Hog Hunter

[71Eagle]

I have a friend who has a ranch in Central Texas and he's having a hog problem. He asked me what might be a good set up for them. He's a retired Infantry field grade officer and being a good officer he asked me (a retired senior NCO) what my thoughts may be.

The type of set up he's looking for is a semi-auto platform (which I think is an AR type), with a good suppressor and thermal sights. I asked him what ranges he's looking for but haven't heard back from him yet. He was originally thinking .308/7.62. We talked about that a little and of course 5.56/.223 also. If ranges out to 200m, I was thinking .300 Blackout. I'm not real familiar with the .300 Blackout but looking at the ballistics for a subsonic I'm thinking 200m would be about max. Not really familiar about suppressors, how quiet would a .308 be? Or 5.56?

Not familiar with thermal sights at all so any thoughts on those would really be appreciated.

So I thought I'd put it out and see what others may think a good set up would be.

Thanks

[Willie Lowman]

I don't know much about thermal sights but I know they can get quite pricey. The owner of my LGS hunts coyotes with one that cost $9000. I know they can be had for much less but a good one is going to be up there.

Digital night vision can be had for a fraction of the price. With good IR illumination you can see for a few hundred yards.

[zoomie]

300BO subsonic at 200 is suboptimal on anything more than the piglets. Even 300BO supersonic isn't right for the job. 308 in any bolt or semi auto would be my choice. Maybe that SFAR mentioned in another thread. Suppressed increase your QOL, but it's not going to be silent.

If you're set on silent, IMO you need to look at slow, big bullets. Maybe a 350+ gr in 450, 458, 480.

[MarkCO]

Originally Posted by zoomie

300BO subsonic at 200 is suboptimal on anything more than the piglets. Even 300BO supersonic isn't right for the job. 308 in any bolt or semi auto would be my choice. Maybe that SFAR mentioned in another thread. Suppressed increase your QOL, but it's not going to be silent.

If you're set on silent, IMO you need to look at slow, big bullets. Maybe a 350+ gr in 450, 458, 480.

All of this.

[ed308]

AR10 are heavy. 6.8 SPC would be my choice. SBR will be great in 6.8. Light weight with limited recoil in a AR15 frame. Easy to reload and ammo is plentiful. 110 gr and 120 gr bullets will take care of business. Range out to 300+ yards. I've never had a hog run on me when I've shot them with a 6.8. .300 BO wouldn't be my choice. Unless you like followup shots.

[MarkCO]

AR10 are heavy

Not necessarily. The SFAR is 6.8 pounds. I've had quite a few, from 6 to 12 pounds.

[Double Naught Spy]

So I thought I'd put it out and see what others may think a good set up would be.

Everybody is going to have their own answer due to preferences. Since this is a hog problem (versus hunting eating hogs), then the goal is to kill as many as possible as efficiently as possible, ideally while still trying to kill the hogs very quickly, as you would a deer, antelope, bear, etc.

So ideally, this will be a semi-auto rifle. AR platforms tend to dominate the the field for those actively involved in trying to keep hog numbers down.

When it comes to killing, there isn't such a thing as too much gun, unless of course you don't like a lot of recoil or you want to make quick followup shots, then too much gun can be a problem. For many folks, carrying an extra few ounces is beyond their capabilities, so AR15 platform over AR10. Personally, I know of only one guy that shoots a .308 AR10 like I shoot my AR15. The dude is a big, muscular firearm. Smaller people can do it as well, like Jerry Miculek, but for the most part people can't run an AR10 as well as they run an AR15 in typical calibers. You can get AR15s in calibers like .458 Socom, .450 Bushmaster, and .50 Beowulf that WILL have a lot more recoil, but here I am referring to lesser calibers like .223, 6.5 Grendel, 6.8 SPC, .300 BO, 7.62x39.

