11P&YBOWHUNTER
Banned
Wrong again!
Redlevel, you are still wearing them overalls!!! You ever take them off??
You were wearing overalls when i met you as well. Reminded me alot of home!!
Welcome Guest!
Farmer’s Perspective of GA Hog Hunters
- Thread starter JAGER
- Start date
Redlevel, you are still wearing them overalls!!! You ever take them off??
You were wearing overalls when i met you as well. Reminded me alot of home!!
Medicine Man
Banned
Wow remind me not to allow you around my place # 1.And #2 I have never disagreed more with this statement.
dadsbuckshot
Senior Member
REDLEVEL
Up here in the state where I live the hog population is ALOT less than yours. Therefore, I can not appreciate your distaste for hogs. I would gladly come down to Taylor County and hunt your farm for hogs only, and also get educated in how hogs are destroying farms.
If you will give me a place to hunt hogs and educate me, then I will be happy to take some of them off your hands. I know with you being a farmer you can appreciate a hunter willing to help you by taking vermin off your hands....
Just PM me and let me know when I can come help you (hunt) your hogs to help your crops and the citizens/farmers of Taylor County...
redlevel
Senior Member
Redlevel, you are still wearing them overalls!!! You ever take them off??
You were wearing overalls when i met you as well. Reminded me alot of home!!
I don't think I was wearing them then! I was on my way to Savannah, wasn't I? I know for a fact that I was wearing khakis that day, because my wife was with me. She wouldn't have let me wear overalls to check in to that fancy hotel on Hutchinson Island. What is it, the Westin?
I think you just thought I looked like I should have been wearing overalls.
JAGER
Senior Member
Good post Redmond. You have identified the key to our (all hunters) future success. The more hogs you kill, the better your reputation. The better your reputation, the more farms you will be allowed to hunt. The more farms you hunt, the more hogs you kill. The circle continues... This is how we change our perception within the farming community.
One of the major problems (besides relocation) lies with many hunters inability or refusal to harvest more animals. First, hunters must recognize and admit there is a problem before attitudes and methods change to increase future harvest numbers.
Second, the hunters loyalty must be with the farmer. The number of hogs to be eaten should not be the determining factor of how many hogs are actually killed. The goal is to solve the farmer's crop damage problem. Even high-volume removal methods will only solve the problem for a few months until another group of hogs moves down the creek or river system to cause future crop damage.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with hunting for "sport" a few weekends per month or hunting just to hear the dogs work. Leases and WMAs are full of weekend "sport" hunters. But solving a farmer's hog problem is a year-round job which takes considerable time, effort and skill. Georgia farmer's are NOT looking for "sport" hunters. They are looking for competent hunters and trappers who are committed to investing the time and resources needed to solve their problem.
I'm proud of young Redmond for understanding the importance of helping farmers while still enjoying the thrill of the hunt. I'd be willing to bet another great dogger (gnarlyone) had some positive influence on the situation. Effective hunters and trappers usually have all the real estate they can handle. There is only so much they can efficiently manage or control. Our challenge is to train more hunters and trappers to be just as effective.
---JAGER
11P&YBOWHUNTER
Banned
I don't think I was wearing them then! I was on my way to Savannah, wasn't I? I know for a fact that I was wearing khakis that day, because my wife was with me. She wouldn't have let me wear overalls to check in to that fancy hotel on Hutchinson Island. What is it, the Westin?
I think you just thought I looked like I should have been wearing overalls.
Ooops, I had you mistaken for someone else. That's right, we met just off 16 one time. I met the other guy at Bass Pro.
Now that I think of it, you look more comfortable in overalls!!!
SELFBOW
Senior Member
Alot of this goes againsnt everything we were raised on. I was taught as a child that if I killed a bird with my bb gun I was gonna clean it and eat it.
I was taught to keep only enough fish to eat and so on.
Thats why when the term eradication/ leave em in the field is thrown out there it is a little bit of a culture shock.
If most sportsman were taught to "conserve" how will you ever sway us differently?
I certainly do not want to teach my 11 yr old who killed 5 hogs last year that it is ok to kill them just to kill them.
Is that what you want? The future hunters of this state to be taught it is ok to kill animals and let them rot? You know it would not stop just with hogs, they would kill other animals as well since their brain says "Its OK"
Robk
Senior Member
offering assistance that may help gets me more access to lands to hunt other species. Right now I have over 3000 acres here that I get to hog hunt for offering to kill and remove both geese(when in season) and hogs. Glad I have a big freezer and love eating them.
