Episode 5 - Wild Pig Management with Jay Long

[0:00]

[Intro music]

Introduction

BW: Hi, and welcome back to the Land Steward Podcast. I'm your host, BW, and I am once again absolutely excited to be back in the booth with you today. Okay, but today's very special because I have convinced the Mr. Jay Long to grace us with his presence to talk to you about the importance of wild pig population control and why that is such a critical consideration for nearly every single land steward in Texas. So, in short, he really just specializes in like the educational programming and technical assistance for land stewards, literally across the state in every single county who are looking to reduce or control wild pig populations. Welcome to the podcast, Jay.

JL: Thank you, I'm very excited to be here.

BW: So, Jay's background. I really wanna talk to you a little bit about how he came to the Institute because this guy is phenomenal and I also… he's so phenomenal I have put him in front of my students I want to talk a little bit about that in a second. So, I know that you spent some time as a park ranger and the public hunting coordinator with TPWD right?

JL: I did. I spent a little over four years with Texas Parks and Wildlife at two different state parks as a park ranger, public hunting coordinator, and I was the manager of public hunting lands at Lake Somerville State Park.

BW: Very cool. What's your like favorite memory of that, if you have one?

JL: The public hunts for the youth.

BW: Aw, yeah.

JL: Those were always so much fun. Seeing young kids sometimes get their first animals, get their first trophies, it was always a blast.

BW: Yeah, I can only imagine. If you have not had the opportunity to meet Jay, he is incredibly charismatic and somebody that you just want to have a conversation with. So, I can only imagine being out there with those youth hunters who are just like ready to go but maybe also a little bit nervous and you being out there with them, that was probably the coolest experience for them. And I also know that Jay is a dad himself. Jay has been blessed with two beautiful little daughters who are also becoming hunters, maybe a little bit?

JL: They are. I'm hoping that my five-year-old, Remington, will take her first deer this year.

BW: Yay!

JL: Maybe. We're kind of running out of time right now and the deer have not blessed us with their presence. But we still have a little bit of time, and my three-year-old Eleanor, she seems like she's gonna be interested in it?

BW: Yeah, I mean, does she have a choice? That's just, you know, the environment.

JL: I think she's gonna be forced to.

BW: Very cool. It's always cool to talk with Jay about just how we like bring our kids into this conversation, and it's funny thinking about Jay who has also, you know, just beyond TPWD he served for 10 years in the Marine Corps. So, getting to talk with him about how he works with his daughters to kind of connect into the land to get them introduced to the outdoors is just the coolest story. And you guys already know I have two wildling boys who are just ready to go any second of the day to be outside. So, it's always fun to be able to just kind of bounce ideas off of each other on like how do we bring our kids into this conversation? What does that look like for the next generation? I have had the opportunity to also put Jay in front of the students that I have in the natural resources communication course over in the Department of Rangeland Wildlife and Fisheries Management, also known as RWFM, and he's been awesome to put in front of them because he's just, he's charismatic. He's one of those guys that you know, especially with some of his experiences in the Marine Corps, he's really effective at leading people to get the right things done and to communicate in a way that helps to build trust in relationships with people. So, people want to follow his instruction. And I think that that background and some of the experiences that he's had, especially in the two overseas tours, were just, I mean, paramount to be able to put him in front of these landowners, to be open-minded, but to also help them understand that he's there to help them, he's there to provide resources and to lead them on the right path, whatever their management goals are. So, I'd love to hear a little bit about maybe some of your experiences in the last… in your 10-year service with the military. Do you feel like some of that has translated over to civilian life?

[5:02]

Marine Corps Experience

JL: Absolutely. So, like you said, I spent 10 years in the Marine Corps. I joined right out of high school. I knew school really wasn't the thing for me out of high school. Plus, I grew up watching John Wayne movies, which definitely, maybe…

BW: Influenced you?

JL: …influenced me a little bit and I loved pretty much every moment of my ten years in the Marine Corps. Unfortunately, I got injured. They told me I couldn't continue my service but during my ten years in the Marine Corps I became a leader. I had to talk to 17, 18, 19-year-olds, but then I also had to talk to officers and so you learn how to make your message stick with whoever you're talking to and you kind of learn how to be the person you need to be in the situation to make things move forward. And it's a skill that not many people get to learn. It's a skill that I find really valuable in today's world and especially in the natural resources world, especially in Texas where we have such a diverse group of landowners. And I also find it valuable in education with, nowadays you look at the span of students in natural resources and wildlife and some of them have experience in the wildlife world and some of them don't. And so, you have to kind of meet them where they are to get them to where they need to be to serve the next generation of landowners and wildlife users in Texas.