Let's say your buddy is shooting a smaller, lighter recoiling caliber like the 6.8 SPC. One of the best ways to offset the caliber deficit is by using good expanding and/or fragmenting ammo. It has been my experience helping guide hunts that people who cheap out on ammo end up shooting a lot more to down hogs, lose more hogs, have longer tracks on hogs, and have fewer one shot DRT kills, and in general, end up spending more on ammo than the guys that use more expensive bullets that properly expand and/or fragment. By cheap out, I mean going with FMJ or some generic match bullet they found online somewhere. With that said, there is some inexpensive foreign ammo I have seen folks use that is softpoint that works as well as our softpoint ammo and if you like softpoint performance, then that may be the way to go, but I like more tissue destruction than what the typical softpoint does. Some of my favorite rounds are those that fragment. I have had excellent success with Federal Speer TNT 90 gr VARMINT ammo. Varmint ammo isn't supposed to work on 200 and 300 lb hogs, but in 6.5 Grendel, it does very well. I have probably killed several hundred hogs with it. Another good one with Hornady SST 123 gr. bullets (hunted exclusively with these for several years) that tend to fragment and expand. Both of these do a lot of damage, pollute a lot of meat, but are excellent hog killers. These are just examples I have found to up my chances for quick kills given that I shoot 6.5 Grendel. There are several others.

Personally, I don't advocate the .223 for hunting hogs. I have hunted hogs with it and will hunt with it again, no doubt, but more like for sniping hogs versus trying to kill as many as possible out of a sounder. When you go smaller in caliber and/or reduced velocity, then your shots tend to need to be more precise in getting the job done. He can quickly and effectively kill hogs with a .22 subsonic, but the bullet only has a very limited number of shot locations on the hog to make that possible.

If he is just going to set up a feeder in a sendero and shoot hogs out from under the feeder, then he probably doesn't need a semi-auto rifle. He can snipe them with a single shot .557 T-Rex. That is because he isn't likely to get too many quick followups in such a situation. I have my feeders in a clearing, but in less than a few seconds, hogs, deer, raccoons, and opossums formerly present can be gone. About the only times I get followup shots at my feeders is when one of the hogs stops before making it into the woods.

300BO subsonic at 200 is suboptimal on anything more than the piglets.

I know of 4 people that went with 300 BO for the subsonic option. NONE of them hunt hogs subsonically on a regular basis. Why? The bullets simply don't kill as well when you take 1500-2300 fps away from them. PLUS, and this is huge, shooting subsonic is about like shooting long range in terms of drop. Unlike supersonic ammo, if you zero at 25 yards, you aren't apt to be zero'd at 200 or 100. Let's say you are shooting a 208 gr AMAX bullet at 1100 fps. With a 25 yd zero, you are down nearly 4" at 100 yards. At 125 you will be nearly 7" low and by 150 yards, will likely miss the hog underneath with more being more than 10" low at that point. If you shoot subsonic, then count on placing your shots much better and that drop will be a factor at much shorter distances than for full power supersonic ammo. In other words, being subsonic means introducing complexity to your situation.

Even worse is that if dealing with sounders, unless the guy is just amazing, shots on running hogs are going to be far less than precise and he won't have much benefit from the velocity to help do the damage needed for a poor shot to be decent. Contrary to popular belief, even a poor shot can be good sometimes. I have managed to shoot out the heart of a hog with a Texas Heart Shot. The bullet had over 20" of penetration, had expanded by the time it passed through the heart (no doubt, much sooner). For clarification, the hog had already been wounded and was running away. My shot was an attempt to stop the hog to finish it hog with another shot after that, which turned out to not be needed.

Suppressors are good. It has been my experience that they are NOT a game changer when it comes to hunting the animals except in terms of hearing safety. If hogs have been shot at before or shot at before with suppressed rifles, they will run away just as fast than if you weren't using a suppressed rifle. For the few hogs that have never encountered hunters previously, a suppressor might result in them not running as far or as fast, but after another shot or two, that grace period ends. Of course, that can happen with unsuppressed rifles as well. If the hogs don't run from the report, they will run from the sound of the impact, which is still quite loud.

Most rifle suppressor will dampen the noise pressure by about 30 db, give or take about 5 db. That will get your supersonic rifle down to about 130-145 db. That is still plenty loud. There are a lot of suppressors on the market that perform fairly well, but vary widely in price. You may pay extra for lighter weight, special materials, and whatnot. If you go with something over 30 caliber, like .458 Socom, your suppressor may be more expensive. The easy way is to get a 30 cal suppressor and shoot 308 or less in it. I shoot 6.5 Grendel from my 30 cal can.

I don't know much about thermal sights but I know they can get quite pricey. The owner of my LGS hunts coyotes with one that cost $9000. I know they can be had for much less but a good one is going to be up there.

