Living in Central Texas it's a nightmare. A few years back one of the neighbor's kids almost got killed by a 200lb hog. Those things are no joke. I honestly gave up deer hunting and I've spent most of my time getting rid of hogs instead
I’m from Canada, going to visit my cousin in Houston in December I’ve never hunted but I do know that non residents don’t need a license on private lands to kill hogs. Any tips?
@@grantga01 hogs are considered pests and they're not categorized as a hunting species. A good A 15 is all you need. Normally it's best to use a semi auto rifle to get rid of many as possible. A shotgun is only if you're up close. It's very dangerous and I wouldn't recommend it
@@conrradotorres4653 you gotta understand I’m in Canada 😂 that means the gun conversation ends when it’s brought up besides the police. So I’ve never shot a gun, or even been in the same room as one.
This is why I like Rogan. One day you are talking about the meaning of life and the next day you talking about feral pigs. This is the box of chocolates Forrest talked about
I'm only a few seconds in and I had the same immediate reaction when I learned that a significant portion of Hog hunters leave the carcasses behind. Seemed so dreadfully wasteful, then I remembered the eco system. Cayotes, Foxes, Bobcats, Armadillos, various species of bird, as well as snakes, and numerous species of lizards and insects got to eat too.
@@randallteague641I've had wild boar before. Granted it was just a small piece but it was delicious. But who knows what some of them eat so I can imagine it's not all great.
I live in Arkansas and I firmly believe these things would take over the world if people left them alone. They're basically honey badgers, but with bulk to back it up. They eat literally anything and will happily cannibalize if they have to.
These damn things are here in SoCal. Norco, Ca which is pretty much surrounded by populated cities and growing has some of these fuckers along the river in SOUTHERN, CA!
Not the whole world but at least where they're not supposed to be. Theres no predators for them in north America. They run in packs so a lone bear or mountain lion have no chance of keeping the population in check.
Some Texans are fearful their pets will be torn apart. They are not as quite predatory as Republican Congressmen. But, like Republicans, the nasty plague are every bit as vicious if required to interrupt their feedings.
There's a big divide in Texas between eating or not eating hog meat. Personally, i think depends on how they're cooked. Considering Texans also eat ass you would figure the non-eaters would grow up.
As a Texan I understand how out of control the problem is. I have a buddy that owns a company that kills ferals from the air. He and his brother were both army helicopter pilots and they bought a Robinson R44. One day one shoots the other flies. They get it done though. People don't understand, if a pack of ferals decides your area is a good place to root it looks like 5 guys with monster trucks did donuts for about an hour. This happens in a period of hours. Go to bed your grounds look amazing wake up and it's all destroyed. The city or county is useless. They might put a few traps out near the area where it happened. So three or four traps for something that was done by about 100 hogs. I'll never forget this one time, I was in the bowels of the music industry for a little while. Basically I was a light and sound technician and a big show for me was 300-400 people. So me and my buddy get asked to run sound for a "music festival in Oklahoma". I live close to the border with OK so it wasn't a long travel or anything but when we arrived and set up the stage if you want to call it that we kept seeing signs that said "Go wild HogFest". So it was a music event but it was just a backdrop for an all day feral hog hunt. It was nuts, every time they brought in a new dead hog the Sheriff would blare his siren and these rednecks would throw these things off their trucks like they were nothing and these things weigh 200 - 300 lbs. Fast forward to the end of the day and this whole side of the field where this festival was taking place was piles of dead hogs. There must have been hundreds of them. One dude there told me that they could have a festival every day of the week and they would bring that many hogs in. So if anyone thinks these nasty mofos are endangered or being treated inhumanely, have your whole yard ripped to shreds once and then come back and tell me a sob about these poor animals. I've often wondered because the government won't tell us obviously but I've wondered with the wide open border how many of these illegals have been killed by a pack of feral hogs. They're just as thick in the Rio Grande valley as they are in North Texas. I know there have to be instances where that has happened. If you get caught in the open by a pack of these things you better be Usain Bolt fast and hope there's a big tree nearby or you're dead.
@@kevohh10 to be honest I don't know what the rules are regarding harvesting them. My cousin used to trap them on his ranch and sell the sows for the meat. If it's not your property then I can tell you for sure you can't harvest without permission at least.