BW: Yeah, I mean that definitely resonates with me. You've got to be able to be adaptable no matter what kind of communicator you are, and you have to be able to meet people where they are, to be able to very quickly identify what their experiences are and how they relate to the land no matter what kind of steward they are. So, on that note, note, we talk a lot about landowners who have owned and are part of heritage or legacy ranches. And then we talk a little bit about new-to-the-land landowners. And Jay has just recently purchased his very own slice of Texas in…?

JL: Franklin.

BW: Franklin, yes. Very cool. So, you got to spend some time out there over the holiday, I think.

JL: I have, yes. So, we went up and put a feeder up, put a camera up. I'm pretty excited because now with the way the season has turned out, maybe my daughter Remington might be the first one to take an animal out there, which would be pretty cool. But it's beautiful, it's 21 acres, so it's not huge, but it's my own first piece of land and I can't... I really can't put forward in words how amazing it feels to be able to start the family on a path of land ownership and pass that down to my girls. Hopefully it'll be a little bit bigger when I pass it down, but it really feels impactful to be that first generation and make improvements on it, make it even more beautiful, and hopefully put my daughters on the path where they continue to want to be landowners here in Texas and be stewards of that land.

BW: Yeah, a lot of what you're talking about is, I mean as you guys know, is at the heart of this podcast. It's that no matter how you relate to the land we have different entrances into that experience, and we have… we're surrounded by resources but sometimes it's hard to figure out who to call, who to contact, what's the best science to use or to lean on when you're making those management decisions that will affect people beyond you. You know that land will be there forever, and we can't always guarantee that it's gonna look the same, but we hope to leave it better than when we found it or when we bought it. So that's really exciting for me. It was exciting to hear a little bit from Jay over the last couple of months on what that process and that journey looked like to becoming a landowner. So, I look forward to having Jay on the podcast again later on so you guys can kind of hear what this experience has been like for him becoming a new landowner and what resources have been super helpful for him over time.

[9:15]

The Wild Pig Problem

I do want to get back to Jay's current role. So, he's a landowner, he is a marine, he's an excellent educator, and his current role is really to help landowners figure out how to manage these wild pig populations. From where I sit, the data that we have from the Natural Resources Institute is that wild pigs are one of the greatest invasive species problems in the United States, not just in Texas, and we all know how great and big Texas is. So, we're a large part of that data. A big chunk of those numbers are right here in the Lone Star State. They impact water quality, our ag crops, livestock, wildlife populations and their habitats, and more recently suburban landscapes because Texas is amazing, and people want to move here and we're seeing more and more land - specifically about a square mile of land every day - go to development because we have to support this incoming population or growing population and that's really difficult for all wildlife species but specifically wild pigs. Who we know are adaptable. They're incredibly smart, they learn very, very quickly patterns, they understand kind of what's going on around them differently than some other wildlife species and they… they'll move right in wherever they're comfortable. So more specifically, nationwide we know the population is estimated to be about four million animals with about 2.6 million in Texas alone. We also know that they are in every single county in Texas except for El Paso. So just a couple of stats for you. The wild pig crop damages and control costs are reported to be greater than 1.5 to 2 billion dollars across the nation and conservatively about 500 million in Texas annually. Those numbers are derived from studies that were conducted at Texas A &M but also figures from the USDA. So that's kind of what we have to work with. Do you feel like that's representative of what's going on?

JL: It is, and it isn't. So you know when I go to my programs I have these great maps that I put up for people and I show them and the way I like to say it is you know these are the numbers we have to work with and it's the best numbers that we have but unfortunately there's no one agency, no one person whose job it is to you know count pigs.

BW: Right.

JL: And even if it was, I doubt they'd be able to do a very good job at it. So, for Texas you know we work off this 2.6 million pigs in Texas number as of right now, but honestly that's our best research available to us and this research comes from institutions like Texas A&M and in educational institutions all across really the southern portion of the United States. If you look at a map while pigs have reached somewhere around 30 states maybe a little bit more here in the United States they've really been a problem for decades in those southern states and so educational institutions have all have teams working on ways to deal with them and population numbers and things like that and so we do our best, we use our best research, put our best foots forward and that's how we get these numbers and so that's what we can bring to the public, but it's never gonna be an exact thing.