I am involved in some of the testing of thermals for a couple of companies. Thermals have undergone some changes over the last few years, nothing major until this year, but won't apply here (I-Ray USA's $18K RICO HD RS75). You can find a good $5K 640 resolution thermal that will get you out to 300 yards, though most people don't shoot over 100. I have hunted with folks that don't like to be more than 50 yards away before the shooting starts. You can get a functional 384 resolution thermal that will get you out to 200 yards and certainly farther. As distance increases and the relative number of pixels on a target decreases as the size of the target decreases, the farther away the animal, the more difficult the identification. More is better than less, but you can be extremely functional and kill a lot of hogs with a 384 resolution thermal scope. Oh, and my distances here are conservative, though the comment about difficulty increasing with distance is accurate.

Here are two scopes side by side, one is a 640 that I did not fine tune and the other is a 384 scope that my hunting partner did fine tune that the image actually looks a little better than the 640...in this case. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-W49jOIpE0

All thermal optics, given that they are electrical appliances, are doomed to fail. I have owned thermal from several different companies and dealt with their customer service in every case. That is just reality. In my experience ATN and FLIR were the absolute worst to deal with. ATN has some of the least expensive thermal optics available given all the features they offer, though much of which you won't use, LOL. When they work, they work well. When it comes to customer service, you may be okay or treated like dirt. Pulsar, AGM, Bering Optics, Trijicon, and Armasight all have customer service that is considered quite good and I have used all but AGM (haven't owned one, yet). I assume InfiRay and I-Ray USA to be excellent as well as I have not heard any complaints about CS on those brands. The newest recent player I have found is Fusion Thermal out of Louisiana. I don't know much about their products or CS, but hope to have one in my hands before the end of the year.

Like your buddy, Willie, I hunt with a $9k thermal sight, a Trijicon IR Hunter MKIII 60mm 4.5x 640 resolution. This the older style (new is 3.5x, IIRC). My spotting scope is the partner IR Patrol M250XR 60mm 4.5x 640 resolution. If I had it to do over today with today's options, I would be going with a scope that is less pricey and has a better image over a wider variety of environmental circumstances. Price does not have a 1:1 correlation with performance in thermal optics between brands.

Digital night vision can be had for a fraction of the price. With good IR illumination you can see for a few hundred yards.

Excellent suggestion. Pulsar, ATN, Sightmark, and soon Bering Optics will have digital NV players. The Pulsars are a good product, but way too expensive for their capabilities. ATN is ATN (see above and steer clear). Sightmark makes the Wraith and Mini Wraith in various configurations. Get the most expensive 4k version if you go this route. It will be worth the extra money. I think the most expensive Wraith is the mini in 4k. It is a 2x native magnification optic, but with 4k, can zoom quite a bit before the picture deteriorates significantly. The really cool thing about digital NV is that you can use it in the day time without frying the sensor (unlike traditional NV that can fail due to bright light). I don't like the regular Wraith which is bigger and heavier and has more native magnification, but has a very narrow FOV. That is why I would suggest the mini (smaller, lighter, still plenty of zoom, better FOV).

The IR illuminator (flashlight) that comes with most digital NV scopes is pretty mediocre and will give you 100-300 yards of performance. You can spend a couple or three hundred bucks on a super illuminator like a Coyote Cannon and get better range. You WILL NEED the IR illuminator on all but the brightest of nights. Most digital NV weapon sights do okay in dusk/dawn situations, but do not do well with partial moons or star light.

With that said, check out my hunting partner attempting his longest shot ever on a coyote with the Sightmark Wraith 4k (full size). I really like this video. It starts after sunset and I think he took his shot just before the end of legal (for deer) hunting hours, dusk, with no supplemental IR illumination. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMZYnyaAnqw

The problem with digital NV or traditional NV when you are using in IR illuminator is that objects in the foreground tend to be overilluminated. So if you have trees branches between and your quarry, maybe just above or to the side as you view your quarry, they will get over illuminated and that can tremendously cut your effective range. In a nice open field that is well grazed like where my hunting partner was shooting, that would be ideal.

