Lone Star Trail
Texas themed hunting and fishing interviews featuring experts and real tales from the field.
Lone Star Trail
Feral Hog Population and Rattlesnake Behavior
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Nathan brings in the experts to discuss what really makes an impact on feral hog numbers in Texas and why what we've been told may not be exactly accurate. Andy Lee is on the show to talk about rattlesnake behavior and what to look for during each season.
Thanks for stopping by and happy hunting.
Follow us on Facebook
Welcome to Lone Star Trail, a new outdoor show aimed at bringing you hunting and fishing updates and compelling stories from around Texas and right here at home. Get ready to join us down the trail. Now, here's your host, Nathan Smith.
SPEAKER_10Good morning and welcome to another edition of Lone Star Trail. I'm your host, Nathan Smith. We've got a great show lined up for you today. Glad you could be here with us. Today we're talking about everybody's favorite subject, and that is feral hogs, the nuisance they are. But we're gonna dig in deeper with Mike Bodenchuk. He is a wildlife biologist and a feral hog expert. We'll check in with him. Later in the show, we're gonna talk a little bit about another favorite species here in Texas, and that is the rattlesnake. So we're gonna talk with Andy Lee, a rattlesnake expert, as well as house rules, all this and more on the Lone Star Trail. Keep it tuned right here.
SPEAKER_01Stay tuned right here. Lone Star Trail will return after these messages.
SPEAKER_09We're here talking to one of the fastest growing invasive species in Texas. Hi, I'm Giant Salvinia, nasty invasive species. I double in size every week. I understand you destroy Texas lakes and ruin fishing. Oh yeah, that's my thing. And that would be why boaters, fishermen, and skiers hate you. Yep, but they do give me rides from lake to lake. Folks, Giant Salvinia clings to boats, trailers, and gear, so remove even the smallest piece and put it in the trash. Don't tell them that! Hello, Giant Salvinia could buy Texas Lakes. A message from Texas Parks and Wildlife.
SPEAKER_10Whether you're looking to buy your next hunting property or have acres to sell, you need Brian Clark and Ranch Pro Real Estate in your corner. They use the latest in technology to make listings easy for sellers to maximize value. In the market to buy that perfect ranch or hunting getaway, call Ranch Pro Real Estate at 325-642-3630. That's Ranch Pro Real Estate at RanchPorRealEstate.com. The land is their life. You're listening to the Lone Star Trail. We're glad you're here. Now let's get back to the show. We want to welcome Mike Bodinchuk to the program today. Mike is a wildlife biologist and has held several leadership positions within USDA APHIS and the Texas Wildlife Services in the past, as well as numerous associations and organizations in Texas and across the U.S. Mike, thanks for being a friend of the program and for being here today.
SPEAKER_04I appreciate the opportunity. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_10So uh it's been a while since we've talked, and in a recent conversation, uh you talked about your seminar upcoming with uh Safari Club International Convention happening in February. Uh you you were asked to present a seminar on your favorite topic, and that's feral hogs.
SPEAKER_04You bet. You know, feral hogs are an important hunting animal uh uh for a lot of people, uh especially here in Texas, where we've got so many of them. Um and feral hog control is important for ecological reasons as well as you know, agriculture and all the rest. So the topic that that we're covering at SCI in Nashville is how can hunters help with feral hog management? Eradicate feral hogs in my lifetime, maybe not even in my granddaughter's lifetime, but we're certainly gonna be able to not make the problem worse, right? How do hunters play into the whole picture of managing feral hogs?
SPEAKER_10You know, that's a great topic and something that our listeners, of course, are going to be interested in. Uh, you know, it's feral hogs are one of those game species, invasive species that we love to hate, right? I mean, they're a lot of fun to hunt, but at the same time, you wish you could you could eradicate them, as you said. So uh if you don't mind, Mike, just kind of get into the uh the details on this seminar. What do you what do you plan to present?
