Explain to me this Texas pig issue...

[TxAg]

Also, they're mostly nocturnal. They arent always as easy to hunt as you might think.

[Night Wing]

In Texas, hogs are considered a cash crop to be hunted all year long. And the vast majority of them are nocturnal.

It's the nature of the business......and the beast.

[JamesV]

I hunted and trapped hogs for some of the local land owners for 3 years. Spent lots of money and time without being paid anything. We could come in the first of march and get out before Oct. not to interfere with their hunting deer. They were doing us a favor by letting us get rid of their pests. Now I let them deal with the problem themselves.

[Breeze430]

I live in the country of Texas. 100 bucks a day keeps out the riff raff, which there is plenty. Most ranchers love honest hunters, but remeber, for every 100 well intentioned hunters, there is one dude that gut shoots everything, throws trash everywhere, and bad mouths the ranch on the web. 100 bucks is a small tariff to pay to visit our fine country.

[SaltyDawg]

Hey cj. How goes it?

Pigs are a problem here, but the money a farmer or rancher can get for allowing the hunting goes a long way toward keeping them in business.

I don't have a problem with a property owner charging for hunting. I kinda cringe at the amounts most of them charge, but it's their property, and "People Will Pay".

You can't compete with money Bro. Unless you have a lot of it, and want to.

Rick

[BigErn]

Originally posted by SaltyDawg:
Hey cj. How goes it?

Pigs are a problem here, but the money a farmer or rancher can get for allowing the hunting goes a long way toward keeping them in business.

I don't have a problem with a property owner charging for hunting. I kinda cringe at the amounts most of them charge, but it's their property, and "People Will Pay".

You can't compete with money Bro. Unless you have a lot of it, and want to.

Rick

Rick head the nail on the head! Yep,if you don't pay it,their's going to be someone that will.
                              Ernie

[Jon Stewart]

Texas or as  someone said above "the Country of Texas", is pretty much private and they like it that way and don't mind telling you about it.   Have spent the last 10 winters (1 month )in Texas.  As a maatter of fact I just got back to the "land of the free, Michigan, Tuesday. My buddy, paralyzed Viet Nam vet, who we visit explained hunting to me this way.  You pay a trespass fee according to the size of deer you want to kill and someone sits in the blind with you and after the dinner bell go's off (the corn feeder) a few minutes later the deer come out.  The guy sitting with you tells you the cost of the bucks that stand in front of you.  You make a mistake and your $3,000 buck could turn into a $15,000 buck with the pull of a trigger.

I don't listen to the grumbling of the hog damage much.

[TxAg]

Originally posted by Jon Stewart:
Texas or as  someone said above "the Country of Texas", is pretty much private and they like it that way and don't mind telling you about it.   Have spent the last 10 winters (1 month )in Texas.  As a maatter of fact I just got back to the "land of the free, Michigan, Tuesday. My buddy, paralyzed Viet Nam vet, who we visit explained hunting to me this way.  You pay a trespass fee according to the size of deer you want to kill and someone sits in the blind with you and after the dinner bell go's off (the corn feeder) a few minutes later the deer come out.  The guy sitting with you tells you the cost of the bucks that stand in front of you.  You make a mistake and your $3,000 buck could turn into a $15,000 buck with the pull of a trigger.

I don't listen to the grumbling of the hog damage much.

Oh geez

[Redfeathers]

A ranch just West of Eden,Texas shot 165 hogs in four days from a helicopter. They still had two days left from the helicopter. The guy stated they would still have plenty of hogs to hunt. They have never hunted hogs with bows on the ranch. I asked about a hog hunt with 10 hunters and I would be responible for the ten hunters(gates shut,trash,things left the way they were found) etc etc. and at a sweet price for $70 a day. I called twice without a reply! Come to find out they were still hunting the hogs from above. TxAg had it right, their thoughts were we would spend a weekend chasing hogs around and not take enough off the ranch. I asked them to give me a call when they were through from the air and let some trad guys have some fun while taking some of the probelm away and make money to pay the helicopter. Still waiting for that call  

[Roadkill]

Calif used to be an easy hog hunting state.  They now charge a bunch. Money talks in these tough Econ times.

[4BTradArchery]

Its the landowners land, he can charge a trespass fee if he wants to or he can choose to let you hunt for free.  As a landowner, why would you just let someone you have never met hunt for free and entrust your life's work or dream to? Will that person care for and tend to the land like it was their own while they are there hunting?  Would you just let someone have full access to your land because he sounds like a nice guy or he had a solid handshake? The problem that your facing is one guy did sound and act reputable and honest, but did a lot of damage to the farmer and ranchers place and never offered to help pay for it in the past.

Yes, it would be nice that I could just accept a handshake and trust someone to hunt my place and know that the place will be better than when they arrived or that THEY will call me in the middle of the Texas summer and offer to do chores and just general work around the place.  

I can understand your frustration, but I think there is more to the sorry than just money.  If you might have noticed, Texas is coming off the worst drought in a very long time.  So many long time farmers and ranchers had to sell all their stock, lost so much money feeding them out, paid an exorbitant amount of money for round bales or even worse lost their land.  Wouldn't you charge a trespass fee if meant you could make a little money (notice the word a little) and rid your farm of a nuisance?

I am not trying to stir the pot, I just wanted to give a landowners side of the story.

[Redfeathers]

Good post 4BTradArchery

[4BTradArchery]

I am really not trying to stir the pot, I just thought maybe some would want to hear a landowners perspective on the issue.

[Redfeathers]

I have land to hunt on just no hogs! Perfect example this past weekend while we were working on fence. Individuals on the place for free let their sons take the vehicle. While out on their joy ride they ran through every mud hole and a low area that holds water when we have a alot of rain in a short period of time. They ran through the water with their 4x4 and made deep holes and ruts without a care. They came very close to turning the vehicle over right in front of our face. The dad's are pi$$ed because now they are looking for another place to roam for free. This issue was not totally the dad's fault as they were not in the vehicle but they were told about the one's son doing this before. He would still have a place to go if he would have made a good decision to not let the son drive alone.

[4BTradArchery]

Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt

[Ray Hammond]

Originally posted by cjgregory:
.......unless you took away the crop damage insurance against hogs and the feds clammed down then I think the hog problem would be gone in less than two years.

CJ- if u were turned loose along with 1000 of your closest friends armed with machine guns for 365 straight days dawn to dark there would be around the same number of hogs in TX at the end of that year as there were when you started- you'd barely be able to keep the population static.

I agree it's counterintuitive given conditions but when was the last time you said to yourself "you know I really am impressed by the level of logic displayed by the average American these days"

[Uncle Buck]

That is the way it is in Texas, If there is one univervesal truth its "Dont try to change Texans, and dont tell them what they can do with their own land".You will only make them dig in and push harder. Actually I have always admired them for that

[Izzy]

Land and the costs involved in managing it arent cheap and if you want to hunt a mans ground that he pays for from his pocket, helping him a little with that burden is only fair.

[Mint]

There is no free lunch, plain and simple as that.

[Stickbow]

I just got back from my first trip hunting in Texas. Awesome country and really nice folks. Atleast the few I met.

But the statement one Texan made to me kind of embodied the feeling I got about how folks hunted down there.

He said, " You should come deer hunting down here some time, we killed a 180 buck last year that had only been on protien for 3 years."

HUH?