Our method
Our method differs from many hunters with hog-dogs, and is usually preferred by landowners. Our dogs work with us as a team and never roam vast distances chasing a hog. If a wild pig does run on them after being bayed, the dogs are able to stop him within a couple of hundred yds. In the event that the wild hog evades them, they will not chase them indefinitely like some dogs will.
Wild pigs travel to many different resources across property lines. If the pigs are on your property , the dogs will find them. But if the pigs are on another property that we cannot access, then there is no hope in removing them at that time. This is where tracking their habits and knowing where they frequent, becomes important.
Unless you put a hog proof fence around your entire property, you will never eliminate all of the oncoming hogs. If you think about it, there is up to 4 million wild hogs in Texas and more in bordering states. You can however manage them to a satisfactory level. This is only done with a persistent hog management plan. In many cases we get the wild hogs down to a manageable level for the landowner and then they are able to keep their numbers down through various methods.
Example 1: We manage the hogs on a 1500 acre ranch in the Fredericksburg, TX area. They were eating all of the deer corn, rooting up vast forests and hillsides and killing fawns. You now would be lucky to find 1 or 2 on the ranch at any one time. We now return to the land occasionally to thin out any that have filled back in. We already know the areas the hogs will visit and can concentrate our efforts in those places. The property adjacent to this land is loaded with hogs, yet most of the hogs have learned to stay out.
Example 2: We were hired to remove the feral pigs on 190 acres that was surrounded by hog "resistant" fencing. We temporarily patched the weaker spots in the fence and proceeded to remove the trapped in hogs. Now the landowner will be able to keep up with the few that might come through the fence in the future. Being that several of the sows we removed were full of babies only a couple of weeks from delivering, removal by conventional means by the landowner was nearly impossible. We were able to eliminate all of the hogs in under 3 days. If the landowner was to try to trap these wild pigs with conventional traps, it would have been a long process that most likely would have never kept up with their reproduction rate.
As you can see, each land we hunt is unique to the landowners needs and requires a properly executed plan to bring them under control. We have the resources and the know-how that allows us to adapt to each situation and be successful.
Our Labs
Many people ask why we use labs. If trained properly, labs are extremely obedient and want to perform their job to your satisfaction. If they can be taught to find and bay pigs, they are excellent at their job. They will not take a pig down unless they can do it safely. Otherwise they will hold them at bay until we get there. Most importantly, our dogs stay within earshot of a whistle. We take them into the areas that would most likely have hogs and the dogs take it from there. They do not roam vast distances in search of pigs. This controlled method of hunting is preferred by landowners in most cases vs. a large group of dogs barking and running freely over property lines.