SPEAKER_04Well, you know, first you we we need to know why we're doing it, right? If feral hogs were were rainbow trout, nobody would want to get rid of them at all. We'd be still planting them in in rivers around the country, but they do some damage. And for hunters, some of the damage that they do isn't always intuitive. Um, we we know that they can eat ground nesting bird eggs, right? They'll disturb turkey nests and quail nests. Um, they eat some small mammals, they eat some snakes. I don't know that anybody's shedding any tears over that. But uh, what hunters need to know is that they also are pathogens for wildlife. We have found CWD prions in the lymph nodes of feral hogs in Texas. And those prions are infective prions, they're not just protein strands that are that are picked up on the landscape. So feral hogs can be a reservoir. We don't know if they're an amplifier, but they can be a reservoir for CWD and can really affect our other main crop, which is deer. They also can harbor and spread anthrax. They're one of the few hoofed animals that doesn't die from anthrax. But in fact, in a recent anthrax outbreak out in Sutton County, we we recovered anthrax antibodies, found out that the pigs had been exposed, but they're just happy as can be, still going around eating on carcasses. And when we experimentally introduced anthrax into pigs, we found that they shed the bacteria. So pigs that are exposed to anthrax then go and put their nose in another water trough and they're spreading that anthrax to deer. So there could be some real problems associated with feral hogs and um and and wild deer. So the reasons that we do hog control, the reasons that people want to manage them, isn't just because they eat corn, but there are some real uh wildlife management issues associated with feral hogs.
SPEAKER_10One of the things you I don't believe you mentioned brucellosis, but I know that's one that is also a disease that that hogs can carry. Is that right?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, the the feral hogs have a a strain of brucella that's it the bacteria is brucella psuus. The one that elk have in the Yellowstone ecosystem, that bison have in the Yellowstone ecosystem, that cattle used to get in Texas was is Brucella abortis. But brucellosis is not just a disease of wildlife, they can spread it to other wildlife, including a lot of very important exotics. Um brucellosis is a zoonotic disease. It can be spread to people. And so hunters that clean feral hogs to eat them need to be sure that they protect themselves from this bacteria. If you get it in a cut, if you uh get some some of the fluids on you and it gets in your skin, um, it it has nasty, nasty effects on people. So uh Brucella uh as a zoonosis, uh wildlife, other wildlife diseases, uh, and and of course predation on some of the birds we like the most, quail and turkey, are reasons enough to reduce feral hog numbers. I I probably should say right in here that that I don't hate feral hogs. I mean, I I I spent my career controlling them. I went from being a predator expert to being a feral hog expert. And I tell people that's not really a promotion. You're going backwards down the food chain. But uh but feral hogs do need to be managed, um, and just like any other wildlife. And and in in a former life before I worked for the government, I was uh uh an outfitter and a guide. My firstborn child is named Hunter. And um my wife was a taxidermist for 25, 30 years. And so, you know, I'm I'm deeply aligned with the hunting community. If I if I sound like I'm bad mouthing pigs, it's it's from this this balanced viewpoint that I've got from from a biology standpoint, from an ecology standpoint, from a hunting standpoint. How do we how do we find that balance? And that's what that seminar in STI is going to be about.
SPEAKER_10Before we move on and talk about the how uh hunters can uh help with the control of feral hogs, let's uh we're still talking about some of the the diseases and some of the things that uh hogs potentially have the capability to spread. I want to get your take, and I'm I'm asking a lot of folks because it is such a hot button issue now. I want to I want to get your take on the New World screw worm.