BW: Yeah, yeah, I hear that. And that, I mean, I think that that's probably true for a lot of different wildlife species, but when we're talking about an invasive species that has been around for as long as the wild pigs have, and we've seen just how adaptable their populations can be and how quickly they can reproduce, it becomes a problem very swiftly. They… they're also very secretive, which just compounds how difficult this is. And we have, specifically thinking about different types of wildlife and how we interact with them, endangered species are one thing. You can be, you can have many different institutions or research entities that are dedicated to making sure that we have accurate numbers on what the overall impact of losing that endangered species is, or just in general what their known population is, but it takes thousands and thousands of dollars to be able to mobilize like that. And usually, those endangered species are specifically very restricted to smaller habitat areas. We know where their historical ranges are, and we have a good idea of where they are right now, but wild pigs are everywhere. So just taking that small scale that happens for endangered species and increasing that scale to a point where we're across the entire state is a totally different story. What we know specifically and what I know as just a research communicator, is that first and foremost, they spend a significant portion of their time around creeks and streams, and they can contribute bacteria and nutrients to those water bodies, which is a huge health impact for us.

So, the populations can substantially impact water quality by eroding banks, increasing sediment loads and algae blooms, and causing oxygen depletion. depletions. That's huge. That's one single species hanging around any kind of water resource that has downstream impacts for wildlife and for humans. So, Jay's everyday job is funded through the Clean Water Act, which is a non-point source grant from the Texas State Soil and Water Conservation Board and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency otherwise known as the EPA. I know that Jay's main job, I'm speaking for him right now, he's literally looking at me in the face going, "What are you about to say about my day job?" So, if I have to think about his day job and if this is something or a field that you are interested in or if Jay is somebody that you feel like you need to have on speed dial, he really has two priorities. One is educational programming and then technical assistance. I wanna hear about educational programming. So, Jay definitely shares some of his lesser-known tips and tricks for the students in the communications class, but from what I know, he has a blast at some of these events and workshops. Do you wanna share a little bit about what that feels like when you're right in front of landowners in those workshops?

[15:53]

Educational Workshops

JL: Absolutely! I love my educational workshops, they're always a fun time. I love being able to go really all across Texas. You know, the way my grant works is we do have impaired watersheds that we're really supposed to focus on, but we are allowed to go all over the state of Texas and I love being able to go all across the state, talk to landowners, get their perspective and you know what I found is in the last year and a half, two years of doing this is that there's really two buckets of landowners that I deal with. The one bucket is, as Brittany mentioned, is that Texas is growing and so we have more and more new landowners who want their piece of Texas. And they come with their own set of challenges and questions and they're always fun to work with, they want to soak up information. But then you have the landowners who have been landowners their whole life, the land was passed down to them, they’re legacy landowners and you know they've been to these programs; they've heard it all and a lot of times they sit at these programs, and they look at you and they're like, "Why are you here?" And it's fun to talk to them. It's fun to reach out to them and explain to them I'm a bridge for them. I'm here to bring them new information. I'm here to bring them new technology. They always have something funny to say. If you give them a chance and you come to them plainly and honestly, they want your help, they want your experience, they just don't want to be talked down to. And so often I found in education we get you know we just get into this research, and we learn all these things and sometimes we lose track of the landowner who's actually has to be on the ground putting this stuff into action.

BW: Mhmm.

JL: And for me, that's the funnest part of it is talking with these gentlemen, with these ladies. And the legacy landowners really, they come like I said, they come with their own set of problems, their own set of difficulties, and their own set of unique experiences, things I've never seen, never heard, things that I can take back and try and they teach me just as much as I teach them, and it's really just been a blast.

BW: Yeah okay, so there is one tip that you share with the class on like opening some of those workshops. You want to talk about that?

JL: So, I always try to open my workshops with an introduction to myself. Like I said, so often I've sat through dozens and dozens of these workshops, both as a speaker and as someone who's on the other side being spoken to. And so often, you know, we as educators, we get in this habit of just getting up there and regurgitating the information and going on because we have so many. Unfortunately, there's so few educators in so many counties in the state that we need to get to. Sometimes it becomes a, you know, almost like a conveyor belt. So, I really try to every time I go to a program I get up there and I give a little introduction about myself, and so one of the things I always do and it's it seems to kind of break the ice and get the you know get them open to me a little bit is I'm not originally from Texas. I was born and raised in Illinois. And you know, I tell people before they give me any crap about that we grow our deer a lot bigger in Illinois than they do down here in Texas. And like I said, you know, even for the older landowners that always seems to get a chuckle across the room. It opens up, it puts them at ease. It kind of lets them know that, you know, I'm not here just to talk down at you or just to talk at you. I want this to be a two -way conversation. I want you to learn. I want to learn from you. And really just, I'm here as a resource for you.