Both of them can be very destructive in thier own right. While "total" eradication is impossible, reduction helps out quite a bit.
R
Both of them can be very destructive in thier own right. While "total" eradication is impossible, reduction helps out quite a bit.
R
redlevel
Senior Member
You are mistaking hogs for game animals. Hunting ethics does not apply to hogs any more than they do to house flies, roaches, or wharf rats. Feral hogs are vermin, not game animals.
Every time you make a post trying to equate feral hogs to game animals, and try to inject an "ethics" factor, then I will make one reminding you that you are wrong, and that every state game and fish agency that I know anything about recognizes this.
Many of the so-called "sportsmen" you refer to are game violators of the worst sort because they are/were involved in relocation and release of feral hogs so they could run them with dogs.
If you want to talk about ethics and conservation, then there is where you should be addressing your concerns.
I have been hunting in Georgia for 50-plus years, and I know a thing or two about ethics and conservation. I know that feral hogs are absolutely the worst scourge that has been visited on the Georgia outdoors. That includes coyotes, fire ants, and armadillos, none of which were here (Taylor County) fifty years ago.
JAGER
Senior Member
I captured his (dadsbuckshot) quote here because I would like to make a comment and hopefully a point. As a hunter, I congratulate him for wanting to help (Redlevel) solve his feral hog problem. However, the spirit of this thread was to share a farmer's (public media) "perception" of hunting/trapping and discuss ways to change or improve it.
From the farmer's view, a novice, traditional daytime hunter does very little to change their "perception" of hunters. This observation is in no way directed at dadsbuckshot because I could have used several different examples on this forum. His quote just happened to be here. The only way we are going to improve anything is to discuss it.
Every week, we see hunters posting a new thread asking if anyone has a place for them to hunt hogs. Yet, no one ever answers them with a legitimate place. Why? Because most farmers realize traditional, daytime hunting methods are incapable of killing big numbers to effectively manage populations. It is safe to say many hunters who read this forum are looking for another place to hunt hogs. But most hunters are only a liability, not an asset to the farmer.
As a hunter, what do you bring to the table which makes you an asset to the farmer? If the answer is a bolt action rifle and determination, stand in line with everyone else. The farmer already observed the results produced by those tools and he was not impressed. Remember the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
The key to being an asset is producing better results. Mr. Redmond (earlier post) impressed his farmers by killing four hogs in one night. What would be the farmer's perception of hunters/trappers if we produced three or four dead hogs per outing? Better than it is now? You bet.
How do you produce these results? By thinking outside the box. What are your strengths? Let me use dadsbuckshot as an example. He might be a novice hog hunter, but he and his father are veterans in the law enforcement community. Maybe some experience in surveillance or semi-automatic weapons. How often do you think law enforcement sniper teams get to practice on live targets, day or night? It sounds like a win-win situation to provide real world cross-training training experience and solve the farmer's problem at the same time.
I've got a few specific ideas to share in June after all the peanuts are planted.
---JAGER
JAGER
Senior Member
It is perfectly legal to kill invasive species such as hogs in unlimited numbers. It is why state wildlife biologists and the DNR give hunters every available opportunity to solve the problem with no closed season and no bag limit. I would never condone killing a legitimate game species just to let it rot.
What do you think happens to the hundreds of hog carcasses killed in Texas from aerial gunning missions?
What do think will happen to thousands of hog carcasses if sodium nitrite baits are approved in the United States?
My advice is to teach him the GA DNR hunting regulation and the difference between an invasive species and a legal game species. If hunters don't change the way they approach feral hog control today, your son might not have a choice in the future.
---JAGER
SELFBOW
Senior Member
I hunt deer over bait in SC which is perfectly legal but I've been told a thousand times on here just cause it's legal, don't make it right!
You need to find someone who has a true dislike for hogs or someone who just likes to kill for the kill only.
Its gonna be hard to convince sportsman to help control it like you want. I kill hogs when I have the chance. My family took 12 last year.
Maybe the question should be "How many are interested in killin as many as possible?"
Jager you speak of the future, you know hogs are everywhere not just farmland. Is the government wanting to take control of it everywhere? Are they gonna go to the refuges and the wmas and take them out? Are they gonna come on all private land to kill them?
We all know hunters can't control them because we kill only what we can keep. We are not wasteful and you are trying to tell us to change the way we were raised.
