Heli-Hunters

Heli-Hunters

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
If Idaho experienced the plague of ferrel hogs that Southeast states like Georgia and Texas are seeing there wouldn't be a potato or a sugar beet to be found. Down in Texas there is an operation called Heli- Hunter that promotes hunting hogs from a helicopter. They say they are heroes to farmers. Words from Heli-Hunter organizers: "It came from the farmers, the row crop guys, guys planting corn and wheat that the destruction was pretty much enormous. The hog count was out of control, they needed a way to control the population. That is how the whole thing originated. Got the laws changed so that we could actually sell a hunt. Then it evolved into what we are now, Heli-Hunter, as a hunting service company. I grew up in this area and there were no hogs at all to speak of 15 to 20 years ago. We've gone from just a few hundred thousand pigs in the state of Texas to, some say, up to 5 million pigs at this time. The scary thing is the way they breed. You have to kill seven out of 10 pigs just to maintain the population. The great thing about our business model in my opinion is that it is a win-win situation. I know there are people out there that don't like what we do but 99% of the population in this area, love what we do. We are heroes in this area. We can take a specific area and fly it repetitively and we can actually control the pig population. We have proven that. We are cleaning out pigs for the farmers, the farmers are happy, the hunters are happy. From an eradication standpoint, there is no possible way that traditional hunting methods are ever going to get rid of the pig problem. We are talking about millions of pigs, not near as many hunters.
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