@@marcellothefellow Ima be reeeal honest with you, I really thought I’d never hear the sentence “I really thought I’d never hear the sentence “I really thought I’d never hear the sentence, I just wrote a book about feral hogs”””
@@WalkwYah My mind is blown, never in a million years! Did i think I would here the sentence "I really thought I’d never hear the sentence “I really thought I’d never hear the sentence “I really thought I’d never hear the sentence, I just wrote a book about feral hogs”””
I’ve literally seen a hog in a tree with my own eyes here in Texas. Just chilling on a branch, no idea how he climbed up there. Crazy animals and very dangerous too. There is a good reason you can hunt them all year round.
"If they're living in an area that has a high population of boars, they're probably gonna get bred pretty quick... and so that's when you see this explosion..."
You know, we were hunting pigs in South Texas before they had even migrated north of I10. This is really an excellent video. This man really knows what he is talking about.
My dad shot a 350lb Russian boar when I was a kid. He was deer hunting when the thing came crashing through the brush towards him. He took aim and dropped it. The round entered the shoulder went up across the spine (severing it) and the round stopped in the rear quarter. He had it mounted and we got lots of great meat from it.
While having to travel West Texas for months with work, I learned pretty quick to drive during the daytime only. Every time I would see a feral pig in the road, I chalked it up to being tired and hallucinating. When you actually hit them, you realize these things are real (and do damage to your rental). You also realize you should never get out of your car to check out what you hit, especially when their friends are still around. I realized that really quick. 😳
You haven't lived until a 220lb hog decides now is the time to put itself through your radiator at 65 mph. You were lucky with a rental... Mine happened in my dads 85 Ford Ranger he was letting me borrow for work.
I live in East Tennessee and have dealt with pigs on my family's farm. Luckily we don't have the feral hog problem other states have....yet. Most people don't know that it only takes 2 weeks for a domestic pig to turn into a feral hog. In w weeks that pig will grow hair and tusks and eat anything. And as a farmer I can tell you that even domestic pigs can be dangerous.
I live next to the Smoky Mountains Natl Park, near Townsend, and we have ferals here in growing numbers. I shoot them on sight and we eat them, they're dangerous but delicious.
@@Just_PeleI live outside of Elizabethton, up in the Northeast. It is cool having fresh pork loin so readily available but damn they are such a menace.
@@michaelholt8590 I live right up the road from you in Virginia. I'm not going to say the name of the town but it's off I-81 about 35 miles from the Tennessee line. I had no idea you guys were dealing with feral hogs down there. I haven't seen or heard of any up here yet, but I have a .243 waiting for them so I can finally try wild hog. I've heard it's delicious. I can walk out my front door and I'm looking directly at White Top mountain with nothing in-between but 2 miles of rolling hills and a few houses off in the distance. It's beautiful, lol.
I had a potbelly pig once that started running with a pack of dogs and it learned to bark and after a month or so he was the pack leader and that’s set and the end of our driveway and bark at the bus every morning
What I love about JR podcast is that it often brings to my attention things that I never knew I was interested in. I don’t even eat pork! But I all of a sudden I wanna know all about the different breeds and Hunt some !
Here in Australia in outback Queensland I went feral pig hunting with a few hunters when I was 21. My uncle bought the game meat Fr the hunters. He had a five acre property with two frozen reefers (refrigerated shipping containers), one for kangaroos and one for pigs. The hunters dressed the carcasses and they were trained to check for various types of parasites and diseases, any evidence and they'd leave the carcass. But otherwise they would sell them to my uncle for a pretty decent price, and the local farmers had less feral pigs eating their crops. They had very nice fur as well, those bristles shine up nicely when you're eating wholesome grain crops.
Some landowners, including me, who run larger farms and ranches, are so inundated and overrun with feral hogs it's hard to fathom. They are destructive. They have to be controlled. You can't skin them all. They don't go to waist. Other native species such as coyotes, birds, skunks, opossums and raccoons, use them for food.
@@brentfarvors192 They are all edible but, some are better than others. It also depends what you do with meat. Older boars, for example, are sometimes better used to make sausage. I've never had wild hog meat that I didn't like. Like any game meat, you gotta know how to prepare it.
@@fakeprofile9502 always been told it was the larger hogs that had worms. We killed two last year for the first time and they were delicious. Many times better than a HEB smoked pork butt. But I’ve learned lately though that low quality stores like Whole Foods, HEB and Walmart are the absolutely worst places to buy meat and other food from.
@@MrPland1992 humans have eaten wild boars throughout the ages. and fridges didn't exist back then. it's all fear mongering in my opinion, if you don't buy the meat in a store they can't charge you for it
@@mryeti1887 • Although that is true we simply can’t rule Alex out because of his style. You say that Alex just throws stuff at the wall and see’s what sticks but that’s not a fair assessment of what Alex is really doing, Alex is like a baseball player that swings at every pitch with all their might, sure they strike out a lot but over all their home run average is pretty good and those types of batters are valued members of the team because they always seem to come through in a pinch and hit home runs when the bases are loaded. And right now i would say Alex Jones is batting about 300, not bad for just throwing stuff at the wall.