BW: Yeah, that definitely resonates with me. And every time Jay tells that story in class, class, he gets chuckles even from Gen Z students. So, you know that that is important. What's cool about Jay's position from my seat is that this, you know, our work is a partnership. And without landowners, as you guys know, this work couldn't happen. It wouldn't be done. We would not be making landscape scale impacts. So, Jay's job is very specifically to be out to serve you guys to be that bridge as he described of science and resources to the people who are out there on the land, the land stewards, the land managers, those of you who are trying to work with the best resources available. So, to me, Jay's job is absolutely critical. Specifically talking about wild pig control and management. Do you want to talk about maybe like what the top three takeaways are in your workshops or what are the top three things that you feel like people take away from your workshops the most in terms of wild pig control?

[21:11]

Top Takeaways for Wild Pig Control

JL: The top three things I always try to drive home is one, wild pigs are here, they've been here, they're going to continue to be here, and it's going to take a joint effort across the state, especially a state like Texas that is 95 plus percent privately owned. It's going to take a joint effort to just get them under control, let alone get rid of them. Two, pigs need water. And so in our summers, in Texas where it's hot 10 months out of the year, they're going to go nocturnal on us and it becomes harder for landowners who already have a million things on their list to do to handle them.

BW: Mhmm.

JL: And then three, when we look at reduction methods there's really two tried and true reduction methods that have been scientifically proven to reduce pig populations. One is aerial gunning, the second is trapping. Aerial gunning has its own set of prohibitive practices whereas one, it's kind of it's costly, and two depending on where your land is and how big it is, it might not be feasible for you to do.

BW: Right.

JL: And trapping if not done right, it can become very problematic and very frustrating for landowners. And so, I always try to give landowners the best practices, the best tips for trapping to try to help with that frustration. I trap pigs quite a bit for videos that we do for landowners. And so, I can really understand why it can become frustrating and why landowners sometimes just… they don't have the time or the, you know, the will to put into it.

BW: Yeah, and trust you me. I have watched Jay attach one of those traps to the hitch of our AgriLife truck and it's kind of comical. I've never actually said that to him out loud. So, if you can't find me over the next couple of days It's because Jay’s [laughs] mad at me. I think the trapping is probably the most relevant for most landowners. It's the most like feasible in terms of trapping. So, if you to me the perspective of a landowner is you know when you're out and it's convenient you have a rifle and you see some you may be able to take a shot or two before they scatter, right? If you're really trying to take a look at what you have if you know that you're kind of being overrun or you know that they're there, maybe you've just had some rain come in, maybe you know that there's more moisture in the air and they're just more active during the day and when you're out. So that to me is probably the most common method that most landowners take because that's what's happening. They're out there, it's when they're already doing other things. Sometimes I know that landowners will… they'll try to to night hunt. They'll try to either do some varmint calling or see what can happen. Do you get a lot of questions about, okay, so what kind of impact can I make on this population on my property with just a rifle?

[23:14]

Can shooting alone reduce populations?

JL: I do, I do. And you know, I always get head shakes and people get disappointed when I tell them that ultimately shooting is not a great way of population reduction, and I promise you hunting wild pigs is my favorite way to deal with them. It's always fun. It's always a great time, but even if you're a great shot, even if you have all the bells and whistles and toys, the thermals, the silencers, if you put 20 pigs in a field, you might only be able to pick off three or four of them before they run out and it becomes just unsafe to shoot at that point. Now I tell this story and then I gave a program and I always love to add this in there I gave a program up north on the Red River and a couple guys in the back kind of snickered as I told as I was talking about shooting and I asked them what they were laughing about after the program they're like well we just got rid of 125 pigs last night. Well come to find out they were USDA shooters who had all the toys all the bells and whistles had UTVs, and they had about 10,000 acres of open farmland they had opened to…

BW: Mhmm.

JL: …so it's not to say that shooting doesn't work, but your average landowner who isn't doing it every night, isn't doing it all the time, and may not have access to this huge open area, it's just not going to be a population effect. That doesn't mean that it's not useful. I like to talk about deterrence. If you have a need to get pigs off your property for short periods of time, it will work for that, like we talked about pigs are smart, they know when we want to, they know when we're after them, but for actual population reduction it is just not a method that really works.

