Passport to Texas

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife and the Sport Fish Restoration Program

Exotic game species compete with native animals for food and habitat. Landowners have developed strategies for managing these creatures, including working with Broken Arrow Ranch in Ingram.

The agreement that we make is that these ranchers have an overpopulation that they need to get rid of – and we’re one of their options.

Chris Hughes runs this family business, which harvests and processes the wild game.

We pay them [landowners] based on the carcass weight of the animals that we harvest. So, it’s really a win-win-situation all around. They help put their land back into an ecological balance, they get paid for it, and we get the meat, we process it, and we can sell it nationwide.

Hughes says a state meat inspector, one to two shooters, a skinner, and a mobile processing unit are deployed into the field.

The time of day that we go depends a lot on what we’re hearing from the ranchers. A lot of our harvests are at night, because that’s when the animals are active. But from ranch to ranch that varies. And some of the ranchers find that their animals are more active in the early afternoons. And so we’ll go out there during the daytime.

Learn about the humane harvest of these animals when you log onto www.brokenarrowranch.com.

We receive support from the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration program … funded by your purchase of fishing and hunting equipment and motor boat fuels…

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti

Feral Hogs: Working With Landowners Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife and the Sport Fish Restoration Program

The Fort Worth Nature Center and Refuge had a feral hog problem. Their management strategy involved trapping and shooting the animals, and leaving the carcasses to decompose.

The pig, as an uninvited visitor to the refuge, has been utilizing our resources since they got there. So, we’re putting the resources back into the natural system.

The center’s Rob Denkhaus, agrees the hogs represented usable meat, but the center didn’t have a safe way to process it. That’s not an issue for Broken Arrow Ranch. They harvest hogs and other exotics, with on site processing and inspection. They age and package it at their facility in Ingram, and ship it nationwide.

On an annual basis we harvest about seventeen hundred deer a year, about eight hundred antelope, and last year about a thousand wild boars.

And that translates to more than 180-thousand pounds of wild game. Chris Hughes took over the business from his parents, who retired to a ranch in the hill country, where they first observed the exotic species.

They saw an untapped resource here in the area, and a potential market; worked through the government agencies to get all the appropriate regulations in line, and began harvesting animals and selling them to restaurants in 1983.

Tomorrow: How Broken Arrow Ranch works with landowners.

That’s our show… with support from the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration program … funded by your purchase of fishing and hunting equipment and motor boat fuels…

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti

Feral Hogs: Harvesting Hogs Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife and the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program

Feral hogs pose a serious problem at the Fort Worth Nature Center and Refuge where they’ve destroyed acres of fragile habitat. The center’s Rob Denkhaus says working with various groups the center developed a management strategy that met the needs of the community and the hogs.

And the key to it was determining how we could do it in the most humane way possible that would allow the animal welfare community to accept it. And, we needed to do it in a certain safe fashion, because we are inside the city limits, where discharge of firearms is generally not allowed. So, we went through a whole process, a whole matrix of different ideas that we worked on in order to come up with the one that actually fit best – that met all of our criteria.

In the end, trapping and shooting the animals was the simplest, most effective, and most humane solution.

We go to great, great lengths to make sure no animal suffers in our traps, which any responsible hunter or trapper of any kind is supposed to do as well.

What happens to the harvested hogs…that’s tomorrow.

That’s our show… we had help today from Tom Harvey… the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration program supports our show…and it’s funded by your purchase of fishing and hunting equipment and motor boat fuels…

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti

Feral Hogs: The Solution Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife and the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program

You may not know this, but hogs aren’t from around here.

Hogs are an invasive, exotic species; they’re not native to anywhere in North America.

Rob Denkhaus is Natural Resource Manager at the Fort Worth Nature Center and Refuge. Descendants of escaped domestic hogs introduced by Spanish Explorers 300 years ago, bred with runaway Eurasian wild boars that were brought to Texas in the 1930s by ranchers for sport hunting. The by-product of this porcine partnership has resulted in a large, destructive, modern
day wild pig population.

The activities that they get involved in like rooting – where they can root several feet into the soft soils – and they’re eating invertebrates, they’re consuming the bulbs and rhizomes of plants and everything. So, they’re having a negative affect on the plant community as well as the wildlife community.

These hogs, says Denkhaus, can also prey on wildlife species.

Ground nesting birds, reptiles and amphibians, and the like. So, their impact is far-reaching…and all negative.

We’ll talk more about this plague of pigs tomorrow.

That’s our show… we had help today from Tom Harvey… the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration program supports our show…and it’s funded by your purchase of fishing and hunting equipment and motor boat fuels.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti

Feral Hogs: The Problem Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

This weekend, explore bats, bugs, birds, and more during guided field trips and workshops at WildFest San Antonio.

WildFest San Antonio is going to be San Antonio’s first birding and nature festival, and we’re going to have over seventy different programs going on all weekend long at about twenty-five different locations spread out through Bexar county.

Gail Dugelby, a Nature Preserve Officer for Medina River Natural Area, says the Alamo City is an ideal location for the fest because it’s a crossroads.

Just in Bexar county alone we have 4 different eco-regions converging all on itself. So, when we say that we’re a crossroads, we get to be a crossroads of culture, as well as a crossroads of ecosystems. We’ve got this abundance of diversity.

WildFest offers participants a chance to enjoy the natural and cultural resources of the area.

Our goal is to educate the residents and the visitors about the unique natural and historical environments and increase the awareness of nature in and around San Antonio.

WildFest is May 4th through 6th throughout San Antonio. Most tours are limited to 15 to 20 people, and charge a fee. Other events are free. Visit www.wildfestsanantonio.com for complete details.

That’s our show for today…with research and writing help from Loren Seeger…For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti

WildFest San Antonio Play Now | Play in Popup | Download