and it is work, to develop these relationships.The question that you have to ask,would you, as a landowner trust someone that you don’t know to hunt on your property? If you are honest,the standard “pat answer,” would be no.

70. One factor is that land owners charge so stinkin much to come hunt them! Ridiculous prices like some protected species or something. I understand liability, but charging just for the liability insurance is enough… Unless the land owner is trying to make money on the deal. Those land owners can keep them on their land and I will, and have, found others that WANT THE HOGS GONE for real without capitalizing on their problem.

71. The Boarbuster trap is making a difference. It was invented by the Noble Research Institute in Oklahoma. Check it out at boarbuster.com

72. Infect the hogs with some HIV that causes AIDS. In a few years all the hogs will all be skinny and dying off. Problem solved.

73. How about feeding them some type of birth control drug or something that will mess up their reproductive organs? To John Baptiste, I don’t think you could get a feral hog to hold still long enough for a gay guy to make love to it. But it would give a whole new meaning to that line in the movie Deliverance where he said “squeal like a pig”.

74. I will be in texas in dec and jan is there some one that I can hunt on there ground I will be at port from dec 25 till jan 7 let me know thanks

75. I live in Tennessee would love to hunt hogs but I have looked on the web of places to hunt and they charge Armand leg to come out there and hunt so it’s not that big of a problem or they wouldn’t charge so much

76. The ONLY answer is sterilization and genetic manipulation. Our universities are full of scientists that can fine tune this idea. Let’s stop arguing about hunting and get this plague eradicated!

77. The biggest problem facing prospective hog hunters is the land owners. They dont want the hogs but they want you to pay them to hunt them. It should be the reverse. They need to pay us for the service we are providing! Untill that gets fixed the hog population will continue to grow.

78. Use finacial incentives and more hunters will come.

79. If it’s a war on feral hogs, why not form an Army composed of experienced Veterans to deal with the problem?

    Give that Army the responsibility to eradicate feral hogs, as well as the authority and equipment needed to enforce that eradication.

    When you want professional results, hire professionals!

    I understand the concerns of landowners, and they’re legitimate concerns when dealing with a mish mash of people jockeying for a lineup to ‘hunt’ feral hogs. But co-ordinating with a professional group of disciplined soldiers is a completely different thing. The goal is eradication, not sport hunting. Right?

    My whole point is this: As I understand it, there is no key person or group responsible for the eradication of feral hogs in the state of Texas, and it’s a very serious problem. If no one is truly responsible for the problem, the problem will continue to worsen and who knows what the results could be? Hire someone to be responsible and empower them to do the job.

    • Don’t believe everything you read if it is such a problem then why don’t they let people hunt them for free. this is a scam to get hunters to pay to come and hunt, all the wile tell them they are needed to get rid of the overpopulation of hogs. I have lived in Texas for over 10 years and have searched hi and low for someone to say help me get rid of these hogs that are so much of a problem and the first thing you find is farmers won’t let you come on there land and hunt them less you pay. There is a huge market for “Pay To Hunt” ranches here in Texas and they are cashing in on this hype that they have a hog overpopulation crises. Less you have a full-time hog extermination business you ant coming to Texas to hunt hogs for free. Would be better off paying to go hunt Elk up north someplace.

80. I am a Texas landowner, situated between a 15,000 acre hunting club and a coal mine that extends for 10 miles (no hunting at mine, limited hunting on club lands). Our 40 acre lake is the only persistent water source for miles. I have a hog problem that you would not believe!!!

    Night vision, large magazine, and even poison have been tried. And failed. High voltage fences help but are not completely effective. You’ll hear them squeal when they go under, but still they come.

    One fellow asked to hunt and proved that he was trustworthy. Last time we spoke, he had tallied over 1500 hogs this 2019 year.

    You wanna shoot pigs? Email me, and prove that I can trust you. No charge. No more than 3 guns per night. Bring plenty of ammo. Just take all that you kill. I’m tired of burying the damned things.

    • I’m a retired member of Naval Special Operations Command Team III Bravo Platoon. I received expert rifle and pistol medals. Having a guy wanting to throw down a bag of corn and sit in a blind doesn’t work well as you know. It takes getting out on your feet and stalking all day and night. The carcasses must be removed right away also or they won’t come around that area for a long time. I have recently retired as a civilian working for the government also and have nothing but bullets, patience and most importantly safety in mind.