You need to find someone who has a true dislike for hogs or someone who just likes to kill for the kill only.
Its gonna be hard to convince sportsman to help control it like you want. I kill hogs when I have the chance. My family took 12 last year.
Maybe the question should be "How many are interested in killin as many as possible?"
Jager you speak of the future, you know hogs are everywhere not just farmland. Is the government wanting to take control of it everywhere? Are they gonna go to the refuges and the wmas and take them out? Are they gonna come on all private land to kill them?
We all know hunters can't control them because we kill only what we can keep. We are not wasteful and you are trying to tell us to change the way we were raised.
REDMOND1858
Senior Member
i understand what you are saying bucksback i was raised that way to and try to practice the method of eat what you kill. and im sure i was raised like that because thats what my grandparents taught my parents, but when they were coming up they didnt have to worry about a pack of hogs coming through their field and wiping out half their crop....its different then it was 20 years ago hogs are alot bigger problem now and have to be controled by whatever means possible so that we can keep our sport, as jager said. i hate seeing good meat go to waste as much as you but sometimes you gotta do what ya gotta do to keep them from doing more damage than they already are. you should teach your son eat what you kill just as my dad did me, but also teach him that unfortunatly in some situations it is necessary to kill as many as you can. im sure most the farmers around here today were raised the same as me and you but ask their opinion and im sure they will say the same.
hevishot
Banned
you are absolutely right....
bigreddwon
Senior Member
hogs
You have lost you it.The reason we cant properly manage land and ponds are because of the people like you and the dnr that go by what yall here and read, and not by day to day activity.Show me dont tell me.
dadsbuckshot
Senior Member
Jager and Redlevel,
Gentlemen I would like to offer an appology to you both for the comments I have made on this thread and the other regarding the free meat. After reading your threads and PMs I can understand where your both coming from with the hog situation. Being from extreme NW Georgia I can not fathom what the situation is like on the farmers in this state down south as we do not have that situation in my areas.
Jager, thank you for taking the time to clarify your views... With the economic crisis we are facing - the farms can't afford to take a hard line hit from hogs or any other species ex. geese, fireants etc... Jager after reading your profile, website etc... I can appreciate a man of your knowledge and experiences. So to you I offer a sincere apology for speaking before being educated....
Redlevel, the same goes for you. Thank you for the PMs and for the information you shared with me. I too want to extend my sincere apologies to you as well...
I think that alot of times threads can get blown out of shape due to the wrong wordage or phrases. Folks perceive statements in different ways, and what reads/sounds good to one man may be a shot in the heart to another. I am guilty of speaking/typing out of context and turn, and well above my education level for the subject at hand....
Thanks to you both... Jager and Redlevel...
Have a good evening, and again please accept my apologies.
kornbread
Senior Member
i think we need to get back on the topic of trying to solve the problem together give each other ideas and about how to control the population .you guys that dont have but one place to hunt make that person happy and it will go farther than you think . i have been hunting one big farm for a while that the farmer was tired of the guys drinking and having 20 people running dogs and catching a few here and there and then seeing them at the store with it alive bragging so he put a end to it untill i begged him to give me a chance now a year later and countless hogs he seen dead and now word of mouth i picked up 4 more big farms around him .do a good job and there will be places to hunt. invite the farmer to go and he can see how you operate and it will get you far .
Wauchula Hog Krew
Member
Jager, this is something I will actually praise you on. Giving some of the less fortunate hog-dog hunters a chance to work together with you and others who use a different method than hunting hogs with dogs. This separates and SHOWS who has the respectful reputation to properly hunt hogs with dogs and will possibly reveal the ones who have been giving us a bad name.
Although, my cousin and I are from Florida, we have been feeling the burden and backlash unleashed onto the Georgian doggers who have been stressed by these very individuals who have given the method a bad name. It's just like a bad apple in the bunch. It destroys the rest because someone couldn't separate it from the good!
I have been stressing enough with the fact that transporting a hog is only right as long as the hog(s) ends up DEAD one way or another. Relocating a hog, alive, and releasing it is different and should be listed as RELOCATION. Too many imbeciles refuse to separate the terms relocation and transporting. Some people transport it alive to be able to pen it up and fatten it up to make the meat better. Some people transport it alive to show it off, as long as it becomes a dead hog later on. Some people transport the hog alive because they are hunting on someone elses land (with permission). Some people transport it alive because they are still in the middle of hunting other hogs and it's just quicker to throw the hog in the trailer and go after more, rather than just sitting there and knifing it for the next 10 to 15 minutes till it's dead. The quicker it is handled the quicker you can get back to catching the other ones. People have their reasons. We have our reasons. But it all comes down to ONE right outcome for respect. It will be DEAD.