SPEAKER_04Sure, and and where hogs are on the landscape, they're probably serving as alternative food sources for screw worms. Um, as tough as they are, we talk about hybrid vigor, right? Feral hogs that we have in Texas are something of a hybrid between the European wild boar and some domestic breed. Whether that domestic breed was brought in by DeSoto in the 1500s, whether it was brought in by pioneers in the 1800s, whether it was somebody's Durok pig that got out last week, there's some mix of European blood and and domestic blood. And European pigs only have one litter a year, and it's about four pigs. Domestic pigs, of course, have got two litters a year and a whole lot of piglets. And what we see in wild pigs is is three litters every two years, about seven months between litters, and that that hybrid vigor of having the strength and ability of uh and adaptability of a wild pig and the fecundity of a domestic pig is what creates the perfect storm. The same thing happens when we get to disease pathogens. They get the disease, they just don't die from it, right? And so they serve as a reservoir for other things. If feral pigs are on the landscape and screw worms do make it here, it's gonna make control of them that much harder because we've got another reservoir for those screw worms to breed out there, and so there's there's fascinating biology behind some of this stuff. I'll throw one more in there. We got vampire bats moving north in Mexico, and vampire bats typically don't feed on domestic pigs because the Mexican pigs have got a rind on them like a pumpkin. They've got thick skin all the way around. But where feral hogs and vampire bats coexist, we find vampire bats feeding on them all the time. 40% of the photos, the trail camera photos of feral hogs in Mexico, and it where there's vampire bats, the bats are feeding on them when the picture was taken. 40%. Holy cow, that's a lot. And so now we've got another source of food out there for screw worms. Now we've got another source of food out there for vampire bats. And then we're talking about infected pigs producing more screw worms that have to be fought. Now we've got gravies, perhaps, and in feral hogs. And so it could be a it could be a real problem out there for other pathogens. And and I think screw worms is gonna be another one of those we have to worry about. Fortunately, we don't have to treat the pigs, right? The screw worm treatment is the is the uh laying out of sterile male flies to to breed with the females. But we're gonna have to do it for a longer period of time. We're gonna have to do way more flies than than we did the first time just because we've got a new food source on the landscape.
SPEAKER_10We'll be right back with Mike Bodinchuk on the Lone Star Trail after this. Whether you're looking to buy your next hunting property or have acreage to sell, you need Brian Clark and Ranch Pro Real Estate in your corner. They use the latest in technology to make listings easy for sellers to maximize value. In the market to buy that perfect ranch or hunting getaway, call Ranch Pro Real Estate at 325-642-3630. That's Ranch Pro Real Estate at RanchProRealEstate.com. Land is their life. You're listening to the Lone Star Trail. We're glad you're here. Now let's get back to the show. Okay, we're back on the Lone Star Trail. Mike Bodentchuk, uh, thanks for being here. We're talking feral hogs, and uh in February, you're gonna be in Nashville, Tennessee, at the Safari Club International Convention, uh, where you're presenting a seminar on uh feral hogs and specifically how hunters can help with the feral hog uh problem. Because, you know, now this is not just a Texas issue. Uh feral hogs are in lots of states and lots of folks are having issues with them. Uh so we kind of talked in our first segment about the uh the why behind the need for controlling and for uh regulating the growth of the feral hog population. I'd like to talk a little bit now about uh this the topic that you're gonna be speaking about at the SCI convention, and that's how hunters can can be a part of that. So let's let's dive into that if you don't mind.