I worked in the conservation field in Texas and 2 of my crew members got treed by a group of hogs. They didn't leave after they climbed the tree either, just settled in underneath them. Had to get the rangers come in to take some out before the pack ran off. Super scary, I always kept my head on a swivel after that.
It wasn't De Soto that brought them. It was the Narvaez expedition. They traveled across Florida to Texas and then across Mexico to the west coast in 1528, for 8 years. There were 3 surviving members of the 600 man expedition. Cabeza de Vaca wrote an incredible account of it. The audiobook is here on RU-vid. Worth 4 hours of your time to hear.
That's because if one of the idiot hunters shoots himself or breaks his leg in your property. He will end up owning the property. Now if he is paying to hunt there, the land owner can have them sign a liability waiver. This doesn't include how much most hunters tear up while there.
@@mikeleschber1316 100% true. I hunt Texas every February for hogs. Large ranch of 100,000 acres. Natural gas, oil & beef cattle.. Tons of feral hogs. Problem is, the liability is enormous and the ranch owners are not trying to get sued for large sums of money due to the negligent and ignorant behavior of someone they don't know. It took us years to build the trust with this ranchs owner(s) to get permission to hunt here. And we take it seriously. In return, we get one of the most unique hunting experiences offered in this country. It is some of the most beautiful land in the USA and makes you feel blessed to be able to see and enjoy it.
@@SM-eu5xl it only takes one idiot for the landowner to become a non landowner. I let my friends dove hunt in our land and tell them to shoot any hog they see....or never get to come back.
@@mikeleschber1316 that’s not true. In Texas nonpaying hunters “have a duty to be on the lookout for dangerous conditions. Any neglect reduces judgments under the Comparative Negligent Doctrine as described”. The land owner would basically have to create an unsafe environment with booby traps or something before they could be held liable by nonpaying guests. However, if a hunter pays to hunt on someone’s property the land owner accepts significantly more liability and has a responsibility to maintain a reasonably safe environment for recreation.
@@johngarren4057 this may be true, but it doesn't stop them from filing a lawsuit against you. The cost to defend yourself would be more then I care to pay. Nothing can stop them from dragging you thru court and costing you a fortune.
I have lived in Port O’Connor my entire life and I can verify that these animals are destructive. In one night they can completely destroy a yard and they are not shy about getting right up close to your home. It’s even worse if you have a pond on your property as you are guaranteed they will be there every night.
@@jinxchi there's just not enough people with the time and money to hunt enough of them to make a difference. I'm in Texas and it's fairly normal to see a group of 10-20 wild pigs running thru fields/Forests around here
Im in East Texas. Texarkana. They are everywhere. I wish I could put up some pics. They are as bad as fire ants. We do clean them and try to use the smaller pigs. Not an easy animal to clean. They do make great sausage and under 50 lbs are great on a smoker.
Cleaning em ain't so bad (but I grew up raising hogs on a farm, so I know the tricks...like tying one to a tree and peeling the hide off with a tractor 😋) but it's the *taste.* They're so gamey they make elk taste like chicken. 🤮
@@digitalis2977 on the bigger hogs I just cut 2 straight lines about 6” wide down the spine from the head to the ham and grab the straps and sometimes the hams. Whats a good trick to use on the under 50’s, to skin faster?
Are the adult males dangerous? My friend who moved from the U.K to Texas after he left the army goes Hog shooting with some ex USMC friends he served with in Afghanistan, and he said the large adult males can be deadly if cornered and your not armed.
@@oransjball Meh, kinda sorta, not really. As humans we can acknowledge and attempt to reverse our effect on the ecosystem. Wild hogs will literally eat anything and everything if they are hungry enough. There is a reason why the age old term of "As greedy as a pig" exists.
Now there is you a truth bomb! As a avid hunter there are few things I hate to waste...other than feral hogs! I try to take about 6-8 a year in the 100 and less pound range and I often will shoot the larger ones when I see them, especially Sows, and leave them for the coyotes. These things reproduce like rabbits!!!
RU-vid started releasing the hogs because of the switch. Also, I've been releasing hogs in Texas and I will not stop until spotify has a comments section so I can shitpost on every episode of Rogan.