[26:07]

Trapping

BW: So, in terms of trapping, I know that you've done the trap demonstrations. Which, I mean when you're at a workshop that's kind of, to me, that's the pinch point of education, is that it's more hands-on, you get to show them what that technology looks like. Can you talk a little bit about trapping, the types of traps that you've used what you think works best for certain landowners?

JL: Absolutely. So, really when I when I give a trapping demonstration, I like to talk about three different styles of traps. So, if you will use your imagination with me, we have the old-school corral style trap. Which is going to be your T-post and your cattle panel style trap that has some kind of trap door on it. So, a saloon door, a guillotine door, something like that and that's going to be your cheapest option. You know most landowners, ranchers, cattlemen, have T-posts and cattle panel laying around. You can build a door out of wood, or you can go to Academy for $199 and buy a saloon style trap door, and you're gonna set that up and you're going to use like a tire or something for the trigger and that's gonna be kind of your basic corral trap. And then we're going then we're gonna, you can go up in money to what we call a human-activated trap. So, these are your smart traps, where they have smart cameras that send pictures and videos to your phone. Once you see the pigs come in, you as the operator can close the gate. And there's also a thing, things like net traps and these are considered kind of continuous traps so you set them up and once you put them in catch mode the pigs can go in there all night long but then they can't come out. And so really what is going to determine which ones you use is going to be how bad of the pig problem you have and how much money you're willing to invest. But no matter which one you choose; what I tell every landowner I talk to is you're only gonna be success as successful as the amount of work you put into before you ever put a trap on the ground.

BW: Yeah, so what in your mind, in terms of like time or time investment, if someone really wants to try and take a look at the numbers that they have or get a good estimate and then maybe start implementing - let's say they go the trapping route - do you think that that is it's safe to say it's a few hours of setup? And then it's just kind of a wait and see what happens situation?

JL: I mean honestly a corral trap… like if you're building a traditional corral trap with T-post, that can take several hours to build, especially if you're building it by yourself. And then it could be days or weeks before you actually catch pigs. And unfortunately with a corral trap like that, where you're using, it's an animal-activated trap, so they have to trip the trigger, you know, you're hoping that you... do all the right things and then it works, but ultimately you could do all the right things and then a big sow or a big boar could come in there and trip the trap before the whole sounder's even able to come in.

BW: Right.

JL: It kind of leaves that up to chance. But on the flip side of that, you could invest thousands of dollars into some of these smart traps. And then it could take you months for pigs to come into it.

BW: Right.

JL: Pigs, ultimately pigs are very, very smart. A lot of it will come down to what we always preach is pre-baiting. And also, it's going to come down to: is there food on the ground? Do they have other resources they can get to and how pressured have the pigs been in the past?

[30:03]

Pre-baiting Traps

BW: Yeah, that's a really good point. So, on pre-baiting what are your thoughts on what should go into that trap or that pen?

JL: So, for me, what I always recommend to people and what I have found in my trapping that has worked the best, is the first thing you want to do is go around your property and find spots that pigs are using. Whether that be where they're wallowing a game trail that you have pig sign on anywhere that you know pigs are actively using, and then you want to start baiting them and you want to put a camera up. And this is another way why I always tell landowners they can save time… then it's gonna cost money. So, for me what I do is I put up a deer feeder and I put up a cell camera that way I don't have to go out there every single day to drop corn and to get the pictures off the camera. The deer feeder is gonna drop the corn for me, this camera is gonna send the pictures to me. And what I found is that if I've picked the right place so I've picked a place that pigs are actively using and it takes less than seven days for the whole sounder to come to that feed, I can pretty reliably build the trap around the feeder in one day.

BW: Okay.

JL: Now, if it takes more than seven days, I always recommend building the trap over a couple of days. Reason being is, like I said, if you picked a good place, so pigs were already going there, and then all you did was give free food out. And all of a sudden, the pigs were like, hmm, I don't know if this is a great place anymore. Then there's a chance that those pigs are already pressured or wary of the surroundings and so if you just go in there and put a big old trap in, oftentimes what I found is it's not that the pigs won't ever come back because they will eventually come back, but you're gonna wind up having days if not weeks of just dumping ground corn on the ground with no pigs coming and for a lot of landowners that becomes frustrating and that they're like you know what this trapping doesn't work. I'm done, I'm not even gonna… I can't mess around with it; I don't have the time. And that's what I've, talking to landowners all across the state, a lot of times that's what I hear. They're like, you know, I tried that trapping and I only got two pigs, or I didn't get any pigs, or the pigs were there before I put the trap up and now they're gone.