SPEAKER_04Sure, there's several ways that we're gonna we're gonna concentrate on, and and and some of this is really, really simple. You know, it's it's intuitive. Don't move feral hogs for hunting purposes. Between 2006 and 2010 in Texas, all of the population level monitors that we had in place, all of the indices indicated our pig population grew at at about 26% per year. That's a five-year period of time. Our pig population in Texas grew, it doubled in a five-year period of time. And and that wasn't because the pigs were breeding that fast. A lot of it had to do with with pigs getting moved in the back of a pickup or in a trailer and being released for hunting purposes. Um and and and I get it, right? They are fun to hunt. I have hunted on five continents, and I've hunted pigs on four of those continents. So so I I do understand the appeal of hog hunting, and I do it to this day. I I went uh to to South America and and hunted pigs down there. There's Safari Club's got uh a pigs and peccaries of the world award that includes North American wild pigs. We we nickname it the Grand Slam of Ham, right? Try and get a pig on every continent. But but I and I I like it. It's enjoyable. How can hunters do it though? Don't move pigs for hunting purposes. Go to a place where there are pigs and shoot some of those. That's the probably the most important thing. We don't see a lot of movement in Texas anymore. There are some regulations now, not many people enforcing them, but there are some regulations. But the reality is there's pigs almost every place that there's pig habitat, so nobody has to move pigs very much right now. Um the one that probably isn't as intuitive is which pig to shoot. And we're gonna concentrate on that during the the seminar quite a bit. You everybody has pigs, you know, that sits in a blind and has pigs show up at the corn feeder, will pick the biggest pig to shoot because it's got the most meat, right? And and that is, you know, when you talk about pounds of meat per year for your daughter, that is the smartest way to go about it. That's not the smartest way for control. We see in the wild that sows kind of drop out of the breeding population at five years of age. And so the the size of their litter is getting drastically smaller. They're they're not going to be contributing to the population like they do when they're one, two, or three. In fact, a sow actually has her first litter before her first birthday. They'll breed about six or seven months of age and have a litter at 10 or 11 months of age, and they'll continue to have three litters every two years. The pig you want to shoot, if you're a hunter and you want to control the population, is that six to seven, eight-month-old sow. She has her whole reproductive life ahead of you. It's like shooting cow, elk, or doe deer. You can take those old ones out, but you're taking one mouth off the landscape. If you take the younger ones out, the heifers, the the you're taking their reproductive potential off of there. And I'll tell you that we've modeled this for scientific purposes, and shooting sows, young sows, slows the growth of a population. Over about three years, you'll have a 50% reduction. That doesn't mean you get negative growth if you just shoot sows. You've got to shoot a whole lot of them to get that negative growth. But you can slow the growth down from about 30% down to about 16% by shooting those six-month-old sows. If you're talking about the same number of pigs being taken off the landscape, you start shooting three, four, five-year-old sows, you're taking one mouth off the landscape, but you're not really affecting the population. And that's a little hard for some people to understand until they start tasting the meat from those six or seven-month-old sows. And those are better pigs to eat as well. So though that's that's a little bit easier to sell when people make that emotional commitment to try and help the problem and start removing pigs from the landscape.
SPEAKER_10So, number one, don't move hogs. Number two, shoot more and shoot younger cells to help your population.
SPEAKER_04You want a big boar, you want a big stinky boar and get your picture taken, take one and and shooting boars does nothing to the population. We got plenty of boars out there.
SPEAKER_10What else? What are some other ways we can we can make a huge impact?
SPEAKER_04Well, the the hunters can also work with with with other um entities trying to control them, right? I we we've tried every way in the world to get uh hunters and landowners together on these things. You know, there have been uh hog contests, there have been all kinds of things. Bounty programs are very popular. I gotta tell you that bounty programs are mostly popular with county commissioners trying to get re-elected. They are they are uh very effective at that. But we're killing somewhere around 600,000 pigs a year in Texas right now. And if you put five dollars a head on each one, you'd spend three million dollars and not kill a new pig before before anything else got done. So I'm not a fan of bounty programs. I think that that encouraging people to trap them, and and if they if they want to keep some around for hunting purposes, release those big stinky boars and and remove the females out of those traps. You can do a lot of management around uh pigs with with trapping and other methods as well.
SPEAKER_10Great information. Uh Mike Bodinchuk, you're always uh a wealth of information and uh man, what an awesome opportunity for those who are going to go to the SCI convention to hear uh hear from you and that seminar. Uh as we talk about uh hogs, uh, you know, population estimates, where are we at? Best guess on on our number in Texas.
