Q=Why don't you just shoot the hogs on the show?
A= We do use night vision equipped rifles and crossbows but most of our customers ask us not to shoot around there cattle, deer, exotics, or other livestock. We also hunt outside of some neighborhood homes. Dogs can be easily trained to target only hogs and much safer around not targeted animals. This falls under gun safety rules. Know whats behind your target, and have a safe back stop. Also if shooting was an effective method to remove large numbers of hogs the estamated 650,000 deer hunters in the woods every year would have eliminated the hog problem in Texas 40 years ago. This is hard evidence that just shooting the hogs hasn't fixed the problem. Hogs are way to smart, and too good at hiding for this method alone to work.
Q= Do you ever trap the hogs?
A= Yes, we use a product called HoldAHawg snare traps. These are the easiest and most effective type of trap we have used. These traps are bycatch safe with deer stops to allow deer to get out of the trap if they get caught in the trap.
Q= What do you do with the hogs?
A= We donate the meat to charities around the state. The meat must go to an approved processing facility and cannot just be given to individuals.
Q= What type of dogs do you use?
A= We have used lots of breeds of dogs in the 19 years we have been hunting, but have found Danes and Irish Wolfhounds and cross breeds of these to be the best for our style of hunting. If I had to choose only one breed to use it would be the Irish Wolfhound.
Q= Why are the dogs more effective than trapping and shooting?
A= We would never tell a land owner to stop trapping or shooting hogs when they see them, but these methods are time consuming and passive approaches because in both cases you have to wait for the hog to come out of hiding and into a trap or shooting range. The dogs are a proactive approach that lets us find the hogs hiding out of sight in heavy vegetation where the hog lives. Traps have to be checked every day and would only allow us to service our local areas.
Q= How do you train you dogs not to chase deer, exotics, or livestock?
A= Our dogs never stop being trained every hunt is training for our dogs, but most take two years of training before we will use them without a fully trained older dog around. We also use Tritronics E-Collars that allow us to correct our dogs from over a mile away.
Q= What kind of gear are you using on your dogs?
A= We use L3 breastplates made for us by Duncan Pig Dog Collars in Australia to protect the dogs from the hogs sharp bottom teeth or cutters on wild hogs. This is the toughest gear we have used and why we go to all the trouble to get it all the way from Australia. We designed our L3 breastplate to better suit the Dane and Wolfhound breeds we use but the can be custom ordered for any breed of dog.
Q= What type of rifle gun do you shoot when you use night vision?
A= I use Mech Tech CCU's in 460 Rowland, 10mm, and 38 Super for night vision work on hogs, and when I am checking my snare traps I carry a Clark Custom 1911 460 Rowland pistol. This gives me 44 mag power with the quick follow up shots of the semi auto 1911.
Q= What night vision do you use on your rifles?
A= We use Sight Mark night vision products for all our night vision work.
Q= What kind of green light where you using on the show.
A= The light we use are Laser Genetics ND3x50 Laser Designator. These are powerful laser lights with a 500 yard range without the bright white light that spooks hogs.
