If you’re looking for a fun species to chase with your bow on the cheap, consider a hog hunt!
These invasive pests can spread disease, devastate farmland, and kill livestock. They reproduce quickly and spread to new areas, so it’s open season on feral hogs just about anywhere you can hunt them. State agencies impose minimal regulations on hog hunting, often with no bag limits or hunting tackle restrictions.
Many whitetail and turkey outfitters offer affordable hog hunting packages so you can take an unlimited number of feral swine off their hands for a fraction of what you’d pay to bowhunt other species. It’s a win-win.
Head to a top hog hunting state in the summer or other off-season for some of the best bowhunting practice you can get. It’s low-pressure and incredibly fun.
Texas, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, and Oklahoma offer some of the best hog hunting, and you’ll typically just need a basic hunting license to start picking off pigs.
Keep in mind that wild hogs are built a bit differently than whitetails, so you’ll want to aim behind the thick shoulder shield — especially with an arrow — and right into the vitals for a solid lethal hit. A quartering away shot is your best bet, and I stick with high-quality fixed broadheads.
If you manage to stick a few parasite- and disease-free hogs — and track them down — you can fill your freezer with your very own pork products. A lot of hunters mix the meat with store-bought fat to create some awesome sausage. Although going after the 300-pound hogs is fun, the smaller, younger hogs make for better eating. If you’re looking for a fun challenge to brush up on your bowhunting skills without breaking the bank, head out on a hog hunt and bring home the bacon!
My friend flies a Cessna from a small airfield in Lake Placid, FL. He’s told me about the nuisance feral hogs which dig holes and furrows there, which can endanger planes landing or taking off; have seen the “plowed up” areas there and can appreciate the concern. The local authorities do their best to control the beasties. Don’t know if they’re just being trapped or hunted, but would think this might be a good venue for an organized bow hunt, since you wouldn’t want firearm rounds flying around an airfield of any size. Going to pass this post on to him in case he can get some interest going on this idea. Who knows, he might even turn into a bow hunter! 🙂
Great idea – they really are a nuisance
The Bow Bully,
This report brought back some good memories. A friend of mine has a 50,000-acre family ranch in Florida; it’s a working cattle ranch that also has a lumber mill on it. The work was divided between the 3 sons: one ran the cattle ranch aspect of the property, one ran the lumber mill, and my friend had the job of splitting off sections of land to be leased to hog hunters, as well as guiding hog hunts on large tracts of the property.
I told him this was “not really a job,” and that I’d be glad to do it for fun. But he had me come out and hunt the property with him, and he actually does a lot of work. He showed be large sections of land that had been rooted by hogs, hence, cattle could not feed there; he said that if he didn’t do his job (thinning out the hogs by hunting) then, in just a few years, they wouldn’t even have a ranch.
He said he got a lot of hunters that wanted to use a pistol or a bow, instead of a rifle; a few hunters wanted to do the old Roman special, and hunt with a spear, and he showed me pics of one client who flew in from Japan, who wanted to kill a hog with a sword, which, not being a martial artist, he didn’t really understand.
I told him that a katana is a weapon of honor in Japan, and that those pics he showed me would gain his client huge face, a lot of street cred, back in his homeland. 🙂
I thought about using a bow, but I’d seen some big hogs turn and charge some hunters; so I opted for my old Hawken when he let me hunt there; I got a few nice hogs in the 160-pound range; and as you said, that size makes for some good eating! 🙂
Thanking you for bringing back those good memories,
dave
dave, sounds like your friend had an awesome gig! They’re fun to hunt with just about anything!