This is a terrible video, but illustrates the problems of IR illuminators and overillumination of things like foliage in the foreground to the detriment of things farther back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h28vbH2syTo

I would strongly suggest that if going with Digital NV on the rifle (and I hunted like this for 3 years), then he 'needs' a thermal spotter. It does not have to be amazing or terribly expensive if he just needs to know animals are out there. I will still suggest not going with anything under 320 or 384 resolution. Newer version of 320/384 scopes today look a lot better than the little 320 res FLIR Scout I was using 9 years ago and they now cost about half as much and have more features.

NOTE: On electro-optics, there will be a recoil rating. Some are .308 rated. Some are .375HH rated. Some are 300 Win Mag rated, and some may tell you the rating in joules for which you have to figure out how many joules your caliber/load are and if your optic will handle it. Sort of like with hearing damage, recoil damage to electronics is cumulative over time and does not self repair. I will make up these numbers for argument sake. Let's say you can get 50k shots out of a given optic if you are firing .223, but it may only last 30k shots with a .308 and 15k shots with a .300 Win mag even though it is rated for .300 Win Mag. Put another way, your car will last longer if you drive on nice smooth roads all the time as opposed to driving over a road that is rutted, potholed hell like you might expect to find in a Minneapolis spring after a brutal winter. The harder your gear is treated, the more likely it is to fail.

[ernie8]

The Spy covered it well . I do not have as large a kill count , 7 last week brought me up to 247 . Right now I am using a Remington Ar -15 in 30AR with a thermal . I do not notice the recoil and have no problem with follow up shots , got 4 out of a sounder before they made it 40 yards to the trees . The best part of thermal , I got the last one in the trees as I could still see the glow of his butt . Recoil is a factor . My 500 Bandit is a 500 grain at 2250 fps , it takes a little for a follow up shot . My big 70 cal shoots a 900 grain bullet and it takes about 30 seconds for your vision to clear back up after a shot . I also like the 350 Legend [ 357 Bandit ] for 200 yards and under , You can get close to the pigs on a dark night and good wind . I developed that round about 6 years ago , so I have been using it for a while with good results on larger pigs . I have upgraded to the 357 Diablo which is a good AR round and 200 fps faster . Not to much to add other than I like talking about pig hunting .

[GeauxTide]

I don't like the AR10 because it's too darn heavy for my 74yo frame. For 100 yards or less, I use a 300HAM'R with 135FTX handloads; for over 100 I use a BAR DBM in 308. Built in rail and 18" barrel with 10 - 165 Grand Slam handloads. I'm not going to shoot much over 100 because they only go down with a CNS shot. The GS or your choice of bonded/monolith bullet will give full penetration. Both platforms are under 8#.

[tangolima]

Large scale problem. Trapping may be more efficient.

-TL

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

[kymasabe]

Has your rancher considered opening the land to hunters who want to harvest the hogs for meat? I'm all for pest eradication, but it seems a shame to waste all that meat. Example, if he dedicated/opened a weekend hunt to just law enforcement officers or game wardens, they could kill alot of hogs in a weekend, and excess meat could be donated to meal kitchens in those officers communities. Be creative, invite snipers from a local base, or swat officers, have a ladies weekend, etc.
Sure, buy a Ruger SFAR for yourself to speed things along, but if you can get a whole bunch of people to kill a whole bunch of hogs for you, and feed alot of people too, sounds like a win/win.
Step it up, get a scale, have every weekend shooter put $20 in the pot, largest hog wins the pot.

[sundog]

300 Ham'r. Check out Wilson Combat and some good hog reports on the Texas hunting forum in Rifles, Shotguns & Handguns. Quite worthwhile reading.

[Double Naught Spy]

Has your rancher considered opening the land to hunters who want to harvest the hogs for meat?

If so, the the landowner has learned that meat hunters are not doing much for the problem and are apt to be more trouble than they are worth.

It is illegal (at least in Texas) to publicly distribute hog meat that has not been first inspected while the hog was alive. Nobody from the USDA inspects the hogs before hunters shoot them. You can donate to friends or family,, but not things like food shelters. But let's say it wasn't illegal. What does donating hog meat cost? It costs quite a bit time, effort, and refrigeration and incidental expenses Never mind the time involved in managing such an operation from a logistics and safety standpoint, and no, just because they were in the military or law enforcement does not mean they are safe hunters.


