SMH..........
Not in reference to you specifically, I don't think. I was saying "you" as in a reference to general people, us, whomever. If they outlaw sport hunting of this pest animal, then it would mean we can only hunt those we plan to drag out and eat... which would drastically decrease efforts at eradication.
Just sayin'...
A 45 caliber 1911 is my go-to trap clearing gun. Both were boars, but they didn’t stink and are now in my Yeti iced down.
Nicely done!
My opinion of outlawing "sport hunting" of hogs doesn't have anything to do with letting hogs lay vs. dragging them out to eat. Maybe I should of just said "outlaw the hunting".
To clarify, my intention would be to outlaw hunting of hogs by any person except the landowner and their immediate family, tenants, and ag lease holders. This would mean that those individuals could hunt/eradicate the hogs on those properties. Sport hunting is in reference to people hunting hogs in general, regardless of intent. No more sport involved eliminates the dollar value that is tied to hunting hogs.
Soooo.... you're saying no one could hunt hogs unless they were the property owner or a formal lessee? Which is essentially putting hogs in a much much more protected/restricted hunting class than any other animal in the state?
You COULD look at it in a way its protecting the hogs from everyone except those specifically allowed to hunt them. However, as I stated in my first post, trapping of hogs would still be legal so looking at it as "protecting" the animal is just false. The goal is to eliminate any way to make a profit from feral swine. In my opinion money and general sport hunting has been two of the biggest culprits in creating the widespread problem we have today. Doing away with hunting hogs in general (w/ the aforementioned exceptions) would disable any hog hunting market value that private landowners and hunting guides/outfitters can take advantage of. As I stated before, we realize that our WMAs have unwillingly been utilized as feral swine relocation sites. IF we were to stop all the hog hunting on those properties then that would eliminate one more reason and place for people to release them.
We know that "hunting" hogs does little to nothing to benefit the effort of managing the feral hog population. We also know that trapping hogs is an effective tool that is under utilized due to time, expense, and effort required. Aerial gunning has proven itself to be extremely effective in eradicating hogs from an area.
As you can see in my first comments, my OPINIONS regarding this topic are based ONLY on the "what if" the State/Gov't had the funds and landowner permission to conduct a statewide aerial assault on the hog population. Only then would I suggest and believe these efforts would be a success.
I dunno, none of that makes any sense to me. You want to make it where people can't hunt them, so they can use a more expensive, time-consuming and labor intensive method to dispose of them. Do you think that is going to encourage more people to utilize trapping than already do now? What benefit is there to the theoretical "former" hunters?
I personally think your proposed position would simply lead to an even bigger explosion in the hog population. We are their only natural predators - imposing more restrictions on humans hunting hogs is going to lead to more hogs. They are voracious, they are rapid reproducers and have no essentially no natural predators in this area. That would be a recipe for disaster, especially for agriculture.
Just my opinion.
I wouldn’t support restricting hog hunting to land owners and leasers only, but I would support restricting the use of dogs to land owners and leasers. In the last 20+ years hogs have been a problem in east TX, hog hunters with dogs have been an almost equal problem. I know this is going to piss some people off, but my experiences have been bad. The ones I know and have dealt with kill way fewer hogs than I can trap, and I don’t disturb the deer to trap them. I’ve been to several state programs on trapping, and that’s the general consensus of the state too.
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