HOG WILD: Nixon-Smiley students compete to capture feral hogs

Take an evening stroll through the pasture of your choice. Chances are you’ll find much of the ground – once rife with grasses - cracked and cratered by feral hogs.

You may see gaps in the soil that are up to five feet wide and three feet deep.

Where the grass has been stripped, you might find mesquite and huisache saplings with thorny appendages surrounding pecan trees, preventing animals like deer and opossums from accessing what was once a steady food source.

Most likely, the pasture before your eyes has been plowed by the piggy plague.

In Texas alone, feral hogs cause some $400 million in damages on an annual basis. They root up recreational areas, harass tourists in state parks and leave other wildlife no choice but to move elsewhere.

But a group of kids in the Nixon-Smiley area are not backing down from the oinking overlords. In fact, they have spent the past month designing and building traps in an effort to capture as many of the critters as they can.

Nixon-Smiley CISD’s first-ever “Shut Your Trap” contest, spearheaded by agriculture production teacher George Green, has proven to be a challenging yet rewarding experience for the students who have undertaken the endeavor.

The contest, which started March 1, consists of three teams:

“Notorious P.I.G.,” featuring Nathan Croft, Aaron Reyna, Alex Salinas and Dylan Van Zandt, have completed their project, which is already set up on a nearby ranch.

“Hog Busters,” including John Rawls, Austin Rogers and David Miles, are also already in business, with their trap set up on another nearby property.

“Hog Slayers,” consisting of Jimmy Sellers, Ryan Smith Tristan Denson, are expected to have their trap up and snatching on Sunday.

“The three teams operated in different ways, and it is interesting to watch how they interact and progress,” Green observes. “This project teaches kids how to work on a schedule, conveying a sense of urgency. It’s also like production assembly. You have to stay on time. Just because one team has finished, and your team has not, you still have to keep on going.”

Toward the end of last year, Green’s class prepared by going through a “boot-camp” in machine shop training. Green wants his students to be prepared for a possible future in that kind of work in case that’s the path they choose.

“With ag mechanics being the class, it focused on such machine shop techniques as tool identification training, shop safety in terms of labor protocol and protective clothing, welding, equipment adjustment,” he says.

Day by day, the students chipped away at the subject matter. As they got toward the end of the textbook work, it came down to deciding what kind of projects they really wanted to make.

“We started talking about wild hogs, and how bad they are,” Green says. “Many of these kids trap feral hogs on the weekends – all on their own. So they’re not exactly rookies when it comes to trapping them.

“We at Nixon-Smiley CISD wanted to take the expertise these students already have in this matter, and mix it with the educational tools we have available for them at our school,” he adds. “So we came up with the idea of the ‘Shut Your Trap’ hog contest.”

The students established a game plan by researching the feral hog topic, and then brought in experts from Texas A&M as well as some welders from Austin Community College, who spoke to them about welding trades.

They then checked out several different hog trap designs, and picked out the designs they wanted to build.

“Then we decided we’d put some money on it, so we went out into the community and talked to several businesses,” Green says. “We told them what we were doing, and one of the businesses offered $100 to the winning team. Another business quickly added that they would throw in $200. Long story short, we got the bonus money up to about $500.

“So that really got ’em motivated,” Green continues. “We called the hog buying station in Leesville, and they said that for every hog we bring, they’ll sell it, and they’ll pay us for that hog. So that’s a bundle of money. And at the end of the contest, we will sell the winning trap as well.”

George says both students and school will be rewarded with a two-way split.

“The money they get from winning the contest and from the hog trap goes to the winning team, and the money we get from selling hogs will go to the Nixon-Smiley FFA chapter,” Green says.

While Green and his pupils are toiling away at doing their part to cut down on the feral hog population, they know it’s a formidable, if not impossible, task. But that’s not going to stop them from doing their best.

“We can at least put a dent in ‘em,” he says as he checks a weld on the unfinished trap. “And our students can benefit from the effort, persistence and hard work they’ve put forth in the process.”