So you have a team out and they kill 40 hogs. Great! Now you need to minimally gut, chill, load, drive, and distribute the meat, so now you need a LOT of oversized coolers and ice, or a refrigeration truck.

Who pays for all of this and handles the logistics?

"Donating the meat sounds like a good idea until one realizes that it isn't easy.

[taylorce1]

I really like my .300 BLK, but range is limited especially with subsonics. I like the AR-15 better than the AR-10, just because of Mil Spec that allows better parts interchangeability. I'd probably look at a 6.5 Grendel it gives you a decent sized bullet and some range you can't get with .300 BLK.

I really like my .300 BLK, but range is limited especially with subsonics. I like the AR-15 better than the AR-10, just because of Mil Spec that allows better parts interchangeability. I'd probably look at a 6.5 Grendel it gives you a decent sized bullet and some range you can't get with .300 BLK.

Originally Posted by Double Naught Spy

If so, the the landowner has learned that meat hunters are not doing much for the problem

I smile every time I see the word "problem" used in the same sentence with Texas hog hunting. Texas doesn't have a hog problem, it's a myth. A few landowners might have a problem with hogs, but the state as a whole loves their hogs. There is too much revenue generated off of hog hunting to say Texas has a problem with hogs.

@DNS, I just quoted you because you posted while I was writing mine and it was convenient. I'm not singling you out. I also don't fault Texas for making an industry off hunting hogs.

[Double Naught Spy]

I really like my .300 BLK, but range is limited especially with subsonics. I like the AR-15 better than the AR-10, just because of Mil Spec that allows better parts interchangeability. I'd probably look at a 6.5 Grendel it gives you a decent sized bullet and some range you can't get with .300 BLK.

I watched a video the other day where a guy killed a deer at 367, 375, 437 yards (etc.) with a subsonic 458 Socom. The bullets look like artillery/mortar rounds going down range. The point here is that you can make long range shots with subsonics, but it helps if you have stationary targets and are only making one shot per 'hunt' and not trying to take out runners from a sounder of 30 that are rapidly changing distance and are running at an unknown velocity. Just watching the video, if the deer were 10 yards farther or closer and he had his ranging incorrect, he would have missed. Most hunters won't attempt shots that far (and maybe for good reason) even with supersonic ammo, though some do.

I smile every time I see the word "problem" used in the same sentence with Texas hog hunting. Texas doesn't have a hog problem, it's a myth. A few landowners might have a problem with hogs, but the state as a whole loves their hogs. There is too much revenue generated off of hog hunting to say Texas has a problem with hogs.

Sorry, but your logic is way off, or if applied elsewhere, we could say things like, "The gulf coast does not have a hurricane problem. There is too much revenue generated off of hurricane strikes to say the Gulf Coast has a problem with hogs." Just because there is money to be made does not me that something isn't a problem.

I will take a wild guess that you are not a Texas farmer or rancher. Would that be correct? That is my guess because I have yet to meet a single landowner that makes a living from crops that wouldn't happily have things go back to pre-1980s times when feral hogs were a novelty and fields were nice and smooth. One of the folks I work for showed me a $10k bill for repairing a piece of harvesting equipment that was damaged as a result of dropping into a hog rooting hole (he said was about 2 feet deep) while running. What a blessing! Think of all the revenue John Deere generated from that.

A problem for a few? You mean like 6 or 7 landowners? We have nearly a quarter million working farms and ranches in Texas covering more than 130 million acres and Texas is only a bit over 171 million acres. The rest is parks, roads, cities, residences, businesses, etc. I have yet to meet a single rancher who has told me what a grand benefit feral hogs have been to his/her operation. For those that lease to hog hunters and do make some money, most would rather not have to be dealing with the issue at all. As one guy said, "We try to make lemonade from lemons, but it isn't very good lemonade."

As of 2019, of the 254 counties in Texas, only El Paso County doesn't have hogs. Moreover, hogs are moving into the cities in many areas. They can be found in the middle of Dallas, various areas inside Houston, Austin, and San Antonio.
https://www.click2houston.com/news/l...f-you-see-one/
https://www.dmagazine.com/publicatio...your-backyard/ (mentions Lake Highlands where I grew up)
https://www.fox7austin.com/news/fera...erns-residents
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zetl1vjVHkU

Folks like the OP's buddy really do have problems with feral hogs. Texas has a problem with feral hogs, even if it does generate revenue. The problem is, damages can be huge.

