Hogs are big business here in Texas, where you can pay a couple thousand bucks to shoot them with a machine gun from a helicopter all day, so… what’s the problem? :P
The problem is that there are not nearly enough people that hunt to even keep the population stable through hunting. The fact that hog hunting has become a business is the reason that real solutions to wiping out feral populations aren’t making headway.
This right here. I fell down the “wild boar problem” rabbit hole a couple years ago. I was curious about what controls have been tried and what could be done to bring things back into balance. The statistic I read said that 75000 boars must be killed per year inTexas just to keep their numbers stable there. Holy hell. That’s a lot of dangerous game hunting.
If I was going to guess, the actual numbers killed are far, far lower than that. Especially since there are a lot of very large private hunting preserves that intentionally try to keep their feral pig population high so that they can attract paying hunters.
When I moved out of Texas in 2016, some friends told me there was a $5 bounty for hog tails from the state. So, you could do it for more than fun; less than a dollar a round for .308, then 5 dollars per tail… that’s a decent profit.
Man, I wish good .308 ammo was only $1/round… Even if I’m loading it myself, good 6.5CM ammo (defined as sub-MOA performance) costs about $1/ea. with Hornady 147gr ELD-M bullets, and that’s only if I ignore how much I’ve sunk into a press and case prep.
Yeah, this was before the industry decided on their panic price increaes. It’s weird how post panic prices never corrected. Going shooting is almost painful now on the wallet.
Hogs are big business here in Texas, where you can pay a couple thousand bucks to shoot them with a machine gun from a helicopter all day, so… what’s the problem? :P
That’s my favorite kind of conservation.
The problem is that there are not nearly enough people that hunt to even keep the population stable through hunting. The fact that hog hunting has become a business is the reason that real solutions to wiping out feral populations aren’t making headway.
This right here. I fell down the “wild boar problem” rabbit hole a couple years ago. I was curious about what controls have been tried and what could be done to bring things back into balance. The statistic I read said that 75000 boars must be killed per year in Texas just to keep their numbers stable there. Holy hell. That’s a lot of dangerous game hunting.
If I was going to guess, the actual numbers killed are far, far lower than that. Especially since there are a lot of very large private hunting preserves that intentionally try to keep their feral pig population high so that they can attract paying hunters.
Oh I know, I was being sarcastic, doing the typical redneck ‘lol we shootin’ ‘em fer fun, what’s the problem?!’ type thing.
When I moved out of Texas in 2016, some friends told me there was a $5 bounty for hog tails from the state. So, you could do it for more than fun; less than a dollar a round for .308, then 5 dollars per tail… that’s a decent profit.
Man, I wish good .308 ammo was only $1/round… Even if I’m loading it myself, good 6.5CM ammo (defined as sub-MOA performance) costs about $1/ea. with Hornady 147gr ELD-M bullets, and that’s only if I ignore how much I’ve sunk into a press and case prep.
Yeah, this was before the industry decided on their panic price increaes. It’s weird how post panic prices never corrected. Going shooting is almost painful now on the wallet.