It is round-up time in Burlington, and for feral hog trapper Robert Bohuslavicky, it’s either pig or pork.
Since April 1, Bohuslavicky has been trailing and trapping the rolling-fat, grain-fed feral hogs at no charge to aid Central Texas residents toiling in the root-hog-or-die field of agriculture. Bohuslavicky’s business called Hogs-B-Gone earns money by selling the swine he traps.
Feral hogs caught live are hauled in trailer loads and sold by the pound to one of the three certified meat processors in the state, or bought by an East Texas certified wild game hunting ranch that offers Bohuslavicky even higher rewards for hordes of hogs on the hoof.
Bohuslavicky and a group of Burlington residents have not forgotten about charity. Some wild hogs are butchered and donated through a church-related, non-profit organization that gives the pork to economically disadvantaged families.
Bohuslavicky, the offspring of a Czechoslovakian father, and mother who is Cherokee, Potowatomi, Blackfoot and Kickapoo Indian, has been trapping hogs for almost 18 years in the Cleveland area.
After sampling wild pork Bohuslavicky, who worked in the transport refrigeration business, began trapping feral hogs on the side primarily in the East Texas area. Learning of farmland havoc feral hogs were wrecking in Central Texas, Bohuslavicky decided to move to the area and establish a business. He already has customers in the Rogers and Buckholts area in addition to clients in Burlington, who have more than their fair share of feral hog stories to tell.
“They are overrun,” Bohuslavicky said.
Gene Klein said hogs are most destructive on grain sorghum and corn, and this spring he had to replant more than 40 acres of corn because hogs ate the seeds. Some farmers have planted cotton instead of grain crops to fend off losses from pig raids.
“They run in packs from 50 to 100,” Burlington resident Judy Johnson said. “You can go out there any time of the day and get a hog.”
Ray Gendron remembers when a pack of hogs ran straight at him on a hunting expedition.
Actual monetary damages from feral hogs has been as difficult to track as the actual wild hog population in Milam County, said Jon Gersbach, Texas AgriLife Extension agent for ag and natural resources in Milam County.
Ag producers have been battling wild hogs for years, but a plus for the people side of the war on hogs is that the wild swine have no season or bag limit in Texas. Individuals wanting to hunt wild hogs at night with spotlights should notify their local game warden, Gersbach said.
Dr. Billy Higginbotham, Texas AgriLife Extension professor and extension wildlife and fisheries specialist based in Overton, said trapping can be the most productive of conventional three hog control methods for rural farmers and ranchers.
The extension service recommends using large round or dew-drop traps, exercising diligence and patience in baiting the trap weeks at a time to draw large numbers of hogs into the trap before the door is tripped, and using smaller mesh to make sure pigs don’t escape. Female pigs become sexually mature at six months old, and can produce a litter before they are a year old, contributing to the wild hog population explosion.
Some trappers prefer to use snares, because trap-shy wild hogs can’t figure out how to outsmart a snare. A snare, however, catches only animal at a time, and the critter caught could be a neighbor’s dog or a wild deer, which could result in penalties.
Shooting is another alternative, but is most productive if the landowner wants to shell out $550 an hour for a helicopter service - hunters at utility-pole height can take out 40 hogs in an hour.
Conventional wildlife census techniques are not accurate in calculating the number of feral hogs living in Texas, but an estimated 1 to 2 million populate more than 90 percent of the state’s 254 counties, Higginbotham said.
Texas AgriLife service has employed a number of projects over the last few years on the economic impact hogs have on agriculture, Higginbotham said. The result is that the impact of feral hogs on agriculture has been significantly reduced by as much as two-thirds.
Central Texas’ feral hogs, Bohuslavicky surmised, are much healthier and heavier than the East Texas wild porkers because their diet. Those rooting out a living in Central Texas chow down on seed grains and if a plant escapes their row crop raids, they return to munch on corn ears or grain sorghum. Wild hog, he said, is gourmet quality meat.
Eventually, Bohuslavicky will charge his customers, with plans to open a state-certified meat processing plant in the area and hire trappers to keep the business supplied and the hog population down. For now, he just wants to help people get ahead of the hogs.
Meanwhile, Bohuslavicky has fine-tuned his hog trapping techniques to a science, knowing how to identify feral hog food foraging and trails, where to place traps, and what kind of culinary delicacies such as corn, molasses, Kool-Aid, apple-flavored bait and pumpkins are favored by feral hogs to entice them to visit a trap and keep coming back until enough are inside eating to trip the wire that shuts the door.
Though Bohuslavicky has the experience and expertise to take on hunting in a back-acre realm that has a cast of thousands, he points out that when dealing with such canny prey as wild hogs, “it’s a learning experience. You learn something new every day.”
