Hog Wild

The state also hosts workshops in which landowners are taught how to trap feral hogs and sell them to USDA-approved slaughterhouses, where the hogs are killed using the captive-bolt method, essentially a pistol shot to the skull. These plants pay as much as 25 cents per pound plus a $5 head bonus. A 200-pound hog brings $55. Feral hogs are said to have a lean, mildly gamy flavor and are considered a delicacy in high-end restaurants on the east and west coasts as well as overseas. "They end up on white-clothed tables across Europe," says Dick Koehler, vice president of Frontier Meats in Fort Worth, which sells the wild hog meat to distribution centers in Italy and Switzerland.

State officials depend heavily on hunters such as Schooley, who volunteers countless hours to killing hogs that destroy neighboring farmland. The Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife allows a yearlong hunting season with no bag limits, no possession limits and no weapons restrictions. A license isn't even required when hunting on property damaged by wild hogs. "This time of year my phone rings nonstop because of that grain," Schooley says.

Like many hog hunters, Schooley pursues the animals on horseback. He goes out with several tracking dogs that corner the hog until he arrives. While the hog is preoccupied with the barking dogs, Schooley grabs the hog by its hind leg, flips it on its side and stabs it behind the front quarter with an eight-inch-long double-edged blade. "A knife to the heart is quicker than a gunshot to the head," he says.

It's a dangerous sport. Already this year two of Schooley's dogs were killed on hunts. One dropped from heat exhaustion; the other was gutted by a charging boar. Though Schooley has only been mildly cut up and nipped at, several years ago a friend in Brazoria County was gored in his upper thigh and nearly bled to death. Schooley doesn't worry, though.

"It's an adrenaline rush," he says. "It's an addiction."

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Fort Bend County District Attorney John Healey is no fan of feral hogs. One evening last fall, while on their way to Sugar Land for dinner and a movie, Healey and his wife were cruising in their convertible Toyota MR2 when a 250-pound hog darted out of a creek bottom and into the road. Healey braked and swerved but couldn't avoid smacking into it. The hog was fine: It quietly darted back into the woods. The car wasn't: Repairs ran to $700. And their evening plans were dashed. But it could have been worse. "If I had hit it square-on," Healey says, "it would have been in our laps."

Healey never imagined that just a few months later he'd be defending the animals.

The controversy began with a complaint to the sheriff's department. A county resident saw flyers posted around town announcing the sixth annual Danny Hill Memorial Hog Baying taking place May 13 at the youth rodeo arena in Needville. They included a photo of a man straddling the back of a large tusked hog. Admission was $3. The event included a pig chase for kids. "No catch dogs or cameras allowed," it read. At the bottom was Jason Schooley's cell phone number.

The resident complained to a deputy sheriff and several local media outlets, which tipped off the Houston Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Healey had no clue what hog-baying entailed. So he called Schooley into his office for an explanation.

First thing you need to know, Schooley told him, is there are two kinds of hog-dog rodeos: bay trials and catch trials.

In hog-bay trials, one or two dogs are released into a pen with a wild hog. But they're not supposed to touch it. The dogs' job is to corner the hog, keeping it at bay. The dogs most commonly used are mixed breeds such as Catahoulas and black-mouth curs. Judges for these contests evaluate the following criteria: how close the dog gets to the hog, the constancy of its barking and whether it maintains steady eye contact with the hog.

In hog-catch trials, a pit bull is usually released into a pen with a wild hog. In these typically bloodier events, the dog's job is to catch the hog with its teeth on the ear, snout or chest and wrestle it to the ground for a five-second count. The dog often bites down so hard that several men are needed to step on the animals and pry them apart with what is known as a breakstick. A stopwatch is used to determine which dog catches the hog in the fastest time.