Been killing quite a few pigs lately

[JTPinTX]

Killed a few pigs in Dec/Jan, but had not really started hammering on them until the last few weeks. We are going to have peanut planting time coming up in a couple months so it is time to start working those populations down as much as possible. Up here we mainly do spot and stalk at night in big open crop fields using thermal.

I built this 6.5 Grendel primarily for shooting pigs. Royal arms billet lower with a CMC 3.5 lb trigger, Hogue finger groove grip, T2 buffer, and Magpul MOE SL stock. Upper is a an Aero M4E1 with a Monster 16" lightweight barrel and bolt from the group buy on here. Cerakote in Tactical Grey, I applied it myself. SiCo Omega with a flat end cap, Streamlight combo light/laser, Thermion XQ50 thermal scope in an American Defense QD mount. My new go-to tripod setup is a Two Vets No Name tripod, with one of their 55 ballheads with QD ARCA mount, and ARCA plate on the gun. Nice stable setup that doesn't weigh a ton and is easy to carry. Weight is very important when doing multiple stalks across sandy fields in one night.

Getting a good start to the new year but have a long ways to go.

First night was a good boar (big one, left side, 182 lbs), 2 sows, and 6 piglets. All these were shot by me using 95 VMAXs at about 2625 MV. Both sows got CNS hits right off the bat, bam bam. Partner got several solid hits with his 308 but nothing of his went down in the field



Three nights later tied into a huge sounder, 60-70 pigs. I had some 120 Gold Dots I needed to shoot up and was using them that night. 1 boar (blond one in the middle), 3 sows, 3 piglets and all but one (maybe 2) of those were mine.



Next night back to the same field as the night before and tied into about 35 more. 8 pigs down this time, smaller average size, but no piglets. Most of these were mine too. Back to shooting the 95 VMAX on these.

[Lemonaid]

So that's the meat wagon I have hear tell of. Wow, might be time to start a bacon or jerky store.

[sundowner]

Looks like you have hog control going big time , congrats .

[JTPinTX]

It is all about numbers. Feral hogs are extremely destructive to crop areas, and very prolific breeders. Not sure if it is totally correct but the number I have heard thrown around is that you have to kill roughly 60% of the population annually just to keep even. That seems about right to me.

So watch this video. Look at all those little ones running around. Those big sows can do that again here in 6-8 months. That is the big sounder we stalked on the second night. Roughly 60-70 pigs out there. "If" those were the only pigs in that area, which they are not, then we would need to kill about 35-40 of those alone just to stay even. To actually start reducing the population, you have to take more than that. Say 50+. It takes day in, day out dedication to working the problem down. Start with the big baby factories. DNS knows what I am talking about, he has been doing it longer than me. He is a seasoned veteran in the war on feral pigs.

https://youtu.be/qG4TbA3mEiw

[GREYBUFF]

Do you need a new best friend to help you come take care of some of those hogs? My toy hauler is ready to go......

[Oryx]

[JTPinTX]

You are right Oryx. It takes all methods to make a dent. We trap, hunt at night, use aerial gunning, about the only thing we don't do is dogs. The real problem for us is neighbors without farmland who don't want to spend the time or money on control, whose properties become havens and breeding grounds for the hogs.

[Oryx]

Definitely takes a lot of work to get rid of them or make a dent. Good luck with the effort and enjoy the parts you can. Your point regarding the rest of the community chipping in (or lack there of) is a great point as well.

[ruesauw]

good job , thanks for sharing !

[Double Naught Spy]

I am going to comment on several aspects here because I am a late comer.

Not sure if it is totally correct but the number I have heard thrown around is that you have to kill roughly 60% of the population annually just to keep even. That seems about right to me.

I have seen a couple numbers on this. 60% is at the low end. The good folks at Texas A&M come up with the projections, but honestly, I don't think they know what they are talking about because the same people claim that despite our current efforts, disease, traffic accidents, etc., the population is still growing at roughly 20% and they have been saying this for YEARS. Yet somehow, they keep estimating the Texas hog population at 2.5-3.5 million hogs. We were at 2.5 million hogs in 2005 (according to experts at the time). At 20% growth per year, we should be well over 30 million hogs in Texas and that is a number NOBODY is claiming. So how can we be growing at 20% per year and still have only a few million hogs?

