Texas hunting

[Texas Ranger]

There are intrepid souls here in Texas that have an interesting hunting process.  they go out for javelina and hogs with basic equipment: a couple of buddies, a pack of dogs and this:





The dogs head and tail the javelina or hog, and the hunter walks up, carefully, and sticks the animal.  The dogs hold on till the animal is still.  Oh, there is usually a gun barer in the mix, just in case.

An alternative method is one of the hunters walks up, grabs the animal by the hind legs and lifts the aft end up, the hog on his front legs is immobile and the pig sticking takes place.

[beenthere]

Yup, have watched similar hunting in a video channel of hunting wild boar in Australia with dogs. The dog grabs the boar by an ear and won't let go, until the guy with the knife does the sticking. Rack up the boars and can sell the carcass for wild meat. This youtuber bigboars1out hunts and takes his 6 yr old son along. Recently hunted in airboats due to high water in the fields, but also hunts from pickup or ATV. Shooting from an ATV while moving looks to be tough, but they are pretty accurate, and good videos.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=bigboars+1+out

[SawyerTed]

We have bay dogs and catch dogs for hogs.  The bay dogs circle the hog and the catch dogs hold it by the head and neck.  

The hunters grab the hind legs and one sticks the hog.  

For some it is a big time.  I've not learned to love it.  

[Southside]

I can't imagine that does the meat any good. Personally, if I am going to kill something, even a DanG coyote, and we have problems with them, it's going to be fast and painless. 

[SawyerTed]

The bay dogs are typically hounds like coon hounds.  The catch dogs are often pit bull or pit bull mixes for obvious reasons.  

I too prefer a hefty piece of lead moving at a high speed or a bolt with a set of razor sharp blades to end things quickly. 

[TN King]

Feral hogs destroy farms. We dispatch them on sight.

 

[Walnut Beast]

A friend went on a hog hunt down there and the ones he got besides some other cuts made some burger grind and said they were fantastic on the grill 

[Ianab]

Dogs are the favoured hunting method here in NZ. The Pigs are a pest, but hunting has pushed them back into the roughest county and large forestry plantations. If they show up on more open farmland they are pretty easy targets, but back in the bush covered hills you basically need dogs to find and run them down. Then they can be stuck or shot. 

Best I've eaten has been cooked in a hangi (umu if you are Hawaiian). Cooked all day gets it tender.  

[customsawyer]

I have hogs here on my place too. They can be rough on most crops including trees.

[barbender]

Even animals I don't like deserve to dispatched quickly and humanely. Having a hog held by dogs until you can catch up and stick it with a knife sounds like sport for folks that still use the skulls of their enemies for a drinking cup.

[Southside]

A pitbull trained and encouraged to engage in a blood sport. What can possibly go wrong? 

If you have ever run behind long legged hounds you know keeping up is impossible. They are going to be on that hog for quite a while before Rambo arrives on scene. 

[sawguy21]

We are seeing feral hogs and they are not welcome. I am with @Southside make it quick and painless.

[Texas Ranger]

In Texas, and a few other states, hogs can be killed in any fashion, at any time, with whatever means available.  They are a plague.  The state, I think I remember, tried aerial poison but found secondary creature deaths and stopped, the hogs will kill and eat anything that does not kill and eat them.  A quick death is preferred, but death is preferred over sensitivity.

[SawyerTed]

In NC there's no feral swine season, they may be hunted year round, no daily bag limits and no possession limit.  

[Southside]

When hunting becomes brutality then bureaucrats knee jerk reactions to the small groups that can be quite loud paint every hunter with a broad brush, and not in a good way.   Just because you can does not mean you should.  

[beenthere]

Seems draining blood from an animal might be painless, disregarding the method used to start the process. After initial blood loss, seems the critter would just drift into unconsciousness. There likely would be some pain from the knife insertion, or bullet, or arrow broadhead.

Recall when Castro took over Cuba, that prisoners were drained of their blood to replace their blood supply. Thought it was extremely cruel, until I was told they just drift into deep sleep. Maybe the Dr.s here would know more than I, cause I don't really know much about it.

Back in the day, hog slaughter houses just hooked one back leg of a hog to be hoisted upside down, and the hog sticker would do the sticking to drain the blood. Reason I've been told that it was stopped was due to the squeals from the other hogs maybe causing a temporary emotional problem (maybe more human thoughts than hog to hog communication).

