Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Wildlife Management Hog Wild

JKB, I don't remember any major cat problems to warrant their removal. We've got them all here in TX, coyotes, wolfs, and cats, so it would take a lot of them to remove the estimated 2 million feral hogs here.

highflyer thanks, but so far so good.

They are just starting to become a problem in Central OK. They are much closer than anyone realizes. They are damaging a lot in Southern OK. They can "basically" plow a field in a night depend on the size of the herd.

Darn it Brian I should have asked you instead of Texas A&M! Ha Ha
But who knows maybe the Texas A&M info was not current.
Oh well I donated $30 to Texas Parks & Wildlife trying to do the right thing.
Those hogs better watch it...I'm mad now!

My nephew sent a pic today,
I guess he's getting ready to smoke that hog & now he wants another one.

Whoaaa...FIH that's crazy!
I hope I never see that many on my property.
I'm told there is no deer on my property,
I wonder if you can poison them hogs?
The old guy that looks after our property
said he had six hogs in one trap awhile back.

This is just my personal take on it, but for my taste, poison is just too non-target specific enough for me. Whatever eats it will die, and maybe whatever eats the dead critter might die too.

I had a problem with mice in the Pheasant pen. (Raised pheasants for dog training). I thought I'd be smart and put out mouse poison (De-Con), kept the trays covered so the pheasants couldn't get to the poison. About 3-4 days later I see a rooster walking around the pen with a dead mouse in it's beak. It didn't take but 2 weeks for all the pheasants to die -picking at the dead mice..... Expensive lesson learned!

My understanding is that in Texas, poisoning hogs (lead aside) is a no no.

I could be wrong, but I am pretty sure that is what I got told by a person I respect.

And as Scott said, the unintended consequences are too high.

Poisoning is 100% illegal. The problem is that the effective poisons leave a residual in the carcass that is transferred to the next animal that feeds on the carcass.

I was going to do it. Then I talked to Kelly Duffie who chewed my butt for being stupid. There are people doing Federal time for that.

I've seen different numbers on how many hogs we have. It varies from 2 million to 7 million. They come and go on my land. Sometimes I'm overloaded with them. When that happens I turn some predatory teenagers loose on them and they decide to go elsewhere. I only have a few right now. But, they will be back.

Ok nix the poison idea. I think I'll be like you Dave I may just trap/shoot a few, but otherwise they will probably just come and go.

Zep I was going to reply to the poison thing, but I got distracted last night by my dvr. I agree with esshup about poisoning. IMO, there's just to big a chance of poisoning other animals, as corn is an attractive bait for other animals and birds.

Personally, I'm afraid the only way to control them is through financial incentives. If the state offered bounties, or there was some way to amend the laws for selling wild game, then maybe more would be removed. My butcher in Emory said he deals with a dealer that can sell all the packaged hog meat that he can provide. But, the butcher has to have it alive, and that creates the problem. They really have no value to warrant the expense of penning and trailering them to a professional butcher.

In fact, I bought a live feral hog last year for $10. The butcher makes his money on the processing, I had a nice 150 pound sow packaged in the freezer, but the guy that brought the 10 hogs in got $100. That's not a lot of money for the trouble involved.

My butcher told me last year that if he could keep a flow of live feral hogs coming in, there is definitely a market for the meat.

There are TX feral hog buying stations around the state, and I believe it's still 28 cents a pound plus a 4$ bonus for the 100 pound + hogs.

I know the gator farm and the butchers require the hogs to be alive, FIH do you know if all the "buying stations" set up by the state require the hogs to be alive?

Zep everything I can find says yes, as they have to be processed at a licensed slaughterhouse.

List of drop off stations was easy to find. Regulations, not so much.

Feral hog buyers

Current requirements

After looking at THF, it seems the approved drop offs change often, so I'd sure call a place before I loaded up a couple.

Thanks for the info.

FIH a buddy of mine told me that if you shoot a hog in the trap and drag them out and just leave them laying there that a hog will likely be completely gone within 72 hours. Do you agree with that? Do the coyotes/bobcats/birds/ect normally get rid of it that quick?

He may be correct, as the carcass is pretty well cleaned up by then. And, you can add buzzards to that mix. Nature seems to handle available food well.

Zep, I had this bookmarked, so thought it might interest you.

Texas Ag

Al, thanks for sharing those documents!

yeah that last link about says it all

They don't all get eaten that quickly. I shot one that went about 15 pounds last year. Since I didn't want to mess with it, I tossed it out into a field. It stayed there about 3 weeks before something got it. I would have thought that buzzards would have it cleaned up quicker than that.

A friend killed a huge boar on my land last year. It stunk pretty bad so he just took the head for a skull mount. We used the tractor to haul it off. It went in a hurry and I wish I had put a camera by the carcass.

I'll be filling feeders and putting up cameras this weekend. My Grandson and his bow hunting buddies will start getting serious on October 11. That's the first day they can make it. Those 2 predators would rather kill a pig than a big buck.

If you ever want to see something REALLY cool try this.

Bore some holes in the ground under a tree, around the big roots and what not. Make sure to get the holes at least 18 to 24 inches deep and maybe as big around as a tennis ball. Make at least a dozen holes around the tree. Now, fill the holes with corn.

Come back in a few days and your tree should be on the ground. Those pigs will root all up under that tree to get the corn and the tree will fall. Sometimes it takes two or three rounds of filling holes with corn, but they will get the job done.

Someone dumped three of them dead along the railroad tracks and nothing touched them for a month.

Sounds like them hogs are more trouble than their worth...

Think I may just let 'em be...unless someone wants to take a few and haul them off. The old guy called today and said he caught 3 more last night. As long as I dont have to mess with any cleanup,hauling, butchering, and dont want anything stinkin....he can keep trapping them I guess.

Me and a friend from work were talking about coming down next spring to do a hog hunt on a pay to hunt deal. Is there anywhere to do this for little to nothing??? We want to bow hunt.

Gator, look on Craigs List under Sporting goods. Lots of really cheap hog hunting in Texas.

Thanks Dave I will look into that.

Bury hogs as fertilizer. They must be fought or they will take over.Free range bacon.

They seem to come and go on my place. Sometimes I'm over run with them and sometimes I see only an occasional track.

If I shoot a couple of them, they leave my place.

Actually, I rarely see them. They grazed my wheat like the cows did, rooted up the Johnson Grass, and muddied a really small pond by rolling in it. On a neighbors land, they pretty well destroyed about 40 acres of coastal bermuda. They've ignored my bermuda patches.

They did tip over a corn feeder and mess up the top of the barrel. When I started TPosting the legs, that ended. I found pics of a huge boar bumping the feeder timer to make corn fall. He pretty well ate about 100 pounds. I thought that was pretty smart.

All in all, they haven't been a problem to me. They don't like the sound of gunfire.

I'd take hogs over black bears any day... Hogs don't rip down fruit and nut trees you've been growing for 10+ years to only have it finally produce and the bear not patiently wait for the fruit/nuts to fall, so he just rips all the branches off leaving you a stick in the ground. Or, knock your game feeder over and chew on the timer. Or climb up the ladder to your treestand and rip it out of the tree. Or eat the foam off your ATV seat. Or turn your vinyl siding into shredded vinyl siding. We went from seeing the occasional sign of black bears 10 years ago, to darn near having more bears on camera than deer these days. I have at least three different sow bears with cubs on my family's hunting land this year. One has twins, one has triplets and one had quadruplets. So, they are obviously finding plenty of food...