    • Most land owners I have come across now see them more for profit than anything else these days. Most are charging from $100 plus per night with one guy telling me $400 per night. I have even come across land owners trapping hogs to breed them then setting them loose for the paying hunters.

      I’m retired from Naval Special Operations and have been in more dust ups around the world than I care to remember. When a friend of mine told his neighbor about me the guy said “I’ll only charge him half”. If it weren’t for the new guys moving in from California that would pay to go grasshopper hunting land owners would be begging for our help.

    • Hi my name is Stefan call me please 646 294 1211 I will come to hunt boar in your proprty

    • Glen I’d be glad to talk with you about such an opportunity been looking for somewhere to hunt for pigs and Coyotes would like to talk with you but have no email to send you any info , if possible send me a email address thank you

    • Hi Glen

      My name is Derrick Shoenrock. I live in Madison, SD. I read your comment on the hog problem article. I would be interested in getting in touch with you about hunting by your lake. I could not find an email so I thought I would write in the reply section. Please let me know if you read this.

      Thanks
      Derrick

    • I am a hon. discharged Marine am at the age of 62 now,myself an cousin would like to be able to Hunt hogs just for a few days sometime if you are still willing to let someone come in and take a few hogs,would love to have the meat,both him and myself have hunted since we we’re old enough to carry a firearm,have hunted about everything the eastern US has to offer,he has also hunted pigs but I have not,but have always wanted to.would abide by any and all restrictions you would have.may not end your problem but there would be a few less.

81. Wow, I actually have read every single comment on here. ALOT of good info. Kind of a shame they’re having to resort to poison, though effective. You cannot eat poisoned boar, no? Even if you Don’t eat the organs? Dumb question, I know, but I don’t know if poisons nowadays have a short half-life….
    My friends and I are from Colorado suburbs (And no, we don’t get High) We were dabbling the thought of becoming Boar hunters, either as a fun “vacation” for a week, or as a living profession. It’s kind of a shame that boars aren’t hunted more, as they’re a very versatile animal, as I’ve read about how tasty their meat is, “Boar pepperoni”, I even have a Boar-bristle brush for my hair. They almost seem like a superior animal than farm pigs. I understand how land-owners want some sort of responsibility/liability about “strangers” shooting on their land….
    Overall, it seems the absurd costs (Or rewards) to hunt boars is Not worth the time/effort. Maybe if some changes were made for the hunting, then the boar population would actually be equalized.

82. Problem with boars.. problem is with the (fee)…get rid the fee.. problem sloved…🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔😎😎😎😎… If hunter and landowner come to agreement to sell the meat split profit..hunter don’t have to pay and landowner gets paid… everyone wants something… everybody wins boars lose. …..

83. Yep landowners want paid to let you hunt almost all Land is leased if not a per day or per hog fee which many can’t afford, Texas landowners don’t for the most part want hog control hogs make them money I heard this need for hunters for years and can’t acquire anyplace that will let you come hunt just to help clear them out I’ve been trying for years , and the public land situation is unfortunately small and not much available, these articles keep saying the same thing all the time but don’t show the real reality of the situation, hunting is just not available unless you Know someone or have a big wallet in Texas, So for now still on the hunt.

    • Buy your own land then let EVERYONE COME SHOOTING

      • It my point the point was landowners make money off of hogs they really don’t want them gone so this article is mainly false , I still go to Ohio and georgia where I can hunt without paying all the fees where I can afford it but it would be nice to hunt here at home but land is too expensive Especially where I have to live so my wife has a decent daily commute can’t afford both , hunted all my life and never had to pay except for a license and some sweat to help the landowners at times with something needed done, no disrespect just can’t afford a lease for the amount of times I can actually go out with work and all, wasn’t blessed with wealth or family land like some lucky folks not that I haven’t tried to get there, so keep on working and be thankful for the generosity of those that let me occasionally use what they’ve been blessed to have.

84. The landowners bitch and complain about all the damage that hogs do to their property. But they don’t want help killing the hogs. Hunters have offered to come in and either trap or kill and the landowners say no. Then they realized that they could charge hunters $$$$ big bucks so they don’t want the help, only want to make $$$$ yet they still bitch about the hog problem.

