08/31/2026
Feral Hogs Aren’t a Planting-Season Problem — They’re a Year-Round Problem
If you grow corn, peanuts, or other row crops in Northwest Florida or Southeast Alabama, you already know what feral hogs can do to a field.
One lesson I’ve learned is that waiting until you see hogs in a freshly planted field—or worse, a few weeks before harvest—is waiting too long. Good hog management has to happen all year.
Here are a few things I believe every farmer and landowner dealing with hogs should think about:
1. Remote trapping with cameras is one of the best tools we have.
The goal shouldn’t be to catch one or two pigs. It should be to identify the entire sounder, pattern them with cameras, condition them to the trap, and then catch the whole sounder at one time. Remote cameras and remotely operated gates give a trapper the ability to wait instead of dropping the gate too early.
2. Don’t wait until planting or harvest to start trapping.
If hogs are already rooting newly planted rows or feeding on a crop that is getting close to harvest, you're playing defense. The damage has already started.
I'd rather reduce those hog numbers during the months when there isn't a crop sitting in front of them. Trap through the winter, spring, summer, and fall. Make hog management part of the farm plan instead of an emergency response.
3. Shooting hogs at night may remove a few pigs, but it isn't a long-term management program.
I've got nothing against shooting hogs where it's legal and safe. The problem is relying on it as your primary control method.
Feral hogs are smart. Pressure them enough at 9:00 at night and they'll start showing up at midnight. Pressure them at midnight and they'll adjust again. You may kill a few, but the remaining pigs learn from that pressure and become harder to target.
For protecting crops year after year, removing whole sounders is a much more sustainable approach than chasing individual pigs in the field.
4. There's another question farmers need to think about: liability.
If people are shooting hogs on your farm at night, what happens if there's a fi****ms accident?
Is the person doing the work insured? Are you financially protected as the landowner?
That isn't something I want to figure out after an accident happens. If you're hiring someone for feral hog control, ask for proof of insurance before work begins.
5. Your property line doesn't mean anything to a feral hog.
One of the biggest mistakes we can make is treating this as one farmer's problem.
If I'm trapping hogs in my field, some of those same pigs may be damaging the field/property next door tomorrow. And pigs feeding on my neighbor's property today may be in my field next week.
That's why neighboring farmers and landowners should communicate and work together.
A professional trapper may have a trap strategically located on one property that is reducing hog pressure across several neighboring farms. Everybody benefits when the goal is reducing the local population instead of simply pushing pigs across the property line.
6. Electric fencing can help protect a crop, but I wouldn't mistake it for hog control.
It can be useful as a temporary deterrent, but feral pigs are extremely intelligent and persistent animals. Given enough time, they'll find weak points, learn to get under fencing, or simply shift their activity elsewhere.
Sometimes all we've accomplished is pushing them onto the neighbor's property for a while.
And when the pressure changes?
They come right back.
The lesson I've learned is pretty simple:
Don't manage the damage. Manage the hog population.
That means:
Camera surveillance.
Whole-sounder trapping.
Year-round pressure.
Insured professionals.
Cooperation between neighboring landowners.
The best time to deal with the hogs that could destroy next year's crop isn't when you see them standing in it.
It's months before that crop ever goes in the ground.
— Havoc Hog Control, LLC
Serving crop farmers and landowners throughout Northwest Florida and Southeast Alabama
havochogcontrol.com
