When we tracked the hog recently, we were on the neighbor’s place (called him first). There was an area of about an acre or maybe a bit less that had been rooted up to a degree I have never seen before. Absolutely amazing. In trying to describe the degree of damage, words fail me. I wonder if that big boar the GS shot could have done it. Could a lone boar do that much earth moving?

I’ve got a scraper blade on the tractor now. I’ll see if he wants me to try to flatten it out a bit. He lets me shoot across the fence, so this would be a bit of repayment.

I understand completely.

It can depend on the soil type and what the hogs are after....but my pastures are largely Sandy Loam and the hogs will sometimes root up areas a foot or more deep (I'm not kidding) and a quarter acre in size. Then move over and start another spot.

It is exceedingly difficult to repair and each time they do this...the repaired spot is denuded of the grass I want and chock full of weeds (when it recovers) which I DON'T want.

In the pic below I drove my Zero Turn up next to one spot they rooted.... just to give you some scale for the depth they dig (and it doesn't do it justice).

Dadgummit that’s a mess

Yes flintknapper, that’s the sort of damage I was talking about, except the area of damage here is much larger.

Before hogs moved into this area, I’d read about hog damage and not pay much attention. Well…now I know what they meant. For damage repair, usually I’ll attach the tiller to the tractor and run the tiller over the area a few times. It flattens things out pretty well, but the downside is that the smell of freshly turned earth will often bring them back to dig in the same area.

I've had much larger areas damaged. But mine tend to be contiguous, they move over 30 yds and start a new spot. But in aggregate can root up several acres in an evening easily.

Sometimes when they don't dig as deep and can cover a lot of area (turning it over 3"-6" deep) in just a couple of hours. That is much easier to repair but it still denudes the area. Once the roots of the grass are exposed.....its done for and weeds will replace it when it comes back....so you have to deal with that later.

Yeah, the hogs can really make a mess. This happened at a friend's place where I used to hunt. He had an old, small tractor that just wasn't up to the task of smoothing the pasture back out. He had to pay a neighbor to come over and deal with it.

They can root some very deep holes. I have been in a field where there were dozens and dozens of holes 14-18" and lots of smaller ones in between. It was nice, moist ground and the hogs had no trouble digging down to what they wanted.

While it is illegal to knowingly discharge a firearm where the projectile crosses a property line, it is a defense to prosecution to have a letter of written agreement with your neighbor that allows for this. In other words, just a good idea to have said letter should you just happen to be spotted by a game warden. Here is the code and what the letter should contain...
https://codes.findlaw.com/tx/parks-and-wildlife-code/parks-wild-sect-62-0121.html

I remember once....you posting either a picture or video clip of some damage where you were sitting in one of those (IIRC) and it really gave one a sense of just how deep the rootings were.

It was like the field was a giant empty egg carton for 500 lb eggs.

IIRC, you suggested the hogs were after tubers or some other deep plant, which certainly sounded plausible.

In the cotton fields here they will root pretty deep looking for the nuts on nut grass. And I have seen them really tear up the ditches digging out Johnson grass rhizomes. A lot of our ground is pretty sandy and they can dig it real easy.

500# eggs ?

You still got that pic ?

flintnapper's pic tis worth a thousand words...

Ya'll need ta get tagether, get more hunters involved...

Miss the hog hunts down @ OSBWMA...

Best thing tis "nip it in the bud" keep after em....

Only thing I’ve found to deter them after regrading, and I’ve only done small areas, is to lay down chicken wire for a couple months. You can pull it back through the new growth and the hogs quickly go find softer ground. Or set up a large round trap and take out the bulk of the herd, then open it back up.

I have seen them dig like that for pocket gophers. The gophers would take the corn from our feeders down into their holes and the hogs would dig em up.

https://texashuntingforum.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/7384766/a-little-prickly#Post7384766

I posted this 3 years ago. If they are hungry for corn they don't mind digging up a cactus patch to get it.

Here is a short video of the hog damage on my cousins farm a couple weeks ago. That field is about 300 yards by 400 yards. The darker ground has been torn up by the hogs.

https://youtube.com/shorts/JOCV48K40Qk?feature=share

Frustrating