Helicopter pig hunting.

[cbeck36]

Have been watching some videos of this, I have a few questions. How do they retrieve all of the carcasses without ruining the crop? What do they do with all of the meat? It is for sure a bucket list item for me, how much is it for a hunt?

 

[CiK01]

They fly over farms/ranches with permission. Everything I have read the property owners want them there and they allow entry to pick up the carcasses. Meat is donated. I have seen them be anywhere from $5000 a few years ago to $1500 now.

On my bucket list too. Just seems awesome flying over a field, hanging out a helicopter with spent brass flying everywhere.

Link for anybody that has never seen it.

Helicopter Hog Hunting with Machine Guns - YouTube

 

[robtattoo]

A: Most of the time, they don't &
B: They leave it to rot.

90% of helicopter 'hunts' are purely eradication.

 

[norsepeak]

All of the hunts I've seen, they do go get the hogs and donate the meat to food banks. The hogs that die in the middle of crop land get recovered by helicopter while the others they drive trucks or ATV's to.

 

[dvm_hunter]

I have a college buddy that flys for an operation here in central Texas. The hogs they cleared the two times I've been have only been in ag fields. It's a ton of fun, i'd invest in a bag to catch the spent brass as you shoot. If you get a little bit of motion sickness I'd invest in some dramamine or meclizine. Looking through an optic and focusing on the moving ground and animals got me a little riled up a couple of times.

 

[Cdpp880]

Most of if not all of the pigs are left for the buzzards/predators to eat, if it is a fun/paid hunter flight allot of times the easy to access ones are picked up for the hunter if they want them. One thing to think about is most of the time there are normally way to many dead pigs (upwards of 50) to pickup and clean all at the end of a hunt. Around where I live I know the farmers hire these guys to eradicate the pigs due to crop damage. On one particular time 4 farmers got together and hired a hellicopter service to come out and kill pigs for 4 days and the total amount of kills on a little over 15000 acres was upward of 500 pigs. Most of the Hellicopter services charge around $500/hr with a min of 4hours.

 

[Billinsd]

Bucket list for sure!!!!

 

[Tex68w]

As someone who has done a heli hog hunt and hunts hogs on the regular in South Texas, Ill leave my itty-bitty opinion on the subject. For starters, most outfits charge you for 2 hours of flight time per hunter, now that might seem like a lot of time and a ton of hogs DOA but to be honest that shakes out to about 10-40 minutes on average of actual shooting/killing time. Like previously mentioned, the property you fly over is owned by multiple different land owners, usually farmers and ranchers that simply want the nuisance eradicated. You spend most of your flight time flying over these properties hoping to stir up a group and then you do your best to drop as many as you can while on strafing runs. The mass majority of the time these animals are not harvested. This is largely due in part to the fact that getting to the downed animal isn't usually worth the hassle and the fact that there is only so much you can do with all of these animals. Sure, some food banks will accept the meat, but it's becoming more and more common for them to refuse it due to health code issues and the time and expense involved with processing it. We rarely harvest the meat because after you've run down an animal like that you need to thoroughly bleed that animal out on ice for days and who has time for that non-sense? I can tell you that in 2016 we killed over 100 hogs and we harvested two of them, one to be used in a mix for venison and another we had made into pan sausage for some clients, of those two only one was taken on a hunt, the other was trapped.

Now don't let my opinion dissuade anyone from going on a Heli Hog Hunt but I just want people to have a realistic idea of how this usually works out. Hunting hogs can be a lot of fun but for myself personally that means with dogs and knife, other than that it has become more of a chore and time suck than anything else.

Took 13 this night, didn't harvest a single one, vultures had them cleaned up in 3 days.

 

[ChrisC]

I'm not familiar with hog hunting, so it's surprising to hear of all this waste - I guess you could make the argument about it feeding the surrounding wildlife. Is that normal? I lost a deer I shot for the first time this year after putting in 13 man hours looking for it...still haunts me. Knowing where the hog is and walking away from it is tough to wrap my head around. Is it acceptable because they're a nuisance/the sheer amount of them? Im not trying to say it's right or wrong, just trying to understand.

 

[Tex68w]

I'm not familiar with hog hunting, so it's surprising to hear of all this waste - I guess you could make the argument about it feeding the surrounding wildlife. Is that normal? I lost a deer I shot for the first time this year after putting in 13 man hours looking for it...still haunts me. Knowing where the hog is and walking away from it is tough to wrap my head around. Is it acceptable because they're a nuisance/the sheer amount of them? Im not trying to say it's right or wrong, just trying to understand.

