Guadalupe County is taking what they believe to be a proactive approach to the feral hog issue that’s entrenched itself in Texas. Their tails will soon be valued at $5 each in the Texas Hill Country county. Voting Tuesday, June 26, to place a bounty on feral hots, the county commissioners see this as a necessary step in their effort to mitigate the problem of the more than 2K hogs that inhabit Guadalupe County.
In a commissioners meeting back in March, County Extension Agent Travis Franke stated, “I know at the extension office, we get a lot of calls on feral hog control and the problems and the damages and things that they do cause.” Since that time, a grant provided by the Texas A&M AgriLife Service to the county in the amount of $15,000 was earmarked specifically for feral hog control through various management activities, with $5,000 included for bounty expenses. The county is matching that amount of funding toward the success of the program.
Photo: Wikimedia
With respect to the program, the $5 tail fee was determined as a reimbursement of bounty hunter expenses, as opposed to fostering a competition. It was also stated that hunters can’t intentionally breed feral hogs in order to suit the program. They are also not allowed to bring hogs into Guadalupe County from outside its borders. It will be a requirement that the hunters properly dispose of the animal carcasses, and they will only be able to harvest during a set period (i.e. a hunting season.) In order to obtain the bounty, they must also provide the hog’s tail as evidence for the county.
Photo: Flickr/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Region
“Just because we give a bounty doesn’t mean people can come from out of town and go hunting wherever they want. It doesn’t mean that they can dump hogs on the side of the road. That’s illegal whether we have a bounty or not,” County Judge Kyle Kutscher noted in a meeting on June 26. Franke stated that although a start date for the bounty program has not yet been determined, he expects that the paperwork will be set for mid-July. Though this isn’t an ideal hog hunting time of year, any remaining funds will be maintained for their trapping or additional containment efforts. If this feral hog bounty program is a success, there is interest on the part of county commissioners to expand the program at a future date.
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