In Texas, hunts by helicopter used to control wild hogs

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WEINART, Texas - Early on a cold morning in northern Haskell County, two helicopters set off to find feral hogs.

Next to the pilot in each two-seater helicopter is a gunner, armed with an assortment of laser-sighted rifles and shotguns to shoot the hogs they find.

When a sounder-- or group of hogs -- is spotted, the pilot follows the fleeing animals, which can run as fast as 30 miles per hour. The hogs generally run in a straight line, allowing the gunman to pick them off one by one from the helicopter flying only about 20 feet above the ground.

Feral hogs have caused so much land and crop damage that Haskell County farmers turned to aerial hunting as the best way to effectively bring down their population.

Over three days last week, about 300 hogs were killed by hunters in helicopters. Previously, the hunters reported, they killed as many as 125 in one hour.

But there are still thousands more wild hogs in the area -- and millions in the state.

Nationwide, the number of feral hogs has more than tripled in the past 20 years to as many as 6 million, according to Jack Mayer, a scientist with the U.S. Department of Energy's Savannah River National Laboratory in Aiken, S.C.

Each year feral hogs cause an estimated $800 million in property and crop damage and 27,000 vehicle collisions nationwide. They eat anything, damage lands where they root, and pollute water sources. Locally, the hogs eat agriculture crops such as milo, wheat, peanuts, watermelons and cantaloupe.

In Haskell County, farmers have had enough.

Nearly 125 people with about 32,000 acres of land banned together to form Haskell County Hog Control to reclaim their land and their livelihood.

Members pay 85 cents per acre each year to hire the helicopters and hunters to patrol their lands.

"We're just trying to take back what used to be ours," said Hollis Callaway, a Haskell County farmer and rancher. Callaway rotates his fields between cotton, wheat and haygrazer. A few years ago, he said, feral hogs destroyed about half of his 2,300 acres of milo. He had given up planting milo but now plans to plant the crop again after seeing the initial effects of the HCHC.

"We've seen immediate results," said Steve Alsabrook, who helped form HCHC. "I would say that within three weeks, we could see an immediate change."

Alsabrook said he lost 250 acres of milo to feral hogs last year. This year, after Johnson started flying for the HCHC, Alsabrook said he made a good milo crop with little damage.

"The combiner I hired said the only damage he saw was around the edges," he said.

Alsabrook said he has noticed fewer hogs since the HCHC formed.

"I used to go out and hunt them myself; I shot as many as 20 hogs within sight of my house," Alsabrook said. "Since we started flying, we don't have any hogs showing up."

Alsabrook said he baited a feeder for hogs and set up a game camera to take pictures of whatever wildlife appeared. Groups of up to 40 pigs were common.

"We kept the cameras on the feeders, and we started having deer show up," Alsabrook said.

In Texas, it is illegal to pay to hunt from a helicopter. During the 2009 state legislative session, a bill, sponsored by state Rep. Sid Miller, R-Stephenville, to make aerial hunting legal died.

However, Johnson has a permit from the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department for aerial wildlife and exotic animal management -- which allows him to shoot the feral hogs. Nueces Helicopters has flown over South Texas counties to shoot feral hogs, and a few other helicopter operators have permits in the state to do the same.

His gunners need only a valid Texas hunting license, and landowners must sign an agreement allowing the helicopter shootings on their land.

Most days the pigs are left in the field. Monday, however, a group near Temple made the trek to collect the hogs for a program that feeds the needy.

(Jared Fields is a reporter for The Abilene Reporter-News in Texas.)