BW: Yeah, there's definitely a lot of different variables between how often you're on the place, if you live there. that's one thing. If you live off the land or if you're what we would refer to as an absentee landowner like I am, I don't live there. I'm not on the place all the time. So, the seven-day interval may make more sense to somebody like me who may only get to be out there four to five times a month, specifically on weekends or just on longer, I guess if you have a long weekend or whatever that looks like for you, that time interval makes more sense. It can be less frustrating because you're not there anyway, but it also allows time, distance, space, and comfortability for the wild pigs that are going to that area, so you're not constantly disturbing it. We've had a couple of traps that have been really successful in certain places on our property near Weldon, Texas, which is, you know, East Texas. There's more moisture. There's more water. We have hogs almost year-round coming in and out of different places, especially around deer feeders, but definitely around, you know, where we have big oaks. They're eating the acorns, and you can see the sign. You can see where they've rooted up. And most of the time, they're venturing out of the woods or out of these creek beds during the nighttime. So, you really just have to be cognizant of what they're comfortable with and then making sure that you're not driving around, you're not disturbing those areas. It becomes a very strategic planning timeframe, I guess. If you're looking at trapping, you have to look at all the different environmental variables around that. Can you do this succinctly? Can you do it effectively? Can you do it in a way that kind of introduces that trap into the environment that in a way that's less shocking in a way that is more conspicuous?

JL: I would like to say, you know, the whole seven days thing, there's not really a study on it, you know, so you'll have landowners that might go out and put a trap up first day, put corn in it, and start getting pigs. This is the seven days things for me is something that I have found in my own experiences trapping is kind of just a good rule of thumb to help cut down on that frustration. At the end of the day what you really want is, you want those pigs to be coming to that bait before you set the trap up, because at that point, you're going to be a lot more effective in your trapping than by just going and setting a trap up with corn or whatever bait you're using and hoping.

BW: Yeah, it's kind of like duck hunting. You got to go where the ducks are.

JL: Absolutely.

BW: Isn’t that like the 10 rules of duck hunting, go where the ducks are?

[35:15]

After Trapping – Sell or Dispatch

Okay. So, let's say you've decided to maybe do a combination of rifle hunting or using a gun and then trapping because I think that overall the more options you have to combine at one time probably the more effective that you will be but then once you've trapped them and you arrive the next morning and you have a whole sounder in this trap, what do you do?

JL: So, you really have two options at this point. The first option is we do have the option here in Texas to sell the pigs, so we can take them to a holding facility which if that is something you want to do, I highly encourage you to go to the Texas Animal Health Commission's website. They have a list of holding facilities. I also highly encourage you to check that list before you have pigs in the trap. Make sure you have holding facilities that are near… close enough to you and call around to a couple of different of them because they all are taking pigs at different times. They all offer different amounts of money, and they all take different size pigs. Something else I always encourage landowners to do is don't let the first time you ever back a trailer up to that trap be the first time you have pigs in the trap. Please practice that, pick the trailer you're gonna use, back it up to the trap, figure out how you're gonna open the trap up, how you're gonna get the pigs in, check to see if there's any areas where the pigs might be able to squeeze out. It just, if the first time you back the trailer up is the first time you have pigs in the trap it will never end well. And then another tip I always give is once you figured out the trailer you're gonna use, you figured up how you're gonna back it to the trap, just throw a T-post in on either side of that trailer and now no matter how many pigs you catch, no matter how early it is or adrenaline pumping, you know exactly where that trailer needs to go so that's where it needs to go.

BW: Mhmm. Yeah.

JL: So that’s one option we have and that's a great option because it allows landowners to get a little bit of money back that they might have spent on trapping and depending on how the market is sometimes that money can be pretty good. Sometimes these holding facilities pay a pretty good amount of money for pigs but not every let's this isn't feasible for every landowner, so the other option we have is dispatching the pigs in the trap. And the way we want to do that is we want to do that from the largest pig down to the smallest pig. We're looking for the cleanest shots we can take. So, we're looking for headshots. Kind of the way I tell people to do it is imagine drawing an X from the left ear to the right eye and the right ear to the left eye and that middle of that X which is gonna be a little higher up on the skull is gonna be where you want to put it and really you don't need anything big. When I do it, I usually use a .22 long rifle or a .17 HMR and that's really all you need. Another reason I suggest that is because the less amount of blood and stuff you get in the trap is the less chance of having to move that trap and I don't know about any other landowners I'm not a big fan of driving T-posts so if I don't have to move the trap I'd prefer not to.