85. I wonder how the fuck people live with there self after trying to depopulate animals an humans who are u to say how many of this an that are to be when u didn’t create none of nothing keep Fuckin with the earth an poisoning shit an let’s just say,the world 360 an we have to live off the land it want be shit there cause u motherfuckers Destroyed it All given us this plant base this low carb that sick mother fucka

86. I remember years back when landowners charged people to hunt deer on their property but they’d pay the deer hunters like $10.00 a head for every hog they got. Then they got greedy and wanted to start charging the hunters a fee for taking hogs. So most hunters quit taking hogs and a lot of them even quit hunting deer. Now that hogs have become a really serious problem, I think there’s going to have to be a way to make money from killing them. If not, it’s cheaper just to buy bacon and ham at the grocery store. There’s a lot of work to hog hunting and a bit of danger too! Not many are willing to do it for nothing anymore.

87. It amazes me when people want to go on a landowners private land and hunt ANYTHING for free . I have had people who make $100,000 a year + that think they should get to come and hunt for FREE, yet ask him if he can give you some of his services or products for free and he’ll faint. Us poor dumb farmers and ranchers don’t deserve to make “a little extra”. This is why I would rather have hogs than hunters, at least it’s still legal to shoot the hogs.

88. I trap and kill hogs any where. I charge 150 a month for the lease of the traps. When I scout with trail cams. Then I will set traps. I catch from 2 to as much as 10 in a night.

89. Texas needs to declare a state of emergency. And allow hunting on all property. Allow all stat hunting licenses. For a couple months.

    • There would be more dead hunters than pigs if they tried that on private property, I promise !

90. Texas: We need more hunters to curb the hog population. Texas landowners to the government, The hogs are destroying our crops, give us money. Texas landowners to hunters and out of state hunters: If you want to hunt hogs on my land it’s $200+ a day.

    Hunters: No thanks, solve your own pig problem.

    • Buy your own land then you can invite everyone to come out and shoot !

91. Hunting hogs sounds like so much fun. Finding people that will let you hunt hog on their land is not so easy. Too many hunters tear up property as bad as the hogs. The places that do want you to hunt charge fees, and forget any guides or outfitters for cheap hunting.
    Even my wife, who hates the idea of dear hunting, would love to chance at shooting hogs. What is a poor boy to do?

92. Just tell me where I can go in the Lubbock area up into the Panhandle, and I’ll do my part. I can’t find anyone to let me onto their property to hunt. I’m on Twitter @mjkung5. Email [email protected]

93. Put a bounty on them. Make it worthwhile.

    • I’d be happy to do it for sport

94. Send in the slaughter-bots!

95. Texas is a joke I was there for the last 3 mouths and could not find any one less than $350 for a hog hunt I can buy a hog and butcher it cheaper so let them rip the ranchers and farmers land up for being so greedy I would pay to hunt so much a day but not 350 or more a hog

    • Buy your own land ,(Please not in TEXAS) then let’s see you just open the gates and let everone with a gun come out and shoot, now don’t be greedy !

96. Just let me and the boys know what to and what not to shoot, we got this. Just come back to pick us up in a truck. The crew and I will fill it. Turkey, deer, any other legal animal. We get her done,

97. Sterilization?
    What about beneficial livestock? Horses, cattle, rabbits, deer, birds, etc? Do you want to make them sterile also?
    Part of the reason Landowners can’t just let anyone with a gun shoot on their property is because they may have cattle or horses on the land that could be shot unintentionally since the ferals are most active at night. Horses/cows worth hundreds or thousands+ of dollars for breeding purposes or market on-hoof sale. Consider that is the landowner’s business and livelihood. Would those happy hunters be welcome to come in your house/kennel to put out rat poison where your dogs/cats sleep. Or come in your office to shoot mice?
    Not to mention, the liability for the landowner if a hunter were bitten by a rattlesnake or had a feral hog with huge tusks almost rip off a leg as they run by while they are shooting another one?
    Yes, parts of Texas are still very wild. Feral hogs are some of the wildest, they will attack and kill calves/foals/fawns, etc., even hand raised smaller pigs and their littles. Not only will they kill and eat ground nesting birds along with their eggs, they also cause such damage to the ground cover by rooting, there will no longer be places of concealment for ground birds to hatch and raise their little ones.
    Texas landowners have to consider all of these things and more to reduce the ferals population. They are losing.

    • GREAT POST! Thank You you understand !