Then we learn that data were fabricated until somebody came along with some new fangled way to calculate hog populations...https://feralhogs.tamu.edu/2011/05/a...ral-hog-myths/
Here is a 2011 article that puts the population at 1.9 million to 3.4 million with growth of 18%-20%. So now we have the real numbers, right? Let's run the low end starting with 1.9 million hogs and 18% growth in 2011 and going to 2021. Well, that still puts us at 9.94 million hogs in Texas TODAY. Using the high end estimates of 3.4 million and 20% growth, puts us over 21 million hogs TODAY. Nobody today is claiming we have 10-20 MILLION hogs in Texas, not even the people who came up with these numbers. Why? Obviously, something isn't right with their calculations

TAMU's current information says the population is 2.6 million. WTH, Kevin? https://agrilifeextension.tamu.edu/s...ns/feral-hogs/

Apparently, we only have about 9 million hogs in the US as of 2020 https://www.theatlantic.com/science/...ywhere/616389/

If hunting isn't working, then why isn't the hog population astronomically larger?

Yep, and Rod Pinkston charges a LOT of money to have his business come out and temporarily take care of your hogs and you know what, his method is more efficient. They run camera traps, do a population estimate, identify sounders, set cellular traps, trap whole or nearly whole sounders, and then come with shooters and hog doggers to get the rest. The operation will take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. It is all very cool, very tactical (it is run like a military operation as he will tell you), and you know what it doesn't do? It doesn't prevent the hogs from coming back. Why? Because they can't do a darned thing about the hogs on neighboring properties. Rod will tell you that as well. They can't do a thing about hogs that are outside of their AO (area of operation).

Rod likes to compare his operation to a military operation and he has a lot of former military people working for him. In considering his operation in the same light, it is like the US fighting the Taliban in a valley next to Pakistan. We can literally wipe them out from the valley and as soon as operations stop, the Taliban come back in from Pakistan and reoccupy the valley...because Pakistan is outside of our AO.

The biggest problem with Rod's operation is that it is NOT sustainable to the average landowner operating a no fence or low fence ranch. They financially can't have Jager Pro out every few months to handle the hog problem that keeps rematerializing. This isn't Rod's fault. It is reality.

As for making a dent in the population, none of us, Rod included, are making any sort of significant dents in the population. Cumulatively, hunters, trappers, hog doggers, etc. are making a dent in the population, but JTP isn't, I'm not, Rod isn't. What we are doing is mitigating a problem, meaning the problem will still exist, despite our efforts, but we lessen the impact it has on the properties we are allowed to cover.

What I do and what JTP seems to be doing is hitting properties on a regular basis to keep the hog population from getting too comfortable on the properties we hunt. We kill some and scare the heck out of the rest that run back to the neighbor sanctuary properties and bide their time for a while before coming back and trying again. If you want to liken it to Rod's military perspective, we are the patrols that keep getting sent into the valley next to Pakistan to help limit Taliban operations. I don't see it as anything quite so dramatic as that, LOL.

I don't know about JTP, but I don't charge my landowners. They get the service for free and they like the fact that they have noticeably less damage to their properties.

As for the percentage of hogs we need to kill, we would need to kill a lot less if the sport hunters would stop worrying about shooting the big 'trophy boars' and worry about shooting sows, which are the baby factories. You need both, of course, but a single boar can fertilize a lot of sows in just a few days, but sows in the wild only get pregnant about 1.5 times a year (though mathematically they can get pregnant 3 times a year). We try to identify sows when we come across sounders. That isn't always possible, but sows are what we consider the real trophies when it comes to helping landowners. Once the shooting starts, then any hog is fair game, but openers should be on sows, if possible.

Not mentioned was helicopter hunting. Depending on the operation, heli-hunting may be free to landowners, the heli-hunting companies making their money off of the shooters at something like $1200 an hour (last I checked). It is a cool deal but has a lot of detractions such a being a bother to neighbors, scaring livestock, scaring wildlife, absolutely ruining people's hunting lease time when the property next door is being heli-hunted and the chopper flies over a non-hunt property, etc. Heli-hunting can result in a lot of hogs being killed. It is a great deal for larger ranches or when multiple contiguous ranches band together, but not a great deal for small and/or isolated ranches. It is sustainable because the operation is paid for by tourist dollars. People want the thrill of flying in a helicopter (most of which have never done it) AND getting to shoot hogs. Again, the problem here is that the operations don't cover properties outside of their AO.

