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Sunday, September 28, 1997

Texas hog heaven for hunters

By MARK BABINECK / Associated Press

PADUCAH, Texas -- Prized game like whitetail deer, mourning doves and sandhill cranes enjoy the legal sanctuary of bag limits and established seasons. The idea is to keep the species thriving for future generations.

Not so for vilified wild hogs. For them, it's open season 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Lawmakers have even kicked in $50,000 for state-paid hunters to bag a few themselves.

Yet, the agricultural pests don't just die; they multiply. As they continue to fan out across Texas, the big pigs are becoming popular targets for experienced hunters and weekend warriors alike.

"For the most part, what got me involved in it is that there's more of an element of danger than pretty much anything else you'll find in this state to hunt," said Ben Cromeens, 21, who's bagged boars for eight years. "I'll be honest, though. You get a lot more opportunity to do it. With whitetail deer, you're allowed one buck a year, and you're restricted to killing that buck between the first weekend of November and the first weekend of January.

"With hogs, you can hunt as many as you want. You can hunt at night. You can hunt any time of year. It helps continue your hunting skills, and it lets me practice."

Cromeens lives in Robertson County, between Bryan and Waco. It's one of 185 Texas counties where landowners have reported seeing the animals, which feast on crops and almost anything remotely edible.

Here in Paducah, set on the economically stagnant rolling plains between Wichita Falls and Lubbock, wild swine populations increase as people slowly stream away. Folks who remain have turned their blight into a boon.

Welcome to the self-proclaimed "Wild Hog Capital of Texas."

"Doctors, lawyers, plumbers, people from California, Colorado, Ohio and all over come here to hog hunt," said Stu Moore, who runs the Paducah Chamber of Commerce from his cramped Sanderson Motel lobby. "When I bought this place (in 1993), all the quail died. I had depended on them. But we're really pushing the wild hog hunts now."

The profile of the wild hog stalker often differs from that of the traditional Texas hunter, Moore said. To an extent, hog hunts have become the bungee jumping of the sporting world as participants often increase the thrill -- and risk -- by using single-shot muskets or bows.

Nearly anyone involved with the sport suggests that those using primitive weapons have a sidearm at the ready, just in case. People usually can't outrun hogs, especially angry ones.

For the less adventurous, it's perfectly OK to use any legal means to smite a wild hog, sporting or not. The state doesn't care.

"You can use anything up to and including hand grenades to kill the poor fellas," Moore said.

Official numbers place Texas' undomesticated hog population at a million. "It may be closer to 2 million," said Mark Matston, Uvalde district supervisor for the Texas Animal Damage Control Service. He said surveys show hog populations intensifying and spreading, especially in East Texas.

It wasn't always so.

The Spanish brought the first hogs to the New World. Once a few escaped their pens, it didn't take long for the clever brutes to adapt to their surroundings.

Earlier this century, some Texas landowners imported tusked Russian boars for private hunts. Feral hogs, former domestic pigs, soon mixed with the boars to create the resilient breed now roaming Texas plains, forests and badlands.

Unlike buffalo, deer and other animals, hogs appear eradication-proof.

"If the United States had feral hogs instead of bison, we would probably still be fighting the Indians, as the white men would be unable to kill of the Indians' food supply," said J.D. Brooks, the resident hog expert for the Triangle Ranch near Paducah.

Big and small, hogs are more than targets for ranchers and farmers, who watch hogs devour row crops and muck up watering holes. Because sows can produce two litters of 6-10 piglets annually, they seem to be expanding exponentially.

"It takes some very intensive hunting to keep populations down," Matston said. "Hunting is just taking one, two or three individual hogs per 100, if that many. Unless it's a day-in, day-out business, we're not going to keep up with them."

Hogs are more likely to smell or hear a hunter than see him. Feeding on virtually any vegetation and some animals, including deer fawns and rattlesnakes, boars can grow to more than 400 pounds. Trophies weighing 500 pounds are rare; most average about 180 pounds.

Tough as they are, hogs only have two legitimate enemies: man and other hogs. They'll eagerly engage in mortal combat with one another around mating season, developing a tough sheath of scar tissue after years of such battles.

"You can shoot hogs on top of their heads and they'll keep going," said Jerry Havins, a former state trooper and Paducah native who's felled his share of hogs. "They may go off and die, but they don't just fall dead like other animals."

Rock star and bow hunter Ted Nugent once slayed a 400-pounder, then wrote an essay about the experience in a way only the "Motor City Madman" could describe.

"PUNG, KERTHWACK, SNORT, GRUNT, KABLOOEY!!" goes his account, provided by Ted Nugent United Sportsmen of America, his Michigan-based hunting organization. "It looked absolutely perfecto, as the gargantuan slabmaster exploded away into the cedar tangles, sod and rocks a'flyin'."

His nicknames for the prize include Jurassic Pork, Gonzo the Wonder Hog and His Majesty McPork. For $1,500, hunters anxious for a similar trophy can spend New Year's weekend stalking hogs and other game with Nugent on the giant YO Ranch near Mountain Home, Texas.

However, Cromeens said gigantic, highly aggressive hogs are rare. Over the years, he recounted just four times in which he's had to shoot a charging boar.

"It depends on the capability of each hunter, really," Cromeens said. "There are some that I think really don't know their limitations, and those are the people that get themselves into trouble. To tell the truth, they don't just endanger themselves, but anyone else involved with them."