[MarkCO]

Folks like the OP's buddy really do have problems with feral hogs. Texas has a problem with feral hogs, even if it does generate revenue. The problem is, damages can be huge.

In the 1990s, I went to Texas and killed truckloads full of hogs. Ranchers let us on, some even fed us. We donated meat that we could not get in the freezers on the trailer to bring back home. The three ranches we shot hogs on loved us. Two sold, one, the Rancher died and the ranch is basically over-run with all kinds of things, sitting last I heard.

Today, I can't get on a Ranch for less than $300. Not worth the time and effort for me.

Problem for some created due to the bounty for others. But yes, it is a problem and one not dealt with well. CO saw what happened in TX and banned all pay hog hunting, and made them all open season.

[kymasabe]

Never underestimate mans ability to hunt a species to extinction.
Put a bounty on a hog, and hunters will do the rest.
I tried to suggest we harvest them and eat them, but someone responded that wont work so...pay-per-pig.

[taylorce1]

Originally Posted by kymasabe

Never underestimate mans ability to hunt a species to extinction.
Put a bounty on a hog, and hunters will do the rest.

MarkCO has it correct, and what I was hinting at. I seriously doubt a bounty on hogs would solve anything. Feral pigs have been in TX a long time, but their population didn't explode until they became a serious cash crop. Take away the profits and the hogs will dissappear in short order.

[kymasabe]

Originally Posted by taylorce1

. Take away the profits and the hogs will dissappear in short order.

Countless number of buffalo roamed the plains and man hunted them to near extinction. If Texas turns dead pigs into a money maker, she'd be pig-free in short order.
And I'm talking open season full-on eradication and paid per kill.

[JohnKSa]

CO saw what happened in TX and banned all pay hog hunting, and made them all open season.

Hogs in TX are not game animals per the hunting code. They can be hunted all year round, 24 hours a day. You can legally kill as many as you are able. You can use silencers and machineguns. On private property you don't need a hunting license to hunt them.

Today, I can't get on a Ranch for less than $300. Not worth the time and effort for me.

I know a person who has permission to hunt on something like 20 different properties. He not only hunts for free, but the landowners often call him and let him know when hogs are on their property causing damage.

The key is that he has a reputation for being responsible and safe and for following the rules the landowners set forth. He has slowly added properties by word of mouth over years.

The landowners absolutely have a problem, many need someone to help them deal with the problem, but that doesn't mean they are willing to just let any stranger come in and hunt on their property.

It's not like this land is just empty property, there are buildings, pumping stations, farming equipment, roads run around the properties, there's livestock on most of them, the landowners live on some of them. The hunting has to happen almost exclusively at night since hogs are mostly nocturnal in TX. The landowners usually don't have time or resources to guide the hunts.

Put yourself in the place of a landowner.

"Oh hello, random stranger at my door. I see you have a gun and a desire to shoot hogs. Yeah, come right onto my property and shoot at things in the dark. I have a job so I can't get up and come out and supervise when you show up at 1AM, or 3AM. But that's ok, I have a foolproof plan. Promise not to shoot my livestock or my pets, don't put holes in my equipment or my house, don't damage my fences, don't let my livestock out while you're coming and going, don't make any of my neighbors mad at me. Scout's Honor? Ok, great."

A lot of people think that because the landowners aren't willing to solve the problem exactly the way they think they should, that there's no problem. It's just not anywhere near that simple.

Feral pigs have been in TX a long time, but their population didn't explode until they became a serious cash crop.

There aren't that many places making money from hog hunting compared to the properties where they are a problem. Sure, there are some places raising hogs and letting them loose so they can make money selling hunts, but there are many, many more places where they are killing absolutely every single hog they can and still suffering damage.

[MarkCO]

If Texas turns dead pigs into a money maker, she'd be pig-free in short order.
And I'm talking open season full-on eradication and paid per kill.

Yes, but there are high gross revenue businesses that profit from the problem that won't let that happen.

Hogs in TX are not game animals per the hunting code. They can be hunted all year round, 24 hours a day. You can legally kill as many as you are able. You can use silencers and machineguns. On private property you don't need a hunting license to hunt them.

Never said they were not. But CO studied the TX problem, and how other states responded, and realized the preventing the for-profit hunting of them was a good idea, and it has proven so.

