Steve I have buddies in Albany, etc. and can be there as soon as you say. I can help organize if necessary. A trad shoot would be nuts! Weatherford is a breeze from Dallas and down at the end of the street from Ft. Worth! Are you trying to eradicate them or just hunt them? Always take out the alpha female and her subordinate female, as well as the alpha boar, which is easier said than done, but this will "break" a sounder of pigs and disrupt it's birth cycles. The fellas I know who do it well use game cams to figure out who's who in a sounder and knock them off one at a time. It's an ongoing war....here's his advice:
"....The problem with trying to reduce their numbers lies in taking out "select animals" in a "certain order" without educating the entire group.
Getting "volunteer hunters" is no problem. Every time I post a hog picture here (or elsewhere) I'll get 50 solicitations to "come help". Unfortunately, maybe one or two of those well meaning folks actually understand hogs and their habits. The rest will only succeed in "bumping into them" and educate the hogs in the process.
My purpose is not to just "run them off" for awhile. I am trying to thin their numbers by appreciable amounts.
To do this...you need to take out as many boars as you can first. The mature boars a very elusive and smart. Next...(or at nearly the same time) you need to locate and remove the "Alpha sow", she will be the leader of the sounder and an excellent "teacher".
Next step is to shoot out the "subordinate" sows (they are pig factories..as long as there is a boar around to breed them). What you are left with...is a "broken" sounder consisting of a mixture of younger sows and shoats. These can be trapped in large numbers, or shot out over a period of time.
Of course, a new group will come in and replace/displace what is left. Then the cycle starts all over again. But the object is to start at the top (remove the oldest smartest, most elusive first), then work your way down.
Just wading into the group...blasting, will result in a few pigs on the ground, but will educate the ENTIRE GROUP and only make them spooky.
Add to that.....the litigious society we now live in....and you'll find precious few rancher/farmers that will allow strangers onto their property for any reason (let alone to shoot at hogs).
Folks who hunt hogs "poorly" do more harm than good, you must be patient and outsmart them. They are extremely intelligent animals and "learn" faster than anything else I can think of that roams the woods...."
Topic: Too Many Hogs (Read 2957 times)