SPEAKER_04Well, you know, you you ask 10 people how many pigs there are, and you get 11 answers. So I'm not uh you you can get the one from Mike. I think we're somewhere between three and three and a half million pigs in Texas. We we had that huge growth between 2006 and 2010. If you remember what 2011 was, that was the horrific drought. And we actually had negative population growth there because of recruitment. Um, since that time, I think we're kind of Stagnant. Um we we are removing a lot of things from the landscape. Both government programs and private hunters and trappers are removing things from the landscape. We just kind of run out of places that that are good things habitat that aren't already occupied. One thing that we probably ought to make sure everybody understands, you know, a lot of people throw their hands up in the air and say, hey, look, I've got to kill 70% of the things just to keep them at level. And that number is the wrong number. It's a myth call from an old Texas and publication that said if we try to drive them to eradication, 70% would drive them there in about a year or something. What we see is that the greatest rate of increase is 26% of the problems. So if you kill 27% of your kids, you have negative population growth. If landlords can get them down in that growth curve, that flat spot in the growth curve and keep the pressure on them, you can actually keep putting big populations low. I modeled a big population if there was no mortality. And it grows very slowly for 24 months until that second and third litter start having their own piglets. And then in 24 months, it starts growing exponentially. So if you wait till 33 months and you kill half the foods, you only get four months worth of relief out of one time. But if you've got 200,000 and you can kill 50,000, 50,000 out of 200,000, you can keep them below 200 for a long time. And so landowners need to kind of start thinking of these the way they do deer. How many foods do I have? How many should I be trying to remove? What age class am I trying to remove? Keep that pressure on them. And you can make a big difference in that. You're not going to drive them to extinction, but you can at least keep that population trapped or negative growth. It may take traps to do it. Germany kills what 700,000 wild boar a year. They still don't have their big population under control. So rifles alone, but rifles and some clever management will.
SPEAKER_10Great information. Mike Bodchuck, thanks so much. We'll talk to you again real soon. Thank you. You're listening to the Lone Star Trail. Stay tuned. We'll be back right after this. Whether you're looking to buy your next hunting property or have acres to sell, you need Brian Clark and Ranch Pro Real Estate in your corner. Use the latest in technology to make listings easy for sellers to maximize value. In the market to buy that perfect ranch or hunting getaway? Call Ranch Pro Real Estate at 325-642-3630. That's Ranch Pro Real Estate at RanchProRealEstate.com. The land is their life. On the program today, we have Andy Lee. Andy is a local snake expert among a lot of other things. Andy, thanks for being with us today.
SPEAKER_05Thank you. Thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_10So, man, what a warm November we've had. And uh it was a fairly mild and and really warm October. Um you've been someone who's been around uh a lot of different animals uh over your your lifetime and a lot of snakes over your lifetime. Talk to us a little bit, if you will, about what maybe hunters should be on the lookout for uh even as as far into November as we are, still being as warm as we are. What are some things that we need to be kind of watching out for? Obviously, uh snakes, but specifically as it relates to rattlesnakes and or copperheads, what what should we be looking out for in the field these days?
SPEAKER_05So I think probably the most important thing um to think about is um the fact that each day can change with um whether you have a snake in the area or not. As as the snakes, specifically or the rattlesnakes, are moving uh towards their dens, um, you know, you may go out to a blind one day and it'd be fine, and and you go the next day and there's a snake in it. Or you get to your hunting lease, if especially if it's an old ranch house or something like that. And you know, they if it's a warm day, then you could very likely just be what we call sunning. They could be laying around the house, you know, sunning, um, you know, where you wouldn't necessarily expect them to be. So so that's that's what I'm would most say is is you know, know that every day is a is a is its own day from a standpoint of snakes right now. Uh I would say probably, you know, a certain percentage of them have reached the dens for the winter, but there's probably a large number that are still out um on the way to the dens, or maybe at a secondary den before they go to the primary den for the winter. Um, and they may, you know, they may go out and hunt um in the evenings um for food, you know, so it just puts them puts hunters especially at risk walk walking to and from the stands. Um, you know, your deer stand or or or wherever you're sitting, or if you sit on the ground, uh, you know, obviously you want to look at your surroundings before you sit down.