As for access, I get that landowners don't want yahoos blazing around on their land. That is NOT the issue. The issue is that I can get on 1000s of pieces of land, for $. So to say it is a "problem" only underscores that the adjacent landowners have different ideas about their land. Some want no hogs, some want as many as they can get so make the $ off of hunters willing to pay.

[MarkCO]

There aren't that many places making money from hog hunting compared to the properties where they are a problem.

Google returns only 10.3M results for "Texas Hog Hunting". Make it Helicopter, and get a list of numerous multi-million dollar a year companies. I don't deny them their free enterprise, in fact many have been great supporters of matches and the shooting sports I enjoy. But they are making bank off of the proliferation of feral hogs in TX. No way the local .govs and State want to let all that income from those businesses go away.

[Double Naught Spy]

Countless number of buffalo roamed the plains and man hunted them to near extinction. If Texas turns dead pigs into a money maker, she'd be pig-free in short order.

Great idea! Explain how this will happen and where the money will come from and you will have the new mousetrap. Of course, this is an age old issue, finding a way to turn garbage into $$, right? Finding such solutions is the stuff of entrepreneurship legend.

The comparison with the buffalo is interesting. Back in the days of buffalo hunting, the hunters could go just about anywhere on the Plains to go after the buffalo as there were large and huge open territories and frontier. Now you mentioned having to pay $300 for a hog in Texas (which is much cheaper than the Colorado hunts, BTW), but Texas is anything but a wide open territory. There are LOTS of people who don't want hunters on their land and so there will remain nuclei from which hogs will continue to propagate.

With that said, Texas is NOT the only state with a hog problem, LOL.

I like the bounty idea. Nobody ever abuses bounties (sarcasm). It isn't like if Texas put a bounty on hogs (with what money?) that people would not start importing them and operating breeding operations. That is part of how the process works already. People don't have hogs, so they import hogs. It has gone on for decades and continues to occur...
https://www.outdooralabama.com/node/1527
https://www.klfy.com/louisiana/ldwf-...ng-feral-hogs/
https://www.porkbusiness.com/news/in...-man-made-mess

We do have a couple of counties in Texas that offer $5 bounties. $5 is something of a joke, but folks will take advantage of the system. You can bet the hog proof brought in to the county isn't just from that county despite bounty hunters attesting to this fact. You can also bet folks are saving up proof from the rest of the year and areas outside of the county, which is not kosher.
https://cbsaustin.com/news/local/two...hogs-harvested

Interestingly, Caldwell County has managed to get grants for several years for which they have been paying bounties and oddly, they still have a terrible hog problem. It does not take long for people to zero the budget and then things are back to normal. Of course, there are plenty of hunters in Caldwell and Hays Counties the rest of the year. The problem here is that while the bounty system may be motivational and even abused some, but the biggest problem is that it runs out of money. This is a fatal flaw. Even if it wasn't abused, it would still fail. Why? Because the bounty only lasts a few weeks. Hunters incentivised to hunt because of the bounty now lose their incentive to hunt when the money is gone and the hog population rebounds. This is akin to those folks who want to travel to Texas to help with the hog problem. They come, shoot a few hogs, and go home. They really haven't helped with much and as soon as they leave, the impact they had is nullified by the rebounding population. Pressure must be ongoing and not punctuated. Bounties that run out of money result in punctuated pressure and in the cases so far, just a short period of pressure before the money is gone.

So how do you come up with a system, such as a bounty, that can be funded and afforded, that incentivises hunters to kill hogs, but isn't so much that the system is abused because an abused system is part of the reason we have a hog problem.

Then there is the issue of 'surrounding properties.' This is a problem I face at the local level. I can wipe out the hogs on a given property in many cases. After that, it becomes maintenance hunting where I continue to hunt the property for when hogs from the surrounding areas decide to encroach on their own into the now vacant property. See, the problem is that while I may have access to the one land, I can't do the surrounding properties and so hogs keep coming in onto the properties I protect. That will happen with Texas if we can't get the surrounding properties to implement their own systems as well for getting rid of hogs.

