J E Custom
Well-Known Member
I have always been an advocate of hog control and management. So this came as a shock when it happened to me and some of my friends on adjacent hunting Leases.
I will start at the beginning so the impact will better be seen. We have been actively managing all the game in our area to improve the size and quality of all. We have also been actively culling and controlling the hogs numbers and quality. We have been using game cameras on all food plots and feeders.
In order to keep an accurate count we set all feedings at the same time and monitor the game at the same time on the cameras so we don't catch the same animals at more than one site. This has been a very accurate way of tracking how many of each we have.
All spring and summer we have been getting very good numbers of Deer, and Turkeys with some very nice Bucks. Hogs have been held to a very manageable level of two to three small (10 or less) sounders and an average kill rate of 20 to 25 each year.
All of this changed once the local farmers allowed the helicopter hunting to take place in our area in an attempt to better control the hogs.
Within 24 hours of this hunting, our game counts went drastically down hill. We thought it was just a temporary effect. Once again, we were wrong. We have been doing the same monitoring since, and after 2 months, the game count on deer has been down by 3 to 400 % and the large bucks have all disappeared. Turkeys have been nonexistent, and the hogs have only been reduced by 15 to 20 %. After the heli hunting we only found the remains of 4 hogs in 300 acres, so it appears all that the heli hunting did was to push the target game out of the hunting area and not effect the hog population very much if any.
This post was not to target any type of hunting and just to show the effects of hunting certain species on other game. The TPW has been given this information for evaluation and for now is recommending consideration for this type of hunting for your area. They also recommended not heli hunting and areas to be hunted for other game until AFTER the regular hunting season has expired.
Long term effects to an area has not been determined yet. In wide open areas of farm land it looks to be very effective on hogs, but in our type of hunting it has been devastating for the short term and as stated, the long term effects are not known at this time.
This is not an opinion piece, this is just the facts as we know them based on all the resources we have used to track all game in our area. Other hunting leases have seen the same effects that we have
J E CUSTOM
I will start at the beginning so the impact will better be seen. We have been actively managing all the game in our area to improve the size and quality of all. We have also been actively culling and controlling the hogs numbers and quality. We have been using game cameras on all food plots and feeders.
In order to keep an accurate count we set all feedings at the same time and monitor the game at the same time on the cameras so we don't catch the same animals at more than one site. This has been a very accurate way of tracking how many of each we have.
All spring and summer we have been getting very good numbers of Deer, and Turkeys with some very nice Bucks. Hogs have been held to a very manageable level of two to three small (10 or less) sounders and an average kill rate of 20 to 25 each year.
All of this changed once the local farmers allowed the helicopter hunting to take place in our area in an attempt to better control the hogs.
Within 24 hours of this hunting, our game counts went drastically down hill. We thought it was just a temporary effect. Once again, we were wrong. We have been doing the same monitoring since, and after 2 months, the game count on deer has been down by 3 to 400 % and the large bucks have all disappeared. Turkeys have been nonexistent, and the hogs have only been reduced by 15 to 20 %. After the heli hunting we only found the remains of 4 hogs in 300 acres, so it appears all that the heli hunting did was to push the target game out of the hunting area and not effect the hog population very much if any.
This post was not to target any type of hunting and just to show the effects of hunting certain species on other game. The TPW has been given this information for evaluation and for now is recommending consideration for this type of hunting for your area. They also recommended not heli hunting and areas to be hunted for other game until AFTER the regular hunting season has expired.
Long term effects to an area has not been determined yet. In wide open areas of farm land it looks to be very effective on hogs, but in our type of hunting it has been devastating for the short term and as stated, the long term effects are not known at this time.
This is not an opinion piece, this is just the facts as we know them based on all the resources we have used to track all game in our area. Other hunting leases have seen the same effects that we have
J E CUSTOM
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