SPEAKER_10Yeah, it sounds like just you know, common sense, but when we're so focused on, you know, being quiet or watching, uh looking up instead of look looking at the ground, uh, it's easy to kind of forget that, hey, you know what, the snakes are still possibly out and about. Uh, give us the ballpark. You said a percentage may have already found their way back to the den. What what percentage do you think that might be?
SPEAKER_05I as warm as it's been, I would just take an educated guess and say maybe 30%. Um, you know, I I actually saw a snake at a den yesterday. Um, but I would have thought if there were uh you know a fair amount there that I would have seen, you know, multiple snakes at this den um and and I only saw one. So I 30% would be my guess right now.
SPEAKER_10Talking about dens, you know, you have you have seen a lot of dens, you've been around a lot of snakes. Uh I guess the average person may not realize what makes um ideal settings or a location for a den. You know, one of the worst things you can do is probably, especially if you've moved into a new area, a new leaf, is set up a a feeder or a uh a blind or something that's really close to a den. And I I realize that you know they're all a little different, but are there some general similarities uh about what you know rattlesnakes are looking for when they uh make their dens or they find holes that will work for dens? Are there certain things that that uh you know stand out?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, so uh very specifically, especially out in the pastures, um any kind of rocky ledge, um rocky outcropping um can be, you know, subject to to having a den at it, particularly if it faces west or south, um, is more common for the den to be there. And I can't tell you the countless number of times that I've seen a den uh with a deer blind sitting right on top of it. And and basically what I'm saying by that is you'll have maybe a rock bluff that overhangs a good lookout um, you know, of the valley below. So the the blind is put on that lookout, and right off the edge, if there's a like a rim rock or what we call rim rock um or ledge rock, right off the edge, maybe five to six feet below the blind will be that that rim, and there'll be a snake den right there. So it it's it's countless times I've seen that in my life. Um, you know, and a lot of times it doesn't cause necessarily cause a problem for the hunters. I've seen them that never knew they were there. Um most of the time, especially in a year like this where it's so warm, they'll see the snakes while you know while they're sitting in the blind. So that being the pasture side of it um would be the most common. The other thing is is you know, a lot of deer leases or quail leases, um, they have old farmhouses um on them. And some of them are abandoned old farmhouses, others are old farmhouses that have been, you know, utilized by hunters, either remodeled or or use them in the state that they're in. And I think rattlesnakes love old farmhouses about as much as they love anything from a standpoint of of a place to put their den. And they'll get under those those pier and beam houses either generally by uh using varmint holes uh that go under the house, like where skunks have dug in dug under. Um and then you know, once the skunks get dug under, then the the rattlesnakes usually soon follow. So that's pretty common for us to see that uh throughout uh a great deal of uh north and west Texas.
SPEAKER_10Talking about the snake behavior, can you kind of break it down for us? I know you know you said earlier that uh uh every day is a little different at this time of year, especially as you know, the nights are getting colder and you know eventually we're gonna start to see uh fall, winter type weather. But and you know, snakes will den up, of course, and be less active out and about. But uh can you kind of break down the among the four seasons? What what is some of the typical rattlesnake behavior uh that we see through the seasons?
