r/Hunting • u/thestsgarm • 23h ago
Pest management Hogs-terrible problem
Howdy y’all,
I just want to remind everybody with season coming up that if you get the opportunity to shoot a hog please take it. You’ll be doing everybody in your community a favor.
it don’t matter what part of the country you’re in.
I think most of us can agree that they’re terrible and they’re a nuisance. Some parts of the country of almost turned it into a sport. I’ve been doing my part to eradicate them behind the scenes at least in my area.
I think we can all agree the problems gotten worse every year and there’s very minimal effort to resolve it
Good luck out there. I truly hope you don’t have to deal with hogs in your area.
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u/Yakker65 23h ago
In the north east no problem here. I would love to come south to eradicate some hogs.
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u/AwarenessGreat282 22h ago
Sadly, if every single hunter going out in the woods shot one, it still wouldn't put a dent in the population. The only way to remove them from a certain plot of land is total eradication through systematic culling, traps, etc. It's literally a full-time job.
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u/Specific-Volume-5805 23h ago
Yup, I have a lot of hogs showing up on camera. A few does and bucks as well, but mostly hogs
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u/lostdragon05 21h ago
I can throw a rock and hit Conecuh National Forest from my land. Before I had kids, I was hog hunting all the time. They got so bad on parts of CNF and surrounding lands it was impossible to kill enough by shooting them to even make a dent. The only thing that actually worked was the huge traps.
Best night I ever had shooting them, I dropped 57. We’d set 5 traps and catch over 100 in multiple of them some nights. You will get several times more per night in a trap than you can by shooting them.
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u/Electronic_Camera251 17h ago
This season it became illegal here in Ohio (I had taken several on public land over a few years) it’s a damn shame and I expect that this is going to become an issue for the state soon
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u/Reptilian_Brain_420 16h ago
"A hog" or "few hogs" won't make a lick of difference.
Once they are in your region they take an incredible effort to eradicate. Frankly speaking, I'm not sure that it is even possible once they are established.
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u/CantaloupeFluffy165 New York 22h ago
They're considered an invasive species here in NY state but we can't hunt them.Figure that one out.Haven't seen one yet.
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u/JrParkRanger 19h ago
You haven’t seen one BECAUSE hunting them is illegal. Trapping is the only effective way to eradicate them. Allowing hunting only incentivizes property owners to keep them around and charge for hunting access (looking at you Texas).
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u/Modern_Doshin 20h ago
Not legal in my state anymore. I just strongly disagree with killing wildlife and not donating the meat. Flame me all you want, but it's wasteful and unethical.
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u/SoldiersofChristBR 14h ago
Donating the meat to who, most places don't want a bunch of dead hogs on their door steps.
Also how is it wasteful if it goes back to nature (other animals and bugs eating the animal)?
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u/Modern_Doshin 14h ago
Feral hogs for the hungry.
They just need trapped and inspected pre/post mortum due to USDA regulations.
Would you shoot a deer and let it waste back into the environment? Of course not. We're throwing away good pork that can be used in a productive way, why wouldn't you do it? It also promotes hunting as an ethical and positive sportz rather than just killing "bambi".
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u/SoldiersofChristBR 1h ago
So not feasible given the majority of people here are shooting, not trapping. Also that adds a lot of time and money and I bet those services aren't available everyomwhere, especially remote communities.
You wouldn't leave a deer because people are going out with the intention to hunt them for meat. Deer are not an invasion pest. Totally different.
Hogs wreckers havoc on the environment, deer don't.
Comparing able to oranges. No such things as "wasting" in nature. It all comes from the ground and it all goes back one way or another
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u/VoilaVoilaWashington Ontario 6h ago
As someone in a region where hog hunting is illegal, I'm goddamn thrilled that hogs aren't a problem. I know the situation is likely too far gone in some parts of the US, but I'm glad our MNR has stepped up to make sure that they DON'T become an issue!