It's a combination of the sheer numbers and accessibility to where those downed animals might be. There might be a portion of those that hunt them that harvest every kill, but personally everyone I know is hit or miss on whether or not they harvest. The best to take are sows 80-120lbs. Think of this in the same vein as one would prairie dogs, they are hunted first and foremost because they are a destructive nuisance that is costing you money. Hit a man in his pocket book and he'll feel it.

 

[ChrisC]

Thanks tex. Is there a concern the carcasses will just add to the food source for the remaining hogs?

 

[Tex68w]

Thanks tex. Is there a concern the carcasses will just add to the food source for the remaining hogs?

That's always definitely a possibility, but at the end of the day all you can do is try to reduce the numbers by any means necessary. We trap on average 5-15 a week and they either end up getting purchased for meat by local processors or we sell them in bulk to a local archery game ranch.

 

[dvm_hunter]

We didn't keep any, you're basically running em and then gunning em down in the open. I couldn't imagine they'd taste worth a crap after all that adrenaline dump and lactic acid build up. The ones they removed out of the ag fields were simply to keep from damaging farm equipment at harvest time. I'll keep some of the pigs I kill, but they have to be smaller 50-100lbs max. We shoot so many you can't really keep enough freezers, and if anyone wants one around our place they just shoot their own as they're not in short supply.

 

[jmez]

There are already so many food sources in Texas you don't really have to worry about "adding to it."

I spent 3 years in College Station and got in with a couple of dog guys. We caught them with the dogs. If they were accessible we tied them and hauled them to a local buyer. If they weren't readily accessible we just stuck them and left them. It is pretty hard for those that haven't seen the damage that they do to comprehend the scope of the problem. We hunted them year round, every weekend, holiday and day off that I had. The guys I went with had good reputations and had waiting lists of places to hunt. Local farmers and ranchers called them begging and pleading to come remove hogs.

If you are anywhere near an agricultural area, imagine someone just going out and dragging a disc across wet fields and pastures to the tune of acres a night. The amount of damage they do to Ag lands is incredible when you first start seeing it.

We were hunting them but first and foremost we were removing nuisance animals. That meant killing every one we could catch, including piglets. If we caught a young sow without much of a race or struggle and I had time I'd cut the backstraps off. Usually you didn't have time as there were other dogs already on other hogs and you need to get their pronto to protect the dogs and keep from losing them. These types of trips aren't so much hunting as killing and removing a problem.

 

[Tex68w]

We kill the piglets too, in fact last time I ran four of them over with the Ranger, it was faster and easier than wasting my ammo and time on shooting them on the run. They all have to be eradicated, it's not an option in the slightest, they reproduce faster than they can be controlled so the name of the game is to kill as many as you can and even then you know you are barely putting a dent in the issue.

 

[texag10]

Good info from jmez, DVM and Tex68w.

If you look at it from the farmer or rancher's point of view, you have a bunch of rats weighing in at 100lbs and up running around tearing up crops and eating livestock feed.

 

[Cdpp880]

where I am the main crop is rice and every farmer I know wants every pig seen on their property killed on site no matter what. As stated before it really is hard to imagine the population and sheer destruction these animals can do with just their noses. A group of 5-10 pigs can compleatly destroy 5-10 acres or more every night easily. Add that up over a couple of months and you can imagine the lose a farmer can endure. I have done one hello hunt and on one section of land in under 2 hours of flight time I shot over 40 pigs. It was as fun if not more than you could imagine watching the videos. I would recommend doing it if you have the chance to. Yes it is expensive but if a group of 2-4 people got together and shared an entire day it is reasonably affordable considering that you are paying for flight time to go kill an animal. The flight time in a hello alone for an hour would cost a pretty good amount so you are really just adding a little to shoot an invasive species that needs to be destroyed, while hanging out of a hellicopter!!!

 

[boom]

riding in a chopper is on my list. hunting hogs in texas, i kinda like sitting over a corn flinger with my bow. it isnt as easy as it sounds, but when it happens it is super fun.

shooting from a chopper, i would get anxious about the animals i might be leaving wounded. wounding one and not even knowing about it because i already flew after the next one, just doesnt sit right with me.

 

[Cdpp880]

In my experience there is no question the animal is dead before you fly on to the next one. If the pig is still moving you keep shooting till it is finished then go on to the next pig.

 

[Tex68w]

Flight time in a Robinson 22 is $500 an hour so yea you are mostly paying for that pilot, the fuel, and the astronomical upkeep and maintenance on that bird.