RE: If Hogs are real problem down south...
 

Yep, fornra, you caught me "red handed" on that one. My son actually made a whopping $100 on a hog hunt on our land when he was unemployed for a while. The group of 4 (3 generations) hunted for several days (4 or 5 I think) and shot 3 hogs. They actually found 2 of them. They were great people. My son was going to turn down the money, but they insisted so he took it. I'm guessing we baited those hogs with corn and mungbeans and peanuts for probably a month or two and let them use our jeep and 6 wheeler and of course our skinning tree, scales, etc. For them, I'd do it all over again because they were great people, very polite, took good care of my land and equipment, hunted safely and followed all the rules. AND I think they had a great time and got to do something they had wanted to do for a long time but couldn't afford any other way. I have plenty of friends that can hunt them any time they want for nothing, of course. For others, well, let's just say that I'd rather have the hogs at this point. If the hogs hadn't gone nocturnal on them, they would have got more. Too bad, because I wouldn't have cared if they killed them all. All of us aren't out to make a killing just as all hunters aren't bad (exactly to the contrary). It's not really about whether the animal is a nuisance or not. It's sometimes about where it's located and who is going to be there and how they might act especially if you don't know them. I don't think any hunt should be overpriced but I do believe that the landowner should have the right to charge (just as the hunters have the right not to come) if he has something others want even if he has them to excess. I've always struggled with high priced out of state licenses when one is hunting on National Park land or Bureau of Land Management land that we might all actually own. So since my vehicle wears an out of state license plate, I get to pay 5 times as much for a license to hunt on property that I own too. Just never made much sense to me. I always felt that one should check the license plate before the hamburgers were served. If they are from out of state, they should have to pay more. There is a little sarcasm in there so don't take me literally on all of that, please. I guess we all have our pet peeves. I was just throwing out a little different perspective just in case someone hadn't thought of that angle. Didn't mean to upset anyone. I sure hope my son doesn't read this. I'd say when all the subtracting was done, my son didn't make so much on that hunt that it would make him feel too guilty. Do you think we could convince those people who live where the deer are eating up all their crops and colliding with all their vehicles, etc to let us all come up there and hunt for free? I suspect they'd still want something to harvest all those nuisance animals? And, I'll defend their right to do that. I may not be able to afford it or I may be so against it that I simply wouldn't do it. But there are some out there that make their money a different way than I do and make enough of it that they don't mind spending some of it on things they couldn't do any other way. I say to both of them.....go for it. Isn't this a great country? There are many who spend more in a day on entertainment than I make in a month or more. Nothing wrong with that. I guess it's all about choices for us all. I do appreciate your stand and hope you can see a little of what I was trying to get across. I suspect, we might be a lot more alike than we realize.

RE: If Hogs are real problem down south...
 

tycteach, your points are much more agreeable in your second post than your first one.
I tend to find some good people on these forums and I suspect you are one of them, what you and your son did for those people was commendable.
I do have more to add to this but not in reply to you as you have explaned yourself well to me, thanks Glenn

RE: If Hogs are real problem down south...
 

Moose Maximus, did you just call yourself an idoit, kinda sounded like it to me, but since I don't know you personally I can neither agree nor disagree;)
And to name two, I'll not spend my night chaseing post from other forums but I'll give you a hint, check Thunderbucks and Beartooth, since both have had post (like I said begging for help with the wild hogs).
When you start looking into the possiability of going then the price tag jumps out and usually their is a premium for a hog that weighs over 200lbs
And no I'll not go to watch a bunch of grown men, some with college educations and still can't spell their own name, get paid millions to play a freiking kids game, I'd rather have a toothache!
That remindes me of Bo Jacksons Heisman Trophy acceptance speech;
My heart is beating 90 seconds a minute! yep he was a hero! Glenn

RE: If Hogs are real problem down south...
 

I'd be very careful about criticizing anyone's spelling if I were you (which, fortunately, I am not).

RE: If Hogs are real problem down south...
 

I own over 600 acers and I use to let people hunt hogs for free. That was until they started makeing a mess of the place and letting everyone they know go out. It got to the point, that when I would go out, id have people get hostile with me. They had no clue whos land they were on, and thought I was Joe Smoe coming to mess up their hunt. I actually had to call the cops one time to get some people off my land. They insisted they had the right to hunt there. They did not believe it was my land. In retrospec, I should have filed charges. I had one occasion where there were guys i let hunt dove there and they not only took way more birds than their limit,and also poached a doe. Needless to say, I let the game warden handle that one. Now I only let close friends and family hunt it. I have had many people from Dallas offer big bucks to just hunt varmits. Hogs, yotes, etc. But from prior expericence, I wont take anymore chances. Its sad, but my land is closed to everyone but close friends and family. I think a lot of farmers and ranchers feel the same way. Or they are looking to make a buck. Kinda hard to fault them for that.

RE: If Hogs are real problem down south...
 

It all comes down to the landowners wanting to make the $$$$. If it was as bad of a problem as they say then they would welcome the offer for some of them to get taken off their land.

RE: If Hogs are real problem down south...
 

Moose Maximus, I would rather not get into a name calling debate.
If I have offended you I apolligize and would like to try starting over!
I still think it's wrong to ask for help and then charge for recieving it. We will never agree on everthing and if we did these forums would get very boaring .
I've been out of school for 30 something years and my spelling does suffer a little, but my math is in pretty good shape. Glenn

RE: If Hogs are real problem down south...
 

It is a problem, but that doesn't mean that opening the land to just anybody is the solution.

We all wish that we could find great places to hunt for free, but Texas has a long tradition of charging people to hunt, and that's not going to go away quickly.

Burniegoeasily's experience is, I think, fairly typical. What starts out as a good idea quickly becomes a bigger problem than the hogs ever were, in a classic case of "No good deed goes unpunished."

As for making a buck, I don't see what'swrong withit. People don't buy land to create a public utility; most of them buy it for the specific purpose of making a living from it. I have tremendous respect for farmers and ranchers; they are collectively the hardest-working people I've ever met, and also the most underpaid (considering that most Americans would starve to death in about a week if ranchers and farmers quit doing what they do). If they can make a little extra money by charging for access to hunt hogs, more power to 'em. It's free enterprise in action.

Finally, it's just human nature that many people don't take care of what they don't pay for. You can drive through any neighborhood (especially lower-income areas, like where I live) and just about point to which houses are owner-occupied and which are rented out. Try to imaginehow much worsethose rental houses would look if people were living there for free.

(And Glenn, I apologize, too, for being such a jerk. I'm old enough to know better than to be so rude.)

RE: If Hogs are real problem down south...
 

Moose Maximus, I live in middle Alabama, between here and Mississippi we define lower income!
My son and I are doing some repair work for the housing athority and we were a little suprised at what we found.
We are repairing the railing on the porches and steps, replacing the rusted out sections. Every inch of the rail bottoms are rusted away from these people pissing on them!
There aren't any white people to be found either, and most of these people pay from $17.50- $30.00 per month in rent, all have fancy cars with the big wheels and loud vulgar music blasting from their windows.
It just makes me proud to see where my tax dollars are going,( oh and the smell of pot is allways in the air )

RE: If Hogs are real problem down south...
 

Hmm....that does indeed sound a lot like my neighborhood, though here it's mixed-race and I don't think there are many government-subsidized houses. It's common to see a $60,000 car parked in the driveway of a $40,000 house (that's rapidly becoming a $30,000 house). I own my home and have lived here for 19 years; imagine how thrilled I am to see how my neighborhood has turned out.

Just goes to show that not all destructive pests have four legs (getting back to the subject of hogs...).