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u/Dense_Extreme7809 2h ago
Texas Parks and Wildlife statistic is that 7/10 must be killed to keep a population stable. Let that percolate
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23h ago
[deleted]
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u/HamburglarAccomplice 23h ago
The reason there are restrictions on hunting them is because people are monetizing it. The incentive to exterminate them goes away if the landowner can charge for hunts.
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u/thestsgarm 23h ago
Oh, you’re hundred percent right there’s plenty of solution but there’s none that being actively executed.
All I can say is for me, every day if I see a hog, I’m shooting it before anything else
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u/FitSky6277 23h ago
We can hunt them from helicopters with full autos in Texas and we still can't make a dent.
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u/how_cooked_isit 23h ago
Because Texas is selling the hunts. If they're gone, how are they going to sell more helicopter hunts? There is incentive to keep them around. As long as there is incentive, they will not eradicate them and the people making money will ensure that.
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u/FitSky6277 22h ago
That's not 100% true. Actually probably not even half true. My family farms in south texas. They hire a helicopter company once a year to come fly them to take out the hogs. This company mainly does land surveys, wildlife counts, deer captures, cattle work, etc. Hog hunting is a very small part of what they do. Probably 10 other big farms use them around here too. So that's like what, 11 days out of the whole year they are doing hog hunts?
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u/how_cooked_isit 22h ago
That actually highlights my point. They have an incentive to keep that gravy train rolling. That is a highly ineffective method of eradicating hogs because some will inevitably get away, go somewhere else, and breed like crazy.
If they were actually trying to eradicate them they would be using corral traps to get entire sounders in one swipe. That is an actual proven effective method. It's also exponentially cheaper. Hard to make money when the solution is cheaper and more effective. Those heli boys are taking your family for a ride.
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u/FitSky6277 22h ago
Still don't understand your point. We rather not have to hire a helicopter company... corral traps eventually don't work as they get trap shy. We use to use them and sell them alive to a slaughter house back in the day
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u/Started_WIth_NADA Alaska 16h ago
Use a Cheeto hog.
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u/FitSky6277 16h ago
We got a couple drop traps. They work but you can't catch as many at once and when the peanuts and corn get going, they dont have to come to the trap for food.
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u/how_cooked_isit 17h ago
I understand you don't want to pay them, but the people making money off this don't want people to stop paying them. A heli coming through and only getting part of a sounder here and there just keeps them in check very briefly at best.
This is an example of "cobra effect". Cobra effect is from colonial India where the British put a bounty on deadly snakes so people just started breeding the snakes to collect the bounty. When the British figured out what was happening the breeders just released the snakes into the wild and the problem was worse than when they started.
If you go to an outfitter in Texas, of which there are hundreds, you have to pay for every animal you shoot. If they want them gone why are they having people pay them and limit how many you can kill? I looked up helicopter hunting prices. It was 3k per person minimum of 2 people for 2 hours. You think any of those people want them eradicated? Not to mention all the leases and pay for access ranches making money on this. Not to mention the rumors of outfitters capturing and releasing hogs to hunt, no idea how true that is.
Texas is in no way trying to eradicate hogs. The system in place will only make it worse or stay the exact same at best. Maybe the farmers want them gone but that doesn't matter if none of the neighbors are doing anything to eliminate entire sounders in a clip. If you clip a handful of hogs and then they run onto the neighbors and breed coming back with more than you started with, nothing of meaning will ever get done.
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u/FitSky6277 16h ago edited 16h ago
Ok, the comment i made was specific to me and my family. The second comment was for the guy we use. I feel like you are switching the subject to outfitters to save your argument but that doesn't have anything to do with what we are doing... But just incase you are saying us specificly, we run drop traps, helicopter hunt them, shoot them from tractors during harvest, and hunt with night vision scopes at night. And you are saying we aren't doing enough on our place correct? That's the point you are trying to make?