Another thing that bothers me is the fact that some say it's inhumane and too much torture to send a bunch of dogs on a hog and just stress the crap out of it. I partially agree to this. My cousin and I use 3 dogs. 2 of them are suppose to bay it up and the other one is a catch dog. Sometimes I need both of them to catch and his dog to keep it bayed up. Some people feel the need to send 7 dogs on a hog is better. I don't know why. You should only need 1 catch dog. If it is all bay dogs then that's alright. But to have 5 catch dogs and 2 bay dogs is all wrong. But we can't control that. In my eyes, 2 or 3 dogs is more than sufficient. 2 Bays and 1 Catch with the exception of the other switching to catch when help is needed. Don't slap us around just because someone else, that we don't know, is using a whole bunch of dogs. That's not our problem. Sooner or later they will figure it out and realize it's inhumane to torture that hog with that many dogs, if they have enough common sense.
We keep the suffering to a minimum as much as we can. The others should, also.
While thermal imaging and shooting hogs seem to produce more dead ones than catching them with dogs is good, it's also a little overboard. I'll still support the thermal imaging if it is regulated at some point. 77 hogs in 6 nights? That's a bit excessive. I've been hog hunting with a 270 Winchester, during the day, before. I've noticed when I killed 2 hogs in less than a minute, none of them would show up at the same spot for the next month or so. So, I think a regulation should be in place to equalize the opportunity for other people with other methods to catch and kill hogs. I'm all for killing as many as you can and controlling their population, but tone it down a little and spread the opportunity to the respectful hunters, who will do the same by your side, with a different method.
I have shared the news and your methods with quite a few hog hunters around here and not one person would ever support your method around here. But believe it or not, they too will control the population as much as they can. We have been gaining a lot of respect around here and have been producing more and more dead hogs each month. It's all about how you do it and what is the outcome of it.
My next concern is this method of "toxin" baiting. Where is the sport in that? If you're producing 77 dead hogs in 6 night with thermal imagery and helping it be legal in other states and training fellow agents to be able to thermal image hunt at night, then there is absolutely no need to introduce this "toxin" baiting. There is already an outcry against your thermal imaging. This will make matters even worse and you're not just going to an average opposition at conferences and meetings. You're going to get heavy, heavy, heavy protesters against you and anybody for it. And I'm not just talking about speaking out. I'm talking about an actual riot. Heck, you just may get some serious death threats from those people if it is introduced and becomes popular.
If it's that much of a problem to bring in the toxin baiting then the best suggestion and solution is to team up with all forms of hog hunters and work together. There should not be a problem producing an equal amount or even more when working together on same lands or different sections with closed gaps.
The same thing goes for the contraceptive hog baiting making sows infertile. The ONLY time I would go for this is if a certain group of hogs were being so elusive and refused to ever be caught, trapped, or killed by hunting with guns. But then again, maybe it isn't always the hogs, maybe it's just the hunter? Maybe you just need to change your routine around to get them.
Other than that, I'll never support toxins and contraceptive hog baiting in this lifetime. I rather pour some honey all over me and shower in sour corn and throw myself in the woods late at night, armed with just a knife and let my bold stupidity produce a dead hog of any size.
There is other things I would like to discuss but I must cut my time off for now and get back to work. Thanks for listening and sharing, Jager.
Although, my cousin and I are from Florida, we have been feeling the burden and backlash unleashed onto the Georgian doggers who have been stressed by these very individuals who have given the method a bad name. It's just like a bad apple in the bunch. It destroys the rest because someone couldn't separate it from the good!
I have been stressing enough with the fact that transporting a hog is only right as long as the hog(s) ends up DEAD one way or another. Relocating a hog, alive, and releasing it is different and should be listed as RELOCATION. Too many imbeciles refuse to separate the terms relocation and transporting. Some people transport it alive to be able to pen it up and fatten it up to make the meat better. Some people transport it alive to show it off, as long as it becomes a dead hog later on. Some people transport the hog alive because they are hunting on someone elses land (with permission). Some people transport it alive because they are still in the middle of hunting other hogs and it's just quicker to throw the hog in the trailer and go after more, rather than just sitting there and knifing it for the next 10 to 15 minutes till it's dead. The quicker it is handled the quicker you can get back to catching the other ones. People have their reasons. We have our reasons. But it all comes down to ONE right outcome for respect. It will be DEAD.