BW: Yeah, I mean that's really good insight and really good experience I guess just in terms of thinking… and thinking in terms of longevity like how long you want to have the trap up there, how long you want to continue to maintain that trap, and how it looks to work around that trap, and regarding your other management practices that are out there. Cause I do know that sometimes your best oaks are also near where your best deer hunting is or where you're managing riparian areas. And you know, there's a balance between I know the pigs are here. They're near these riparian areas, they're causing erosion and other types of land and soil damage, maybe even possibly contaminating the water and the creek that's here. Do I want to continue to keep this trap along this stream bed and making sure that you're obviously thinking long term? What does that look like? Do I continue to bait them here? Do I try to move them? So, there's a lot of different considerations. And I… you know it's helpful for me to hear from Jay what your very specific options are what the prescriptive ways are of handling once you have trapped a sounder or even a single pig it just gives you guys a very clear idea of what managing an invasive wildlife species feels like. What that's like, what the time and the effort in the… your investment looks like for managing. So, I did want to ask for those of us who may live in a more suburban area, I know that you guys have heard me talk about the NRI inbox. We've had some messages from homeowners who are either a part of an HOA or they're just in a more highly populated area where maybe having a trap or shooting or dispatching a wild pig or even backing up a trailer is not really an option, but you know that those wild pigs are there. You've seen the sign. You've even maybe seen them around a neighborhood, especially in if you are against a wooded area or even a creek especially in parts of east Texas or central Texas that are just very densely populated, but you're also you know you're in… you're around a lot of different natural areas what would be your advice for those people who know they have them, they're not really sure what their options are?

[40:58]

Management in Suburban Areas

JL: So, we are actually working on some resources specifically designed for that right now and it gets… it gets hard. So you know we have these different neighborhoods here in Texas where you have some of these neighborhoods that are like you know five acre properties you know lots that were divided out of a hundred acre original lot and for those you know I kind of I've worked with some of those neighborhoods and what I usually try to suggest is maybe get together as a neighborhood and buy one trap and kind of work it around your neighborhood. Now as you get more urban and get closer and closer to a city center that becomes harder, and so with things like that, we're gonna have to look to our cities and our towns to start having programs. We can also look at fencing. However, fencing becomes hard as well because unfortunately, pigs are very good at getting around fences.

BW: [laughs] Right.

JL: Now there are fences out there that, if maintained properly, do very well at keeping pigs out. However, that is also something else you have to add to landowner's time is maintaining those fences.

BW: Yeah, that's a good point. I know that you maybe a couple weeks ago, you had a landowner call you this is kind of more of I guess on the technical assistance part of your day job. And he was in Bastrop, right? He was new to the land. He just maybe somehow just bought this land.

JL: So, he'd actually just did… his family wasn't new to the land, but he was new to taking care of it.

BW: Got it. Okay.

JL: So, the land had been in his family for decades and was willed to him from his mother.

BW: Okay.

JL: And so, he asked, he was at one of my programs. He asked me a bunch of questions at the program. and then asked if I would be willing to come out and help him. And I'm always willing to come out and help. I'm always willing to come look at beautiful land across Texas. It is probably the better part of my job. And so, I went out to Bastrop, met with him. He showed me around his beautiful piece of property. We looked at a couple of different sites. where he had had pig damage. We picked one site, and I helped him build a pig trap there. I haven't heard from him as of yet, if it's been successful, or how he's been going. Now this was a situation where we kind of broke the rules of pre baiting. And we broke those rules because him as a new landowner, he wasn't extremely confident in building it himself.

BW: Mhmm.

JL: He thought he could do it. I think he could have done it great. He seemed really, he really, you know, read into some of our publications and some of the resources we have, but he wanted my help. I'm always glad to give that help. And so, we talked to, we talked about the pros and cons of, hey, if we set this trap up without pre-baiting, things are gonna be slow, you're gonna have to be patient. And he was willing to take that downside with the upside of me being there to help work him through kind of the kind of the trouble spots of building a traditional and we actually built we didn't build a traditional corral trap; we built a figure-C trap where the trap kind of forms together and then the pigs can squeeze in but then can't find their way out.

