Each year some friends and I go down to east Texas to hunt wild pigs. My friends went for two weeks and I went for a week. This was my most productive year, I shot five hogs and we were able to find three of them. Shot one hog at night and we had a good blood trail but it just did a big circle and the blood stopped. The other hog, we never found blood but it hit the deck and was squealing like heck, maybe I just grazed it. Missed a hog the first day when my gun misfired / wouldn't fire ( dang AR ) and then I finally got it fire and by that point the hog was walking away into some bushes and I was pretty flustered by that point. Missed one at night too, I must of pulled because the cross hairs are on the hog in the video. I did get to see a bobcat in the wild. I've never seen a bobcat in the wild before so it was an interesting experience. At first I thought it was small dog but once I saw the small bushy tail, I knew it was bobcat. I took some pictures with my scope, but my scope and pew pew are still in transit home. All in all my friends got twenty-seven hogs total. We bring them home and have sausage made out of out them. Shot both of these the same night. A boar, and a sow. Long story how I get them..... My two plus some others. My hunting rig. It's BCA .308 AR10 with a Sigthmark Wraith 4k Max Night Vision Scope. The IR light goes on the picatinny rail near the end of the upper receiver. Ready to head out to the stands A deer that was passing through. He / she knew I was there as they were stomping their foot and snorting at me. There's definitely some Duroc in this pig. It was the best looking pig by far. My friend got this boar the last night I was there. Definitely the biggest boar we've gotten down there so far. As a spit ball guess I'd say he was close to 150lbs plus. Camp, it's on a 30+ acre lake.
We're those "free range "? A buddy of mine went a couple weeks ago. They were on a large fenced ranch (2000+ ac) and they brought pigs in and 'stocked them. They killed over 400. And it was $$$...
All free range. They just want them gone because they tear everything up so badly. A few years ago they were telling us that they were digging up grave markers in a local grave yard. What do you do with 400+ pigs also ?
I have never heard of stocking wild hogs for hunting. I would think the owners of said ranch would be wildly unpopular especially if in Texas. All I have ever read about & heard about hogs in Texas is that they are over running everything. No need for license or bag limits. I have a friend that goes to Texas to hog hunt & a DNR officer tells them where to go for best results, what landowners don’t care if they hunt & what landowners to stay away from. The fella is pretty much a hunting guide for them, very helpful & friendly. Unlike the PIA dnr officer here that treats everyone as a criminal until you can prove that you aren’t, she is a real piece of work. I haven’t asked him lately but he was looking at buying 20 acres down there just to establish a camp for his family.
When my buddy told me how many they shot, that's when I started asking ?s about fence etc. He said they saw two gooseneck trailers going out empty when they were pulling in. Sounds like the pigs are trapped in other places, then brought to this site. Told me.m it was $200 per pig. I told him he was f'ing crazy. He didn't pay, boss paid...he works for a construction/land clearing/building site prep type company now. I'm sure it was just a tax write off. Before this group went down and shot, another group had gone down a week or two prior, and they killed over 500. The meat is given to some kind of food bank type thing...he said there were ppl out picking up the pigs while they were still roaming around shooting. But I can't see that there's any way that any kind of group can process that many animals in a timely manner, without having dozens + ppl processing and a lot of infrastructure. I can't see paying to shoot a pig, when like yall said they are tearing up things and they want them killed.
Zero problems taking them down with a .308 with the correct shot placement. They are a hard animal to kill even with the correct shot placement due the armor plating on the boars, and the thickness of their fat. They were especially fat this year. Took a picture of a hog after we skinned it that I shot with my .308 at roughly 100 yards and there's a nice size ( >1" ) hole in her shoulder. I'd say the majority of the pigs we killed were shot between 50 - 100 yards. The brown hog that I posted the picture of above my buddy shot at roughly 370 yards ( yes 370 yards ) with a .270 Winchester from a picnic table at camp. We know the distance because there's a shooting plate right next to where he shot that hog. The majority of us either hunt with a .308 or a 6.5 Creedmor. One guy exclusively hunts with a 7.62 because the ammo was very cheap to buy back in the day. The land owner doesn’t want us hunting with a .223 or 5.56 because it doesn't have enough punch to ethically kill the animal.