[Double Naught Spy]

I had to think about this for a bit. Trapping, when it works, works great, but traps are expensive and or complex and not readily portable, are a lot of work, and if not cellular, have to be checked daily (if you are humane). But you know what the #1 downside to trapping is? Nobody does it for fun. If I had permission from landowners for guests, I could have a crew of 10 volunteers on the weekend and 2 or 3 any other night to go hunt. Everybody and their cousin wants to hunt hogs for free. Try getting your buddies to help you deal with a bunch of dead hogs in a trap. Most would never want to trap shoot them (which is a very nasty business). Or you can load them up and sell them at designated buying facilities (but only ones of a certain size range), but then your buddies want a cut of the profits.

So trapping may be more efficient, but nobody wants to just trap hogs for fun and not very many people are able to make enough money at it to keep them interested for very long. It isn't a sustainable operation from a popular standpoint.

I hunt for a landowner who has traps. About 10 years ago, he trapped 1000 hogs over the course of a summer and knocked them back a bit. However, he said it got to the point where he was no longer a cattle rancher, but a hog wrangler and that wasn't his business. So I hunt for him now.

[LDHunter]

You are right Oryx. It takes all methods to make a dent. We trap, hunt at night, use aerial gunning, about the only thing we don't do is dogs. The real problem for us is neighbors without farmland who don't want to spend the time or money on control, whose properties become havens and breeding grounds for the hogs.

JTPinTX,

You obviously know what you're doing yet I find myself confused over your bullet of choice being the 6.5mm 95gr Vmax which, by Hornady's description, is a fast expanding varmint bullet.

Please enlighten me as to why you like this bullet for hog control and what your favorite point of impact is on these hogs.

I'm certainly not doubting your choice of bullet but am looking to learn more about bullet choice for my Grendel.

[Oryx]

I had to think about this for a bit. Trapping, when it works, works great, but traps are expensive and or complex and not readily portable, are a lot of work, and if not cellular, have to be checked daily (if you are humane). But you know what the #1 downside to trapping is? Nobody does it for fun. If I had permission from landowners for guests, I could have a crew of 10 volunteers on the weekend and 2 or 3 any other night to go hunt. Everybody and their cousin wants to hunt hogs for free. Try getting your buddies to help you deal with a bunch of dead hogs in a trap. Most would never want to trap shoot them (which is a very nasty business). Or you can load them up and sell them at designated buying facilities (but only ones of a certain size range), but then your buddies want a cut of the profits.

So trapping may be more efficient, but nobody wants to just trap hogs for fun and not very many people are able to make enough money at it to keep them interested for very long. It isn't a sustainable operation from a popular standpoint.

I hunt for a landowner who has traps. About 10 years ago, he trapped 1000 hogs over the course of a summer and knocked them back a bit. However, he said it got to the point where he was no longer a cattle rancher, but a hog wrangler and that wasn't his business. So I hunt for him now.

I won't try to debate the fact that trapping hogs is not as fun compared to hunting them.... I agree and really wasn't suggesting that. Eradicating hogs because of damage is a completely different objective than hunting them for fun. Farmers who are losing $ from damaged crops often lose far more in crop revenue than the cost of a trap or two. a farm that could trap and kill 1000 hogs in a single summer has a pretty bad problem in my opinion and would likely never have them eradicated by hunting alone.... 1000 hogs is a lot.

I'm really not trying to suggest that hogs shouldn't be hunted ... I am a hunter and enjoy it as much as the next hunter .... just pointing out a different perspective and approach to the OP's post #4. I think that both hunting and trapping together still isn't a bad idea. Additionally, I'm not even sure if it's his land or he's just hunting on it to be quite honest ... but if it's his I would venture to guess based on the cost of his set up to hunt them the cost of a trap might not be too large of a concern in the grand scheme of things.

[ThisWildAdventure]

Some really good dialogue in this thread. Subscribed.

[LRRPF52]

JTPinTX,

You obviously know what you're doing yet I find myself confused over your bullet of choice being the 6.5mm 95gr Vmax which, by Hornady's description, is a fast expanding varmint bullet.

Please enlighten me as to why you like this bullet for hog control and what your favorite point of impact is on these hogs.

I'm certainly not doubting your choice of bullet but am looking to learn more about bullet choice for my Grendel.