Feral hogs cause economic and aesthetic damage to agricultural enterprise and property owners across Texas. They root looking for food which destroy a number of ag crops, increase erosion and can spread disease to wildlife and livestock. Feral hogs have been heavily trapped and hunted for decades. The pigs on your property have seen a trap and been shot at. Animals that survive the traps and rifles become educated. “Educated” is a blanket term used in the industry for animals that have become conditioned to different methods of removal.

How do you know if your feral hogs are educated?

If your hogs are only coming out at night or when people are not normally active. If the bait outside of your trap is eaten but inside of the trap is untouched. If you see hogs on your game cam every day at the same time but when you show up, they don’t show. The solution to these educated hogs involves a mindset change of the property owner. The mindset of a property owner without pig problems is: Get rid of entire sounders at once.

This sounds simple but with conventional methods or insufficient modern traps this goal is not attainable. Even with the best equipment, some hogs are so educated you cant get them to enter a trap. This is where suppressed thermal operations come in. After trapping we can come in and dispatch the pigs outside of the trap.

TWML uses the most advanced trap electronics on a custom trap that has been developed over a decade and/or a rifle system specifically picked for your property with highly advanced thermal imaging scopes and suppression systems.

Calling Texas Wildlife Management and Logistics, gives your feral hogs two options: Steel Traps or Lead.

Facts: once a feral hog gets to around 60-80 lbs. There are no natural predators in Texas. Body morphology and aggressive behavior prevent animals from removing larger animals from the population.

What does this mean – Humans are really the only things that can fix the feral pig problem.

Feral pig facts

Females become fertile at 4-6 months and have a gestation period of 120 days and can be rebred within days of dropping a litter. They have as many as 10-13 babies dependent on conditions. Feral hogs are estimated to live from 4-8 years in the wild. Assuming a feral hog sow lives in great conditions and lives 96 months (only fertile 90 of those) having a litter every 4 months, one sow will have 292 babies in her lifetime. Six months after each litter is dropped half of those will start the cycle again. This is truly exponential growth.

Fact: Due to rapid reproduction: Several studies have concluded that you need to remove 70% of the population in order to maintain the population. What this means? 7 out of 10 pigs on your property need to be removed in order for the population on your property to remain the same.

Trapping shy pigs

What this means to you? Small traps, large traps with animal triggered traps or electronic traps used improperly, that catch part of a sounder, show the rest of the sounder to stay away from traps. Have you set a trap out and caught a few but never caught again in that location? You can often move the trap and catch some more but if youre reading this, Im guessing you still have a problem with pigs. The remaining animals that are extremely wary of traps or human activity or widely known as trap shy pigs. Some of these pigs are so wary the only way to target them is with thermal depredation.

Less than effective methods-methods that do catch pigs but don’t really help remove 70% or more. These methods have been used for decades but the problem is still getting worse.

Hunting: Lets be real. The average hunter is only going to kill one pig at a time. Some will get 2 or 3 and a few really experienced hunters will get more. This adds pressure that begins to make pigs more wary possibly making them go nocturnal and really doesn’t do much to the population. Small box traps or corral traps with animal activated triggers: A person can easily catch a few pigs here and there with these methods, sometimes more than that but in reality, they are not removing the entire sounder which leaves outside pigs trap shy and ready to make babies.

Using hog dogs: A really good set of dogs will catch 6—10 pigs in one night, on a night when the conditions are perfect for the dogs, the people and the terrain to get to catches quickly. The remaining pigs scatter. Although well trained dogs don’t chase livestock and other wildlife, the process adds stress to those species. Another major problem is dogs don’t recognize property lines, this can cause big issues with neighbors. The pigs leave your property for a bit to go tear up the neighbors then inevitably without constant pressure from the dogs, return to destroying your property

What makes a trap effective for actually getting to the 70% threshold?

Short answer: A trap big enough to get entire sounders , live feed  and remote trigger