Another thing that bothers me is the fact that some say it's inhumane and too much torture to send a bunch of dogs on a hog and just stress the crap out of it. I partially agree to this. My cousin and I use 3 dogs. 2 of them are suppose to bay it up and the other one is a catch dog. Sometimes I need both of them to catch and his dog to keep it bayed up. Some people feel the need to send 7 dogs on a hog is better. I don't know why. You should only need 1 catch dog. If it is all bay dogs then that's alright. But to have 5 catch dogs and 2 bay dogs is all wrong. But we can't control that. In my eyes, 2 or 3 dogs is more than sufficient. 2 Bays and 1 Catch with the exception of the other switching to catch when help is needed. Don't slap us around just because someone else, that we don't know, is using a whole bunch of dogs. That's not our problem. Sooner or later they will figure it out and realize it's inhumane to torture that hog with that many dogs, if they have enough common sense.
We keep the suffering to a minimum as much as we can. The others should, also.
While thermal imaging and shooting hogs seem to produce more dead ones than catching them with dogs is good, it's also a little overboard. I'll still support the thermal imaging if it is regulated at some point. 77 hogs in 6 nights? That's a bit excessive. I've been hog hunting with a 270 Winchester, during the day, before. I've noticed when I killed 2 hogs in less than a minute, none of them would show up at the same spot for the next month or so. So, I think a regulation should be in place to equalize the opportunity for other people with other methods to catch and kill hogs. I'm all for killing as many as you can and controlling their population, but tone it down a little and spread the opportunity to the respectful hunters, who will do the same by your side, with a different method.
I have shared the news and your methods with quite a few hog hunters around here and not one person would ever support your method around here. But believe it or not, they too will control the population as much as they can. We have been gaining a lot of respect around here and have been producing more and more dead hogs each month. It's all about how you do it and what is the outcome of it.
My next concern is this method of "toxin" baiting. Where is the sport in that? If you're producing 77 dead hogs in 6 night with thermal imagery and helping it be legal in other states and training fellow agents to be able to thermal image hunt at night, then there is absolutely no need to introduce this "toxin" baiting. There is already an outcry against your thermal imaging. This will make matters even worse and you're not just going to an average opposition at conferences and meetings. You're going to get heavy, heavy, heavy protesters against you and anybody for it. And I'm not just talking about speaking out. I'm talking about an actual riot. Heck, you just may get some serious death threats from those people if it is introduced and becomes popular.
If it's that much of a problem to bring in the toxin baiting then the best suggestion and solution is to team up with all forms of hog hunters and work together. There should not be a problem producing an equal amount or even more when working together on same lands or different sections with closed gaps.
The same thing goes for the contraceptive hog baiting making sows infertile. The ONLY time I would go for this is if a certain group of hogs were being so elusive and refused to ever be caught, trapped, or killed by hunting with guns. But then again, maybe it isn't always the hogs, maybe it's just the hunter? Maybe you just need to change your routine around to get them.
Other than that, I'll never support toxins and contraceptive hog baiting in this lifetime. I rather pour some honey all over me and shower in sour corn and throw myself in the woods late at night, armed with just a knife and let my bold stupidity produce a dead hog of any size.
There is other things I would like to discuss but I must cut my time off for now and get back to work. Thanks for listening and sharing, Jager.
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JAGER
Senior Member
No need for an apology to me. This topic is a legitimate concern for the farming community, the hunting industry and our hunting reputation. There is a great deal of passion and emotion surrounding this topic. Human nature makes it very easy to change our minds from positive to negative, but next to impossible to change from negative to positive. Emotion often plays a bigger part in the process than logic. I listen to everyone's opinion and then offer my 'logical' perspective of the situation.
I appreciate your comments. If you were thinking it, so were other hunters on this forum. It gave me the opportunity to educate everyone about the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) and why Georgia's State Meat Inspection program doesn't allow feral hog donations directly to food banks.
The spirit of the GON Forum is to have intelligent conversations about these topics and to exchange ideas and opinions. The only way we are going to improve anything is to discuss it.
Thanks, ---JAGER
