🐗 “Inside Texas’ $100 MILLION Wild Boar Industry: How Farmers Trap, Hunt & Process MILLIONS of Hogs Every Year ”

In the pre-dawn hours of central Texas, under a haze of dust and floodlights, a farmer named Bill Haskins waits beside a massive steel trap.

It’s motion-triggered, connected to his phone, and baited with a stench of fermented corn and molasses.

“They can’t resist it,” he says, staring into the mesquite darkness.

“You just gotta wait.Then, a rustle.A grunt.

The ground vibrates as a herd of wild boars — forty, maybe fifty strong — charge into the pen.

Bill’s phone vibrates.He taps once.

The gate slams shut with a thunderous metallic clang.

The earth erupts in chaos: squeals, fury, dust.

“That’s money,” he says, exhaling.

Welcome to the Texas boar industry, a strange collision of destruction and profit.

It started decades ago.

Feral hogs — descendants of escaped domestic pigs and Eurasian wild boars — multiplied beyond control.

Today, Texas is home to an estimated 3 million wild hogs, the largest population in the United States.

They cost farmers over $500 million in agricultural damage each year, destroying everything from cotton to cornfields overnight.

“They breed like wildfire,” explains Dr.Maxine Porter, a wildlife biologist from Texas A&M.

“A single sow can produce two litters a year, with up to 12 piglets each time.

Multiply that by millions — you’re looking at a biological bomb.

Trapping and hunting are no longer hobbies.

They’re survival.

Across rural Texas, an entire boar-control economy has emerged — one that’s as organized and lucrative as it is brutal.

Modern traps resemble military equipment: automated circular enclosures the size of swimming pools, fitted with night-vision cameras and remote locking systems.

Some ranchers use drones with thermal imaging to track herds at night.

Helicopters sweep across ranchlands, their spotlights slicing through darkness as marksmen lean out with AR-15s.

It’s not a hunt; it’s an operation.

In one county, farmers even formed a cooperative hog task force.

“We’re not hunting,” says organizer Jeff Molina.

“We’re defending ourselves.

Each captured or killed hog becomes part of a larger chain — a shadow industry stretching from the dusty Texas plains to international markets.

At a small processing facility outside Abilene, workers in heavy aprons hoist the animals onto hooks.

The smell is thick — iron, earth, and heat.

“It’s ugly work, but necessary,” says plant manager Cody Bell.

“We’re turning chaos into commerce.

Once processed, the meat is inspected, flash-frozen, and shipped overseas — mostly to Europe and Asia, where wild boar meat is prized as a delicacy.

“They don’t want to know where it came from,” Cody says.

“They just want the flavor.

Each carcass can fetch anywhere from $50 to $200, depending on size and quality.

Multiply that by hundreds of thousands of animals, and you get a quiet empire built on an ecological nightmare.

Even the parts that don’t end up on dinner plates are used.

Bones and hides are repurposed for crafts and tools; fat becomes animal feed or biofuel.

“Nothing goes to waste,” Cody adds.

“The wild takes — we take back.

This industry doesn’t just keep ranchers afloat — it supports hundreds of jobs, from trappers and helicopter pilots to meat inspectors and butchers.

Companies like BoarBuster and Jager Pro have turned the fight against feral hogs into high-tech enterprise, selling smart traps, automated bait systems, and thermal scopes to landowners across the South.

In some parts of Texas, wild hog hunting has even gone luxury.

Tourists pay thousands for guided “boar safaris,” complete with night-vision rifles, catered BBQs, and social media bragging rights.

“It’s the only hunt where everyone wins,” one outfitter jokes.

“The hunter gets his thrill — and the farmer gets his land back.

Still, not everyone agrees it’s enough.

Despite millions of hogs trapped and killed each year, their population continues to rise.

“We’re killing them faster than ever,” says Dr.Porter, “and yet the numbers don’t drop.

It’s like bailing out a sinking ship with a spoon.

Not all Texans celebrate this booming boar industry.

Animal rights groups have condemned aerial hunts and trapping methods as cruel, calling for more humane population control.

But most locals see it differently.

“Cruel?” says farmer Bill Haskins, wiping sweat from his neck.

“Try losing your entire crop overnight.

Try watching 30 hogs tear through your pasture in 10 minutes.

Then tell me what’s cruel.

To many Texans, the war on wild hogs is personal — not just about money, but about identity.

It’s a battle between man and nature, tradition and chaos.

As dawn breaks over the plains, Bill releases a new trap, checking his phone’s live feed for signs of motion.

In the distance, he can already hear them — grunting, rooting, unstoppable.

“This’ll never end,” he says, almost smiling.

“But as long as they keep coming, we’ll keep catching.

For some, the boar invasion is a nightmare.

For others, it’s an opportunity.

For Texas, it’s both — a story of destruction turned into enterprise, of wilderness tamed and monetized.

And somewhere in the brush, as the sun rises over the barbed wire and blood-soaked soil, another sound echoes through the land — the squeal of a wild hog, and the clang of a trap door closing.

In Texas, that sound means one thing:
the business is still good.