Big money to hunt feral pigs... I don't get it!

Look around, you can find a good deal. I hunted south of San Antonio a few years back, 3 hogs 2 days, 180 bucks and included a night in the camp house.

The reason they charge what they charge is because they can. Lots of folks lined up to pay 'em, no laws against setting your own rates. Free country, put up or shut up. It's called capitalism. It's supply and demand, essentially. Can't blame a land owner for getting what he can for a resource, destructive or not. Gotta pay the taxes on that land, ya know, and God, but do I know. They get a bit thicker on my place, I might just start day leasing. If it can pay my taxes, it's an idea. If it could provide spending cash, it's an even better idea.

Most landowners here are reluctant to allow folks they do not know well to hunt on their farms/ranches. There is the problem of liability if the hunter falls out of his own stand or gets shot by accident. Careless hunters leave gates open and cattle stray. A few cattle are shot by hunters or spotlighters every year on one of the places I hunt.

There are online sources. I found the place I hunted in the Houston Chronicle's "hunting and fishing" section in the classifieds. Hard to run across the bargains at online outfitter listings. Gotta dig through the papers and be patient.

A guy posted the following some time back and I saved the info. I'll get up there some day to try this place if it's reasonable. He seemed to think it was. It's only about 2.5 hours from me.

here is the info on the ranch up 290, near Houston.
Mr. schulz.
Rock Island(I'm not kidding) Ranch, 281.744.5228.
A great guy to deal with.

Click to expand...

I just hunted pigs for the first time south of San Antonio as mentioned. Although I had a good time we got totally hosed by a ton of hidden fees such as those stated. Ask a lot of questions to make sure of what you are getting. Ended up costing about 1000 apiece for 2 pigs before we got away.

I just hunted pigs for the first time south of San Antonio as mentioned. Although I had a good time we got totally hosed by a ton of hidden fees such as those stated. Ask a lot of questions to make sure of what you are getting. Ended up costing about 1000 apiece for 2 pigs before we got away.

Click to expand...

Wow, that's nuts. Place I hunted was just south of 1604 between I37 and I35. This was a few years ago. Was for meat hogs, under 100 lbs. They got more for big pigs two of which I passed on that looked like over 300 lbs. There were some big pigs there, but they were over-run with meat hogs. I wasn't out for a trophy.

We shot 2 over 500 pounds and got hit with huge mandatory skinning and de-boning fees, over 200 for each of those. cooler use fee extra also.

We shot 2 over 500 pounds and got hit with huge mandatory skinning and de-boning fees, over 200 for each of those. cooler use fee extra also.

Click to expand...

Unless they figured out how to skin the customer, it ain't the same place. I had to do my own skinning and quartering and use my own cooler.

Well, it's just simple supply & demand.

If you struck oil on your property, and the market is $100 per barrel, would you just give it away, since it cost you nothing? No, you will take what the market will pay. The market is driven to an artifically high level due to the huge population vs. the lack of public hunting lands, as is being discussed in a concurrent thread. The market price should and will in fact come down over time as the pig population increases and more and more farmers/ranchers allow hunting.

Myself and a friend just paid $220 each at razor ranch (www.razzorranch.com) While it does seem expensive to me for an animal that breeds like a rabbit, i paid it. We did so because we dont have hunting land of our own and before approaching local farmers or ranchers we wanted to make sure that we would even enjoy hunting them.

The guys at the ranch were more then hospitalbe and made us feel like we were kings. They have a $500 trophy fee which saps the fun out of the hunt. Anything with over a 1.5inch tusk is considered a trophy and i am fine with that, but when looking through glass in the woods at a black hog with dark tusks at 50 yards it is hard to tell how large their tusks are. So ended up out there for 4 hours worried i would shoot something i couldnt afford to take. In the end I shot a 80# sow, which should taste great but the stress of hitting a more expensive animal took alot of the fun out of the hunt. They didnt nickel and dime us though all fees were explained on the site and were the same ones when we got there.

I saw about 20-30 hogs while i was there.

They have a $500 trophy fee which saps the fun out of the hunt. Anything with over a 1.5inch tusk is considered a trophy and i am fine with that, but when looking through glass in the woods at a black hog with dark tusks at 50 yards it is hard to tell how large their tusks are. So ended up out there for 4 hours worried i would shoot something i couldnt afford to take.

Click to expand...

Surefire way to avoid that nasty trophy fee, if you find that you accidentally misjudged after approaching the down game:

http://homeschooljourney.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/shovel.jpg

"Yeah, I shot - musta missed, though."

End nippers could trim those teeth, too.

I can certainly respect your interest and attitude. I have been extremely lucky through my life to have a small place to hunt on and know folks who allow me to come hunt with them on their's through friendship's or work to hunt type deals.