I'd seen the damage that the feral hogs do to the fields in Texas and a group of them can destroy several acres in a night. And it is devastating to the crop and the field
Did you know the rattlesnakes don't always rattle? The ones in Texas pretty much never rattle anymore. The ones that did attracted the unwanted attention of feral hogs. Rattlesnakes had co-existed with javelina for . . . forever. But the larger hogs LOVE snake meat.
Feral hogs are no joke. Me my uncle, and my cousin were hiking in northern Michigan and stumbled up to a few just grazing in the field. Thankfully they just ran away once they saw us but was a huge surprise considering I didn’t know there were any in the state until that point.
Larry's real name is Dan Whitney, if I recall correctly. His early stand up is good but when he came up with Larry the cable guy his popularity soared.
One characteristic of the Russian boars is they will develop slab of cartilage about an inch thick, covering their shoulders and the exposed ribs behind their shoulder. Kind of like armor that protects their lungs and heart. It's very stiff and will cause the skin to sit up on it's own. I harvested one last fall and was going to experiment if there were certain calibers that wouldn't penetrate it. By the time I got the skin, with the cartilage, removed, I was tired of messing with it. Maybe next time.
You guys need to come down to Australia. We had something like 24 million wild pigs at the last drought ending 2 years ago. That’s one for every person in this country
Don’t they hunt the hogs from choppers? Imagine you’re just chillin as a hog living the hakuna matata life and all of the sudden you hear Fortunate Son overhead
ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-N7qkQewyubs.html I'm surprised they don't have decommissioned gunship helicopters in Texas to go hunting with instead of the civilian ones they use now.
Yea...until they start shooting all of the wolves and mountain cat. Look at Idaho, they wanna kill off 90% of the wolfs just because some farmers, ranchers, housing developers are scared of them. If your a legitimate farm or ranch...you keep insurance around for that and the federal government gives you fair market price which if you even lose one...that pays for the insurance and then some.
There's more to it then that. In the early 20th century, some hunters brought in some wild boar. The feral pigs interbred with the wild boars and now you have huge crossbreeds all over Texas. Edit: The worst problem is that these hogs can have microscopic worms that are VERY dangerous if ingested.
those feral pigs here in Texas are so ferocious and destructive! There are some wild game hunters that DO process them and give the meat to some homeless shelters and low income communities.
Hogs are a terrible problem in East Texas. When I was a kid it wasn’t too bad but around the early 2000’s it’s gotten terrible. They came in and destroyed, land, crops, houses, kill pets, and it’s not rare for them to attack people. Helicopter hunting and year around hunting has definitely helped in the recent years. I always learned growing up you never shoot an animal you don’t intend on eating but for these I definitely don’t feel bad about it.
Had an uncle-like figure growing up in California who was one of the most renown hog hunters out there. He took former mayors, Raiders players, and other celebrities hog hunting. His favorite way to hunt them was to corner them with dogs and take a Bowie knife to them. Crazy shit.
@@CJ_102 obviously you have never had jamon iberico de bellota (Black footed pig ham from acorns). Only salted for two weeks, not smoked, not heated, and hung for two to three years in cave like conditions..... Because of the oil in the acorns, the fat of the finished ham melts at room temperature, and has a flavor that is incomparible. It is worth the $1500/ ham. Next time you buy a US ham in the store, let a slice sit on the table for an hour. It's fat won't melt. Bellota ham does. So no, it is NOT 99% untested BS
In South America feral hogs are even larger: in late XIX, wild boars were brought from Eurasia and mixed with large domestic pigs like the Durok. That’s why you see pictures of those immense hog carcasses that won’t fit even a pickup trunk across. I’ve heard of hog as heavy as 300lb.
Thank you Joe for your great and informative interviews. The feral hog problem is very real, just like the uncontrolled Harp Seal overpopulation in North Eastern Canada where I am from. Now with the ban on seal pelts the seal population is over 8 million and ultimately, due to lack of sustainable food stocks for them, they will starve, and become diseased. That can actually threaten the entire species... So much for the "Save the Seals" campaigns of all the do-gooders 🤬
Rogan kept saying cooking is art and he learned that from Anthony bourdain, but bourdain made it a point that he completely disagrees with anyone who says cooking is art
I'm from Texas, I used to have a custom processing business, I would trap and butcher wild hogs and donate the meat to food banks, but I quit because they didn't appreciate it.
It's true they have no breeding season, but every year in late January/early February there are tons of piglets hitting the ground in east Texas, so there are still general rules of thumb.
