On Saturday, February 15th, 2020 the owner of the Nuisance Wildlife Removal company, Joel Dudley whose been professionally removing wild pigs for 15 years says he’s killed the largest hog he’s ever seen, 488 pounds.
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Joel was hunting with his buddy, Mike Huckabay at The Preserve (also known as Cypress Lakes) in Texas using thermal-imaging, nighttime vision scopes at night. He said they were called in to do a hog eradication and while out they spotted a group of hogs gathered together beside a pond. He added that the hogs have been overpopulating the area and tearing up the subdivisions so the locals wanted them removed.
“We saw this big boar standing around one of the ponds. Even at the distance, we could tell he was massive. We went toward him and couldn’t find him, so we got back on the ATV and went down another road. That’s when Mike got within 20 yards of him and shot him,” Joel told Blue Bonnet News.
They killed five others that night and one of the hogs aggressively charged towards Joel and was about 30 feet away from him before he shot it. Joel says that instead of using hunting dogs, traps or bait, he prefers the night vision scopes.
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The reason is because trapping and baiting would attract more hogs to the area where they’re already a problem. He also always uses low-caliber ammunition so it doesn’t blast through them leaving a bloody mess everywhere but instead just drops them where they stand.
Feral hogs number in the millions in Texas and people have even been killed in residential areas. For example, Christine Rollins was killed by hogs on November 19th when she was getting out of her car to go to work.
Texas is very serious about maintaining control of the population of the hogs and making sure they’re not dangerously running rampant around people and destroying farmlands.