BW: That's so creative but also you know just on the note of if you guys listened to episode four, we talk about how to find a natural resource but professional in Texas and what the value of that is. And these people are just like Jay. They're willing any time of day or night to come out and help you and I really mean that. That's their job. And Jay was able to help a landowner who probably to Jay's point could do something like this on his own. He had read the materials that we have that we have on our website. He had read some of the materials that Jay showed us during that workshop, and he still probably felt like maybe I should have an expert out here to help me figure this out the first time so that I know I'm making the right decisions and I know how to deal with some of these challenges when I'm out here on my own. And that to me is the value of getting in touch with their natural resource professionals, whether they're from NRI, whether they are from TPWD, NRI. NRCS, AgriLife Extension, or the Forest Service. There are lots of different programs involved in all of those entities that are going to help support landowners and coming back to this idea of meeting you where you are. However you steward the land, whether you're new to the land, you are part of a legacy property or maybe you're in more of a highly populated area and you're just looking for something someone to bounce ideas off of Someone who is immersed in that science and research every single day like we have the opportunity to be here at the Institute. So, I love that story that Jay shared with me actually got to see him doing a happy dance as he's walking out the building that day and come by my office and say “Hey, I get to go to Bastrop and work with a landowner.” So, I just echoing what Jay said that is I can attest to it being the favorite part of his job so it's…

JL: Can I add something to that?

BW: Sure.

JL: I promise you everyone who works in this field that is going to be our favorite part of the job. A day where we don't have to sit in an office and work on a proposal or work on a PowerPoint or just be in that side. If you invite one of us to come out and see your beautiful property and just be outside for the day, doing what we love.

BW: Yeah.

JL: I can't tell you that you're gonna find a no. The one thing I will tell you is please be patient with us. For many of us, we cover the whole state. So, our schedules get busy, but I promise you that we'll be there for you, we want to be there, we want to help you, and so we will get back to you as soon as we're able.

[47:15]

Contact Information and Resources

BW: Yeah. Okay, so if someone's looking for you, no matter where they are in the state, where can they find you?

JL: So, NRI's website, if you go to the people section, Brittany has been kind enough to put a good photo of me up there, and it has my email, it has my phone number, please reach out either way. Don't be hesitant about the fact that I have an out-of-state area code. I've had that phone number since I was like 15 and everything's linked to it so it's hard to get rid of. Please call me, email me. Like I said, it’s… my favorite part of my job is to get out and see this beautiful state and see some of these unique and just amazing properties.

BW: Yeah, and just looking forward in general to connecting with land stewards, you know obviously, that's the point of the podcast who want to be able to share that information with you. So in addition to finding Jay on the website and all of his contact info. We also have different resources on our website under our education tab so you can find a couple of different lessons on there about how wild pigs negatively impact water quality and some of the implications of that. And then we also have a YouTube channel. It's dedicated to wild pig education. We have somehow gained hundreds of thousands of I guess subscribers to that specific education channel on there. Just videos of kind of demonstrating certain things. You can find Jay on there. You can also find Josh Helcel, who is another in-house Natural Resources Institute expert on wild pig control. There's just some really great and awesome resources. If you're more of a video watcher you can pause it, take a look at what they're doing, try to identify some of the challenges that you have. There's even some good information on there on how to cook, how to prepare wild pig meat, if that's something that you're interested in. But then there's some other information on there about the diseases that come with wild pigs. So, the flip side and the side that is not always pretty about this invasive species and when they're overpopulated, some of the things that... that happen down the line when you're looking at wild pigs and how to identify some of that. Anything else you want to add?

JL: Just always check those sites. We are always adding new stuff. We have new PLS lessons in the pipeline right now. We have new videos in the pipeline right now. Again, please, if you have questions, if you need resources, reach out. I'm always happy to answer those phone calls, answer those emails anytime. And one thing I would like to add is that everyone in NRI kind of knows me as the guy who listens to podcasts. And so, I would just like to thank BW for making my dream come true of being on a podcast.

BW: Yeah, it's truly an honor to have Jay on the Land Steward podcast. He was one of the very first kind of pre-listeners before we published episode one and he gave us some really helpful feedback on how to just connect with you guys, what's the best way to share our stories and then to share you guys' stories and to make sure that we're giving you the best sound science and research that is possible in the state of Texas from the Natural Resources Institute and from many of our partners that we are so fortunate to be able to work with in Texas. So, I've left you with a few things for homework. Make sure you look at our YouTube, find Jay, everybody bombard him and fill his inbox with invites to your property. He's a wealth of knowledge and we have behind Jay even more information and people who are willing to connect with you specifically about invasive species control and especially for wild pigs in Texas because they are in every single county. And if you know, I think the saying is if you haven't seen ‘em yet you'll see ‘em soon. So, that's it for now. I'm gonna sign off. This is your host BW, thanks for joining and listening to episode five of the Land Steward Podcast.

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