The sheer uncontrollable amount of them definitely should result in no poor or homeless sleeping hungry in the particular city....that really would be a one positive outcome
I've been going Hog hunting in the last couple of years a few hours south of San Antonio. I remember when I first shot one with a large group, they didn't get scared and run away they stayed in placed and continued to eat. it was a group of 20, so unbelievable
I've had spotify for about 4 years and recently it'll play an episode 1/3 of the way thru, hit me with the ads, then will refuse to fkn play anything else. Really been pissing me off while I'm at work
One night, driving along, minding my own damn business, I hit a half grown hog. It went under my truck and lifted it about six inches off the road. Like hitting a barrel filled with rocks. Only $800 damage. If it had been full grown it would have totaled my vehicle
I stalk feral hogs in central Texas with an old Fred Bear recurve. (45#) My place is about an hour ENE from Joe. Sounders will bed up during the day, dozing in shallow dirt "nests" rooted out in the shade of thick Yaupon brush with Post Oak overstory. They change their bedding areas often without reason but will most often be located near water. The big boars will often bed apart from the sounders and lead a rouge life except when a sow is in heat. Younger boars will group together near the females and baby pigs. I've counted one sounder crossing a pasture to be 100 animals, but that was only once. Sounders of 20 plus animals are common. Bedding areas are isolated from people traffic and are thickly covered. Wet tangled draws often crisscross these undisturbed patches. If you molest these resting animals three or four days in a row, they will move to another bedding area. Mud rubbed off on tree trunks is a common sign. Fresh scatt is a better sign. But best of all is a nose full of sleeping hogs. Even when the wind is in your favor and you smell the sounder, it is unlikely that you will be able to sneak up on these bedding animals. They will have several nests spread in about a 1,000 sq ft area. One of them will most likely hear you. {They have the best hearing and trust this sense with their lives.) Or as so often in a tight thicket, the wind will be squirrely and one of the sounder will bust you with the best nose in the forest. Before you can see one. Even though you smell them. You'll hear "Booof! Boooof! Wooof!" Followed by crashing brush and streaks of black, tan, or spots headed in all directions. But hardly ever will the entire sounder flush initially. Some of the older pigs will freeze in their beds especially if they didn't see, hear, or smell you. So! At that moment I knock an broadhead and freeze, too! I may wait for several minutes, frozen, because most of the pigs haven't see you and don't really know where you are. One nervous hog may make the mistake of trying to slip away and he may give you a shot. If I get no initial shot I listen for the soft location grunts they make as they try to locate each other to reassemble. I mimic their noises to try and fool them. Now all of this sounds like I should be quite a successful stalker of wild hogs, but my success rate is less than 10%. Why? They are so wary. So smart. So fast. I'm hunched over or kneeling in a thicket. Its hard to see. Its hard to get a good draw on my recurve. I don't have much time to aim. Then when I do hit, it's crawling on hands and knees following a blood spoor. I'm 72 and have hunted all my life. I have enough energy to stalk about 3 hours, then I declare the hogs winners and go back to the camp and make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I love hogs. I'm not mad at them. To me they are the greatest wild animal in America.
I live in suburban Ashland, Kentucky USA and this is the same thing with those silly White-tailed deer here, man I've found them in my living room, in the front seat of my ride and if I don't nail one just going down the street on my bicycle it's a good day 🤣
Here on the Big Island the hogs are NUTSO. You’re allowed, encouraged by everyone, to kill 2 hogs a day. Fire ants, beetles and hogs are ruling the islands.
Having seen a lot of videos about these feral hogs, they do not all get left behind, some are butchered and eaten. I recall one channel being asked what they did with all of the hogs, their response was a giant BBQ. I am not a fan of guns in general but to deal with these things I completely understand the need.
I had a pot belly pig. bought a pregnant Momma. It was fun. She had five piglets, one died. We took the four babies to the vet, had them neutered, they were all boys, obviously. Kept one. Gave away mom, and him, eventually. They dont stay small, and cute. They arent pigmy pigs. Theyre very sweet, but the males must be neutered if you want them for pets. A female pig in heat is kind of weird as well. They are extremely smart. but the boys grow tusks, and they have to be cut. Our boy got one caught in the fence, the shrieking was unreal. He wasnt hurt, he was stuck. That was loads of fun. Had to cut the tusk to free him. Then he had one tusk, making it easier to cut the other. We made him get stuck in the same way, just to hold him still, then cut it. You dont take these things into account, when you see little piglets. Theyre soooo cute, and/but such a pain in the posterior to keep, in a backyard. Its really not feasible.
I still think about those pigs, and hope they werent murdered for someones barbecue. I made them promise me they wouldnt, but you know how honest people are. Not!