Say Texas institutes a statewide bounty. We will kill a lot of hogs, but there will be a steady supply of hogs that will continue to re-enter Texas from Oklahoma, Louisiana, and even New Mexico. For all I know, they will come in from Mexico as well. You don't hear a lot about it, but Mexico also has feral hogs. They didn't magically stop at the Rio Grande.
https://theworld.org/stories/2011-11...ld-boars-texas We already get armadillos, bears, javelina, mountain lions, etc. that cross into Texas from Mexico, so there is no reason to believe hogs don't as well. I am sure they move both ways as they do out of Oklahoma and Louisiana.

I am all for finding appropriate ways to get rid of hogs, but the problem is far for complex than simple solutions offered.

CO saw what happened in TX and banned all pay hog hunting, and made them all open season.

Several states have started various alternative programs to see how they work. While Colorado did ban commercial hunting for hogs, you can book hunts right now... https://www.google.com/search?client...nting+colorado

Looking at one of the ranches, the hogs just look like domestic hogs turned loose within the ranch, which by some definitions would mean they are feral and by other definitions that they are not, despite basically being free-roaming hogs over a large area. https://www.seversonoutfitters.com/h...ng-in-colorado

I don't care if these are high fence properties or not, the hogs will escape. Overall, they seem to have done fairly well, but Colorado's feral hog population was never large. At Colorado's peak of hog problems, they probably didn't have as many hogs as Texas had 50 years ago before we knew what hog problems were. Back in 2001, Colorado was believed to have approximately 350 feral hogs in the state and by that time, we had over 2 million.

In 2020, they announced that they had eradicated all of their feral hogs,

“As far as I know, Colorado is the only state that has announced that it has eradicated all feral pigs,” says Travis Black, deputy regional manager for the Southeast Region for Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW).

which was something of a lie given that they have private ranches selling hunts for feral hogs. https://www.porkbusiness.com/news/ho...ted-feral-hogs Of course, it may be that they think they eliminated free ranging feral hogs and they may have done a decent job with it, but then there is still the issue of people importing hogs which is an ongoing issue.
https://www.outtherecolorado.com/new...f9d0b46b4.html
https://www.nationalhogfarmer.com/ne...abies-positive

Colorado's announcement of the killing of all the feral hogs in the state sent minor shock waves through neighboring states and hog hunting communities. If they can do it, why can't we do it? Colorado was mostly successful because they didn't have very many hogs and they were largely in two isolated areas, comprising just a few counties. It should also be pointed out that Colorado's efforts took 15 years to accomplish...and they didn't ever have very many hogs or a widespread problem (only 2 known populations). https://www.grandviewoutdoors.com/ho...all-feral-pigs https://gazette.com/news/local/color...9a119e7b5.html

[MarkCO]

I don't care if these are high fence properties or not, the hogs will escape. Overall, they seem to have done fairly well, but Colorado's feral hog population was never large. At Colorado's peak of hog problems, they probably didn't have as many hogs as Texas had 50 years ago before we knew what hog problems were. Back in 2001, Colorado was believed to have approximately 350 feral hogs in the state and by that time, we had over 2 million.

Yes, my verbiage was bad. I should have said "all feral paid". You can go shoot an Elk, Bison or Hog from high fence in several places. But amazing what one can assume from the internet. Yes, they are all high fence. The Game Wardens check them on a regular basis. Raised domestic pigs shot by paid hunters is not really the same thing as feral hogs.

Colorado has a lot of issues, but they did a great job of eliminating feral hogs, and there were a heck of a lot more than 350 in 2 places.

[JohnKSa]

Google returns only 10.3M results for "Texas Hog Hunting".

It returns 8.9M for "flat earth", but that doesn't change the shape of things.

Make it Helicopter, and get a list of numerous multi-million dollar a year companies.

The Helicopter companies are most definitely not letting hogs loose. The videos show that they have hunts on large tracts of agricultural land where they have permission to shoot.

But they are making bank off of the proliferation of feral hogs in TX.

Sure, many are, but most them are not letting hogs loose to make things worse, and the moneymakers are, by far, outnumbered by landowners who just want all of the hogs dead.

And as mentioned some regions are willing enough to lose tax revenues that they are even paying a small bounty for each dead hog sometimes.

The bottom line is that it is a problem, and the fact that landowners won't let anyone who wants come shoot on their property at night doesn't change that fact. Too many people assume because the problem isn't getting solved the way that they think it should that there's no problem at all.