If we were as eat up with them as some of the other folks I know I would not have any issues with helping folks like yourself out. One of the biggest issues is once you start with one or two folks, then before you know it everybody is contacting you for a similar type deal. Or like in the case of a friend of mine, we end up catching several folks a year on their place who say, well so and so said we could come out and hunt hogs here. Funny thing is so and so never mentioned it to the owners, and when contacted knows nothing or makes out to know nothing about it. Or the best one is, well we lost one of our dogs, and we're just over here looking for it.

Anyway, I know a couple of folks who post on this board, and have see it recommended for similar type hunts that you looking for. I cannot say either way how much better they would be if any over another operation.
http://www.texasboars.com/

I do know that if you look up The Big Woods up around Athens, your going to spend WAY more than you need to in order to get what your looking for. Another place you might look, is through the TP&W and their Annual Public Hunting (APH) Permit. It allows access to a lot of privite places that have leased their land to the state for regulated public hunting access. I also know that they do a LOT of hunts through the Wildlife areas found at this link,
http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/huntwild/hunt/wma/find_a_wma/list/

Might be on a limited basis, but most of them do hog hunts through out the year to try and keep them from ruining the areas.

Man, I've been sitting on a goldmine for years and have been completely unaware of it. LOL! We are eat up with them here in Alabama. My family owns a lot of land along the Alabama river in the southern half of Alabama. Too bad that you guys don't live near me. I'd gladly take you out on our land to shoot one absolutely free on one of my off days at any time outside of deer or turkey season. It might not be the slam dunk kill that you can probably find at the pay hunt places but they are out there, trust me. I saw 27 in one group back during last Turkey season one morning.

And I agree that it is outrageous what you guys are being charged to shoot hogs. If these same ranches also sell whitetail hunts then you are doing them a valuable service by killing feral hogs. Hell, they should pay you.

Here is one I walked up on and shot with one of my old military surplus rifles one morning.

There are a lot of public lands with hogs out here just pay $48 get the map buck and find them. Most are closed during the summer months but I don't want to be dragging a 100-300 pound hog through the forest when the temp is up. As a side note the lease I was last on used to run a day hunting deal for hogs after deer season. He would get a bunch of different yahoos that just wanted to mud bog out to "a good" spot and end up tearing his land up more than the hogs. They would leave trash and forget to close gates. Also had some things stolen so maybe thats why some uys charge a lot. A little money to cover the big head ache.

Geez am I glad I found this thread! I have never been hog hunting either but was considering taking the .44 Marlin lever gun up to Alexander County where there's a guided hunt - that's only about a 2.5 hour drive for me - but they want $600 !!! I'm seeing now that's pretty steep. I'll wait until the price goes down or I find a cheaper way to do it. Even though $600 is no big deal I'd feel like a sucker paying that, especially if I got there and got bent over for more in hidden fees, etc.

OK dumb question from Alaska. Do those pigs you guys shoot taste like the pork chops I buy at the store?

I can't speek for evey wild hog but when I was staitioned in Yuma a friend of mine went home on leave to south texas and shot a small pig and it was awsome. Way better tasting than the pigs we raised back home in oregon. BUT this was a young sow not some nasty old "trophy" boar.

OK dumb question from Alaska. Do those pigs you guys shoot taste like the pork chops I buy at the store?

Click to expand...

Nope. They're better. Fresher, natural diet...though I try to shoot smaller pigs, under 100 pounds. The bigger boars can be pretty nasty.

They're much, much leaner than farm pork, but still cook tender. No marbling, very little fat at all on 'em, yet they will grill/BBQ tender. Try grilling venison ribs. LOL! I have to go buy bacon ends and bits at the store to mix with it for sausage just like I do with venison. Just not enough fat for sausage.

It's called greed! It has infected everything in our society.

So, it's greedy to want to make a buck off YOUR land, the land you pay taxes on? This is the ol' class warfare thing, again. That land does not belong to you. If you wanna play on it, you gotta pay for it, or find something elsewhere. That's just the way it is. Some states have a lot of public, federal owned (all of us tax payer's) land. Texas does not. We gave all our land out after the revolution to pay folks for fighting in and surviving that war. It's the only resource Texas had at the time, bunches of land. Western states who were won and paid for by the blood of Texas patriots, and the Mexican/American war that followed, had no people and the land was federal territory by proxy. So, you see, it was the blood of Texas patriots that gave Aridzona and New Mexico all that BLM land. Actually, most of New Mexico was Texas until the Mexican war. But, it hadn't all been spent, yet.

Now, then, Montana/Wyoming? Well, they were owned by the French. The French weren't about to fight a war over it, wouldn't be real Frenchly would it? Besides, they knew they would lose, ain't won one yet! So, they sold out for cash.

Now, then, Montana/Wyoming? Well, they were owned by the French. The French weren't about to fight a war over it, wouldn't be real Frenchly would it? Besides, they knew they would lose, ain't won one yet! So, they sold out for cash.

Click to expand...

Now that's funny right there, I don't care who ya are.