LeBlanc said the process was slow at first, but over the course of two months, the trap has led to 11 captures.Ĭurtis attributes the slow start to the hogs' skepticism to enter the pen and eat 'free corn.' He called Curtis, who installed his app-controlled trap in mid-December. LeBlanc said only a week after he moved in, hogs destroyed his backyard, overturning large swaths of land in search of food, which for a feral hog includes grasses, roots, bulbs and insects.ĭays later, they made their way to LeBlanc's front yard. When Antoine LeBlanc bought his new home on the south side of Jefferson County in October, he quickly realized that feral hogs would be an issue. 'They're effective, but really expensive,' Boone said.

With remote-operated traps, the heavy panels link together, making it difficult for the biggest of hogs to break through or lift the pen over their heads.

With older traps, Boone said the effectiveness really depends on how well the pens' panels are driven into the ground. Hardin County Game Warden Michael Boone said that traditional traps, which are usually operated with sling or trap doors, are effective to an extent, depending on where hunters place them, but these new advanced ones are 'definitely the most effective.' The animals have a life expectancy of four to five years, but some can live up to 8 years, according to the state agency.įeral hogs have managed to survive, adapt and increase in numbers despite attempts at population control and it's 'highly unlikely to eradicate a hog population,' the TPWD states on its website. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department estimates the state's feral hog population at 1.5 million. 'Every animal has its purpose, but hogs are some of the most destructive animals out there that multiply incredibly fast,' he said. White called the hogs 'ecological disasters,' saying they have denigrated some of his soil by pulling roots from the ground. 'Now we catch twice as many and it's a tenth of the work,' he said. 'In the past, we had to make a 150-mile round trip just to check and see if we caught anything' in homemade pens. 'It's without a doubt the most effective way to do it,' said Curtis, who lives in Silsbee. 'The only thing that comes close to being able to control the overpopulation of hogs is wireless traps.'Ĭurtis said his group has caught nearly 100 hogs in six months, and up to 26 at one time. 'If I was more consistent with it, there's no telling how many we could catch,' White said. White said he has caught about 120 hogs with his trap, and up to 16 at one time. 'You can be at home in bed and trap them with the touch of your screen,' Graves said.ĭavid White, a financial adviser who lives in Hardin County, has been using wireless traps for the past six years to keep hogs off his 500 acres. Once the herd gets large enough, any of the three men can hit a button on their phones that will close the gate, trapping the hogs until someone can drive out and load them up. The 30-foot diameter pen is equipped with a cellular modem and a motion detector that sends pictures of hogs inside the pen. Since they started using the app, their hog trapping numbers have doubled, he said. The trap is linked to an app, CellGate, on the men's smart phones. 'Our dogs' jobs are to find and catch hogs.'Ĭurtis, who has used hunting dogs to trap feral hogs for more than a decade, said the men invested in a $6,500 wireless trap six months ago. 'If a dog's job is to chase a car every day, they're going to chase a car every day,' Graves said. 'It takes more technique than strength,' said Curtis, of bringing down a hog. In under a minute, Tito and Victor Gonzalez had the hog pinned to the ground by its ears.īy the time Brian Curtis and his friends, Greg Graves and Bruce Perdue, loaded the hog into Curtis' 2001 gray Ford F-250, two more dogs - Cooper, a 7-year-old Black Mouth Cur, and Boudreaux, a 5-year-old Plott/Cur cross - were off in search of the next mark.īoth wore GPS trackers around their necks to locate them and cut vests around their torsos to keep them from getting hurt.

Newton county water authority hunt