98. Well the problem is 95% of Texas land is privately owned. You can’t just go out to the woods and hunt anymore. Hunting is big business in Texas so if you don’t pay you don’t hunt. These land owners want to cry about the hog problem but then want to charge you hunt. Not every one wants to spend that kind of money on some nasty ol hog. I’ve seen $300- $1500 per hunt per person and the cheaper hunts require minimum 3-4 hunters. That’s just to hunt if you don’t lease a property for an average $2,000 a season per person or know a good buddy that owns land that is able to let you hunt for free. Then there’s the expense of your gear, trip and processing the animal. Most people don’t know how and won’t attempt to process the animal themselves and equipment to do it is expensive. So I don’t feel sorry one bit for these land owners and their hog problem. So instead of having to pay an exterminator like anyone else would to take care of a pest problem they want to find people to charge to take care of their problem. And those that say the money goes to pay for bait corn, how about a barter system? Ask hunters to bring so many bags of corn.

    • I’ll agree with all of it.

    • As I have stated numerous times, the solution is simple : buy your own ranch and open the gates and let EVERYONE hunt. Now don’t be greedy, let everyone who asks come hunt for FREE.

    • I agree. That sums it up. Land owners must PAY hunters to harvest hogs. $30.00-$50.00 per hog, limit 3-5 per hunter. 2-3 day hunt. Landowners pay each Hunter $40.00 for a 1 day hunt, $50.00 for a 2 day hunt, $60.00 for a 3 day hunt. Kill or no kill. Plus hunters keep the meat. That would cover our expenses and landowners hog problems would be taken care of. Hunters bring their own camping and food supplies. Please note, I’m not listing any fees in the hundreds or even thousands. Tried to list a FAIR fee for landowners. Not trying to PRICE GOUGE.

99. I am from Australia , and hunt pigs in North Queensland.
    Once or twice a year i fly to USA and hunt deer in Virginia at a friends property and then we go up to Quebec to hunt moose.
    My point is i would gladly come and shoot hogs, for free or even pay a lesser amount than a hunt package.
    My own firearm and ammo, and hunt for the love of hunting.

100. Where can one find places to hunt them?

101. Introduce a natural predator into the food chain.

102. Wow, in North Texas, particularly in the panhandle we have to pay landowners to let us hunt their hogs, not the other way around.

103. I’m going to be in Teas next December and would like to hunt them but don’t want to pay a high price to be on ranchers land. I’ve hunted them in California over the years and have some experience with them. In fact I would trade hunting there for hunting deer or elk here as I do every year with friends.

104. John McAdams, feral hogs breed 1x – 2x per year, not 3. 115 day gestation, 90 days nursing, etc. On average, sows are ready to breed at 6 months but do most often don’t until 12 months. boars can breed at roughly 12 months but often do not until 18 months. They average 4-8 litter size with a 1:1 boar to sow ratio. Unless they lose a litter, you’re NOT going to see a sow breed 3x in a year, just saying. The rest of the article is good. TOTAL damage (land, habitat, livestock, economic fallout, etc.) across our great state is estimated at over $400 million annually.

105. Must not be too big of problem or farmers and land owners would allow folks to hunt their land, free of charge. I’d even agree a contract of sort having hunter to agree to pay for any damages they caused.

106. until the farmers and ranchers get it out of their heads about charging ungodly prices to hunt,the problem is gonna get worse.I lived in Austin in the mid 80’s knew one rancher that had a problem,complained that hogs had cause over a half-million in losses to his sod farm and pecan crop,got permission to hunt one night,he showed me where,the way the hogs came in from ect.I took 7 in one night,and took them all to be processed.A few months later,was ready to try again,but rancher had died and his greedy son wanted to charge me 300 dollars to hunt,plus an additional 200 for everyone above a certain size.I took that money,went to the sale barn and got three fat hogs,and paid to have them processed,all for less money than greedy wanted.I understand about just letting folks with guns roam free on a ranch isnt always safe,but for ones like me,that had a place,no danger to any livestock,wanting ungodly money is only turning away even a partial solution.

107. Well for one thing, they need to stop Trapping and stick to straight killing. Trapping takes too much time, effort and resources by which time the hogs have already multiplied and dropped babies on tne ground far past the numbers one would trap. And after trapping maybe 10-15, you gotta herd them to a vehicle then take them to do wayever with… TOO MUCH TIME WASTED. JUST LETS US KILL THEM AND GET THE NUMBERS UNDER CONTROL, BEFORE THEY DESTROY TEXAS’S ECOSYS.

108. I’m willing to help anyone with for free to cut down on the population, but people of East Texas seem to enjoy having hogs, trying to make a quick buck! But hurting the farmers trying to make a living by adding to the problem. I’ve heard plenty of folks say man! Those hogs sure tore my yard up last night but when you say you’ll help them they day awww man I’d have to charge you $125.00 a day or $200.00 I’m not going to let you help for free.