[WV Sawmiller]

  If you have ever been cut by a wild hog you will likely be less sympathetic to the manner of his and his relatives passing from this old Earth. >:(

[customsawyer]

I have allowed hunting hogs on my place in the past but after picking up trash behind them I put a stop to that.

[TN King]

The goal here is feral sounder eradication, by whatever means necessary.
Feral hogs reproduce at alarming rates.
They're responsible for $$ billions in lost crop production, forest damage, erosion and field damage. 
They're very smart, have exceptional since of smell, hearing and good eyesight. Can sprint a mile in under 3 minutes and have ferocious appetites'.  
Combine their qualities, reproductive rates with no real predictors. What do you get? 
We use digital and thermal scopes for those who only appear at night. Others, more brazen are dispatched on sight. 

[TN King]

"Predators" Dang auto spell checker wrongly predicts my intent daily.

[barbender]

I'm not warm and fuzzy towards feral pigs. I get the destruction that they cause. If we had them here, I'd shoot every one I saw.  

The point I'm trying to make is, if you will torture and kill the pigs by any means (because that's how the pigs do things), at what point do we become no better than the pigs?🤷‍♂️

How much of a dent in the pig population are the guys running pitbulls and sticking the hog making, anyways? 

[SawyerTed]

Here in NC, feral swine are not native and became a problem in the eastern half of the state after some hurricanes caused the accidental release of domesticated pigs from hog farms.  Their populations grew dramatically and they became a feral nuisance to farmers and property owners. 

Feral swine in the western most counties come from two sources.  European boars were imported to a hunting preserve in Graham County in 1912 and they too were "accidentally" released a couple of times over the next 30 years or so.  They inbred with free ranging domestic swine.  Of course free ranging domestic swine couldn't be rounded up and would reproduce and go feral as well. 

For 30 (1979-2011) years here in NC, "wild boar"/feral swine were protected with big game hunting regulations like deer, turkey and bear primarily targeting  those western most counties but incidentally the eastern part of the state. 

Now  they are in about 80 of 100 counties.
They aren't in my area, yet.  In 2011 the Legislature and NC Wildlife Commission dropped the regulations - except hunters must have hunting license and hunt during standard hunting hours, blaze orange and a few other general hunting regulations. No closed season and no bag limits, squirrels have more protection than feral swine. 

I have participated in a couple of hunts in South Carolina over the years.  Those were highly regulated by the South Carolina wildlife officials.  They were planned as dog hunting events specifically.  I enjoyed the fellowship with my friends and other hunters.  Dealing with the dogs adds another layer of complexity to hunting that seems cumbersome.  

In the end that kind of hunting just hasn't  appealed to me.  I prefer making the selection of the animal I want to harvest, if I want to harvest.  There's not really an ethical alternative to harvesting an animal already caught by the dogs.

[Texas Ranger]

Killing hogs is like killing cockroaches, no ethics involved.

[Ianab]

How much of a dent in the pig population are the guys running pitbulls and sticking the hog making, anyways? 

If Conservation Dept want's them totally cleaned out of a protected area, like National Parks or a bird sanctuary, they sent in contract hunters with a team of dogs. Dogs will track and run down every last one eventually, and then it's basically a moot point if it's shot or stuck. In rough country there is nothing more cunning than a feral pig, and they will almost always sense you first, run and you may never even see them to take a shot. Well trained dogs have even better senses, and can run further. The pro hunters put theirs through Kiwi aversion training, where they are taught not to attack kiwi birds, and often carry GPS collars so they can be tracked to where they have a pig cornered.  

 

I prefer making the selection of the animal I want to harvest, if I want to harvest.

Selecting a game animal is fair enough if you are managing a population, so you have seasons, bag limits and good reasons to "let one get away". All feral hogs are a pest anywhere, so the only good one is a dead one. Like you don't catch and release rats because you only want to kill specific ones. 

[SawyerTed]

Every hunter has to square with their own principles and ethics within the confines of the laws and hunting regulations.

I never said I don't hunt and kill feral swine.  I have and will continue to.  I just don't particularly enjoy hunting them with dogs.  There are a number of hunting and fishing pursuits that I've tried and I don't find particularly enjoyable. Doesn't mean you can't, just don't try to convince me. 

There best be some ethics in hunting feral swine (or any kind of hunting)or hunting privileges of all sorts will be curtailed.  

Trash left behind, roads and trails damaged, carcasses and entrails improperly disposed of, fields annd crops damaged, indiscriminate shooting, wonton waste among other transgressions are quick ways to sully the reputation of all hunters.  To say there are no ethics in hog hunting is an overstatement.