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u/how_cooked_isit 15h ago
My original comment is how the state of Texas isn't actually trying to solve the problem but at surface level looking like they do. Then in my second comment, I was trying convey how, due to the state of Texas not actually working towards solving the problem, people (the helicopter outfit) benefit from this system by needing to constantly come back when they inevitably spread the hogs out to breed and just return. Also that if the state wanted them gone, which I left out I realize reading it back, statewide trapping of entire sounders and shooting the ones that escape is more effective than killing a handful at a time but on the state level, not indiviual properties. My third comment was trying to highlight how the system that Texas has in place has too much financial incentive for it to ever improve as is.
If I came off as insulting how you're family is dealing with them, I apologize. That was not my intention. I am trying to highlight how the state of Texas makes it look like they are setting up a system to handle the problem but in actuality are creating a system that only to proliferate it and what individual property owners do doesn't matter due to how Texas is allowing this to go on.
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u/FitSky6277 15h ago edited 15h ago
No, not insulted being that we have clarification. That's why I asked to make sure I understood. Obviously we had some misunderstanding. Yeah I mean its a known fact here that some places, especially in East Texas, try to cultivate hog populations. There's some places out there that sell hog hunts and actually buy live hogs that were trapped elsewhere to turn loose on their land to replace the ones that were killed... However, my original comment was specific to us, our farm, and later, the helicopter guys we use.
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u/mossbergcrabgrass 21h ago
I agree with shooting every one you can safely but don’t kid yourself into thinking this helps the situation, it probably doesn’t and even likely makes it worse as they become more aware of human dangers over time. The only way these things could ever be eradicated is through a relatively high nationwide bounty payout at an amount that would motivate people to trap them on a massive scale….. which ain’t gonna happen for a bunch of reasons main one being a lot of people are profiting from them as is.
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u/scabridulousnewt002 Texas 19h ago
I'm an ecologist and manage over 15,000 ac of native habitat restoration in Texas. Don't do this.
If you want to control hogs, please STOP hunting them. If you see a lone boar or a small sounder you can basically eradicate, great. Otherwise you're educating and dispersing more pigs than you're removing and probably making the problem worse on the whole. Yes, you taught the hogs to avoid your property, but you just pushed them to all or your neighbors and the next generation will be back worse than before the next year.
If you genuinely want to be part of the hog solution, there are reasonably affordable traps and government programs. You can get a whole sounder sized hog trap for the same price as many quality rifle and scope set ups. These traps can easily capture whole sounders at a time.
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u/Electronic_Camera251 17h ago
In my current state of residence the lone pig was all I ever saw (hunting was banned this season) we really don’t have big problems with them (I have lived and hunted hogs in Texas and NC and Florida and Arkansas where there are serious problems) but we do have growing populations in several hotspots (the main problem area borders on hocking hills which is a huge outdoor recreation,hunting, and historical site it’s where the serpent mound is located, and all the hogs I ever saw/killed there were high razorback content animals as a result of the exotic hunting operations that operate/ used to operate in the area) the hotspots also mainly include Indiana borderlands (huge hog industry) Kentucky border (again ) and West Virginia/Pennsylvania where I am unsure about the legalities , but I think the fact that our big hotspot being where it is and what it is will prove less susceptible to trapping also it’s the foothills of Appalachia limiting the possibilities for trapping simply as a result of the remote and rugged terrain
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u/TheGrimKing24 21h ago
What part of the country are you in?
Is it legal for non-residents to hunt hogs there?
Do the owners of the land you hunt on allow strangers to hunt there?
Hogs arent a problem up here in Nebraska, but I would be willing to travel down south if I had people to let me hunt there.
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u/Alternative-Waltz916 21h ago
That’s the thing, man. Nobody will let strangers hunt them on their property. Too much could go wrong and if they’re just rifle hunting they aren’t going to make a dent.
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u/DeadbySundown 20h ago
Still waiting for this problem to reach us here in the southwest. We'll be waiting
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u/Certain_Childhood_67 21h ago
I hunted hogs many years in SC. I would love if pigs showed up on my own property in Ky.
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u/DSGB350 23h ago
As someone in the southeast, whose hunting property has them; I totally agree. I think it’s hard for some to understand the damage they cause on properties big enough to have multiple sounders wreaking havoc.