109. Hey guys. I just watched a video last week where China was killing and burying hogs by the millions for fear of infection. That means pork will be in short supply there. I would set out feeder to sedate them buggers and have China or any other country that wants them for food. Might try also capturing males and give them a Vesectomy. Tag those males and allow them to be the dominent hogs and they will keep some of those sows from reproducing.

110. I am disabled/retired and would love to get in to this hunting. I am about 36 hours away but in one of these they mentioned that land owners were charging for hunting. Is that correct? If they are such a problem and they are wanting hunters what is the deal of charging the hunter, it seems they should be paying them. I have never hunted pigs, what cal rifle is needed or hand gun is needed? I would be happy to help if something could be worked out that it wouldn’t cost me. I wouldn’t look to make money, just don’t want to pay any.

111. Bandera County, I paid to have a professional hunter come in and kill hogs. $2,000 a month and for two months. He killed 57 grown hogs and a number of smaller ones. The hunter was professional and did a great job.

112. My problem with this is, by the time you pay non-resident license fees, trespass fees, and the fees these businesses are charging for a hog hunt, you can buy a hog from a local grower and have it butchered twice. I “won” a hog hunt, and by the time fees were assessed, it would be over $500, and I still have to get myself to and from Austin area, as well as pay for processing after the fact. So if this is such a problem, may keep these guys from leasing up all the land for these hunts and make it a little more reasonable. Although you can kill all the hogs you want without a license, if you want to eat any of it, you have to have a license.

113. I have Paid to hunt every year. Last Dec, I finally dropped a Monster.

     Is there a way to Hunt for FREE?

     I am a LE Firearms Instructor, Ret Police Chief and now a Federal Security Specialist. I have hunted for over 30 years. I want to help.

     Can anyone tell me where to go and help without me paying. Yes I would live to get paid to do it, But at least hunt them for Free.

     Let me know:
     [email protected]
     Jess

114. Sorry the hog problem in Texas is not a problem if they wanted to get rid of them they could this page is an ADD disguised as a problem but is an opportunity for land owners to make quick cash..

     • Sorry, anyone paying to hunt wild hogs needs help. You are part of the problem, not the solution.

115. hi im nathan i was try to start my own buisness on hunting and read moving wild hog in texas but dont no how to get start any ids please email me

116. I’d hunt them here in TX but I don’t have $1500 for a decent infrared or like sight. The few ones I do get, I share the meat with friends. It’s organic.

117. Feed the hogs to the swine!

118. I understand the land owners not wanting any strangers shooting on their property . We do not have a hog problem here in Indiana ( other than an occasional domestic hog getting free) . Hell I won’t let people I know hunt my property . It’s not worth the risk !

119. The solution is simple. Eliminate paid hog hunts. That eliminates the reason for anyone wanting more hogs. Secondly, make land owners responsible for eradicating the animals on their land. Otherwise, you are effectively screwed, Texas.

     • They get the tax cuts for throwing a cow an acre land owners should have to produce a quota of tagged-photos of culled hogs per acre. I mean the hunters pay to hunt the deer that just walked across their private land into the public land. They don’t own the deer, hog, pheasant, etc. If they do then why the fees and restrictions. The hypocrisy in this country is stupifying.

120. Write an article (or comment) with at least one link telling me where a financially self-sufficient retired person like myself can go camp in Texas, find and be welcome to shoot feral hogs without paying an ‘outfitter’, land use, or out of state resident hunting fee, and I’ll believe Texas has a wild pig problem.

     I think this is the second article on the subject have read in TTAG. Sort of like ‘fake’ news rolled out on a cycle. You know the drill. There’s a supposed problem that’s getting worse, doing a lot of damage and costing people money in the state of Texas. But then again that just seems to be fine for a lot of people hoping to capitalize on it, have jobs based on it, and most the people of Texas apparently don’t care, or aren’t affected either.

     Everybody is happy, so what’s the problem? Like global warming. I’m supposed to give a crap that someone’s spoiled grand kids, consuming just like feral hogs, won’t have seaside real estate to inherit? When access to public beaches is disappearing?

     I don’t need payment or gratitude. No fantasies it will lead to a $90k income. I will pay my own expenses for gas, food, meals, enriching the supposedly beleaguered people of Texas suffering this ‘problem’. It would be way more pleasant than trying to volunteer for anything in the ‘community’ these days. No having to sign publicity releases, get background checks, sign privacy agreements, waive my rights to personal information, read and sign off on disclaimers.

     Problem solved?

121. I guess I don’t get it. If someone is deliberately bringing them onto their property to charge people to hunt them, just let it go until they need your service, then turn the tables on them and charge them a high rate with a higher stupidity tax. Maybe I’ll bring termites into my home and then charge exterminators to come and kill them. I wonder how that would go over. How many takers do you think I would get?

     • I think the many wealthy land owners should pay to have professional hog hunters wipe out as many hogs as possible. Trapping works.

122. This anxious hog hunter from Iowa is going down to Texas to kill hogs with a few good buddies. Who wants their hogs killed? Please call 641-895-5341

123. Hog hunters, go to the EWG website, find your state, find your county you wish to hunt,
     then zero in on the landowner wanting pigs eradicated, and see what the landowner is
     getting in government taxpayer subsidies. Then check and see if there is a timber reserve
     program for landowners, which exempts the timber land from property taxes. Then check at the courthouse and see what money making Ag land is taxed per acre compared to small acerage or a town lot with home. Then check at your USDA office and see what land is in CRP taxpayer subsidized set aside acres. When the rancher tells you if you think ranching is so good, get into it, reply that you already are, and ask them if they realize where the income tax money comes from for Ag subsidies.
     Pay to help someone? We already do.

124. Im from Ohio and have a massive raccoon problem. I let people come out and kill them for free because they destroy my corn fields. I look into pig hunts around the south and these farmers want paid to take care of THEIR problem.

     that being said if anyone has the lowdown on where to kill a few hogs hit us up.

     Ig: Hanging_tree_official

     • Exactly. These “new” age ranch owners who came across a few bucks in life form these LLCs, slap a fancy ranch name on their gate and charge people big money to eliminate THEIR pests. lol. The States, including Texas, now restrict what was never restricted because Dems run these agencies now and trust me they enjoy fee and licensing revenues and restrictions that cause demand to drive permits cost up because people pay. This is the peoples land and it’s disappointing to see this trend in Texas of all states.

125. The issue is that you can’t hunt them with an AR15, 10 and that’s the ONLY issue. Nobody wants to be limited to muzzleloader or bow to hog hunt or shoot a hog with a fricking shotgun..seriously? There are millions of ARs looking for a purpose other than poking holes in paper and 3 gun competitions. Maybe set up 1 rifle per hunting area (Area 1, 2, 47, etc) and prohibit Friday-Weekend for rifle. No limits on baiting and let gun owners have fun with their ARs. Thought Texas was more gun oriented than other states but it’s really no different than …shitty Illinois. WTH. Democrat infiltration is being allowed to over..I see it coming and is already here in so many ways. You’re gonna get limited, licensed, and fee’d to death if you’re not careful Tx.

     • What are you talking about? I live in Texas and hunt hogs all year long with thermal riflescopes on AR-15s, AR-10s and LR-308s. Where did you read you can’t hunt with ARs. That’s literally our tool of choice here.

126. The reason they limit the AR is on the public land is because the public land is also used for riding horses and many other extracurricular activities there’s so many people trying to hunt such small parcels of public land which there aren’t many to begin with most of Texas land is in private hands , and trust me I pop many at hog with an AR you’re better to use a 308 I’ve hit hogs five or six times or more in the head and lungs and they just keep on going you might get a few of them small feral hogs with an AR but the big boys take a little more power to break through I shot the last one with the 308 he went over 100 yards down here stuff a thick they get down in there you’re lucky to find them not to mention you sure don’t want to do an after them right away, I was the same way when I moved here I whined a lot about not being able to hunt ,people don’t realize what it takes to run these ranches, ranchers welcome a little extra money which they can put back into fencing feed and taking care of this land it’s not cheap not to mention the insurance nowadays you have to carry because someone you let hunt decide they want to sue you because They fall on your fence and cut themselves up or shoot there self on accident not to mention the rattler bites that happens to a friends at his ranch. Lands not cheap here I understand folks want to hunt all I can say do like I did and take the plunge I’ve got too hunt now five times in the last year because I have to fix fences and take care of the ranch and animals and pay the bills and not once has someone that has asked to hunt offered their time to help me out funny how ranchers should bend over backwards to let others hunt when we can hardly enjoy our own hard worked for place and then complain when the landowner wants a bit of compensation, I get it now I was one of y’all before but now I get it.

127. A lot of good comments on here. If someone would let me stay on their farm i would take care of their hog problem i have a camper a gun and a 2-million-dollar liability coverage for any damage

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