SPEAKER_05So so we'll just start with l let's say fall, um, because that's when a lot of the transition starts to take place. Um you know, in the old days, I say the old days, uh 80s, late 70s, 80s, 90s, um our winters came on much sooner. And um usually by September and October, you would have snakes that were going to the den. They would be at at what I refer to as a secondary den. Or, you know, they would be fairly close within a hundred yards maybe of the primary den, which is typically um uh would be bigger or deeper in the ground so so they can survive the winter. But as that's changed, what we've seen is, you know, as the weather has changed, what we've seen is the um the snakes are later to head towards the dens. So now we're looking at at November or December, where most of the time if you if you see a snake crawling across a road or crawling across a pasture, well he's pointed in the direction of the den um is the direction he's crawling. And um that is kind of how the behavior happens in in the fall. Well, then as fall turns to winter, they they move down into their dens so they can be protected from from freezing weather because basically they're cold-blooded animals. Um if they get caught out in the cold, the uh the they have a uh a possibility of freezing to death. And um so they will they will move into their dens and move down into the ground or further back into the hole and and spend the next you know several weeks um in that den. Now on on especially in December on given days, they will come out and and lay in the sun in front of their den. Um but uh but soon after that, as we get into January where the days pretty much stay too cold for it, they will just stay in the den. So that's kind of got us into a wintertime pattern at that point for um for January and February. But usually by late February, um they start you know to head out of the dens, to lay in front of the dens. And it's almost you can count on anymore. You can count on one week in February where we're gonna have mid eighties to almost ninety degrees. And what we're seeing on those days when it gets that warm, a lot of those snakes will make their way out of the den and may make it, you know, ten to fifteen feet away from the den to lay in the bushes or the grass. And what they're doing a lot of times is they're is they're they're getting out and hunting. We've actually seen snakes come back to the dens at night that have actually been probably out crawling and hunting for for a food source, whether it be rodents or rabbits or or birds, you know, or etc. That happens, you know, will happen in um February, you know, to mid-March. Is a lot of activity around the dens itself. What will start to happen then for spring will be basically on the warmer days, the more consistent days we have warm, they will move away from the dens themselves uh even further and then start scattering, you know, up and down maybe the side of the hill or or wherever they're at. And they stay close enough if they have to get back in the den, they will, because as we all know now, we're later getting colder. We typically are staying colder late in uh on into the spring. A lot of times in April and even early May, we'll get pretty cold days and a little cold stretch in there that may keep the snakes at the den. But usually then you can count them by the first week of May, sometimes even late April, they will have moved out. A lot of them will try to find a mate. They'll hang with that mate, you know, for for a couple of weeks a lot of times, and that's their mating season, it's gonna be, you know, around April, sometimes March. Just say a a month in there, late March, early April is their breeding season. A lot of times, especially your bigger snakes will kind of go solitary and just kind of hang out by themselves for the summer. Uh they'll hunt on uh till the weather gets too warm. And then for the summer months, July and August especially, they will pretty much just we've seen 'em go to the same spot, you know, day in and day out, uh, to hang out, maybe uh the same house that they're spending the summer under. They'll they might hunt in the evenings or or at night and then come back in the morning to get back under that house that's their summer home. So the hotter days, a lot of times you'll start seeing a few snakes uh back in a denim area because it's cool. Um they use it in the winter to stay warm, but they also use it in the summer to stay cool.
SPEAKER_10You once told me some interesting uh information about the radius that a snake may travel, and it was really surprising to me. I I was not expecting it to be as as big of an area or as much travel as uh you indicated. What is the you know, on typical year, you know, let's assume that food sources are available and they certainly have been the last two years. I mean, I've never seen I've never seen this many rabbits or rats, mice, like I mean, it's been crazy. So what what's the what's the radius of a of a given den that uh we can talk about for rattlesnakes?
SPEAKER_05I you know, uh, and I don't have a scientific figure on it, but just based off of kind of what I've seen with experience, probably under normal conditions, not not more than a quarter of a mile, um, if they have good food source that they can live off of. You know, I would definitely say a half mile. And then, but then if they're if they're if the food's not there, um I I fully believe that they'll move, you know, a mile or more to to try and you know find food while they're hunting. I I do strongly feel like though that for the most part that they have their own territory that they would prefer to stay in. And um we've they may not go back to the same den every year, but they will be back to the if you see a snake at a den, uh you will see him if you had a way to identify, say, by color, maybe by not having rattlers for some reason, you will see that snake back at that that den eventually. Um, so yeah, it's gonna vary a lot just based off of of of food source and water. You know, they they they need both. They can live without both, uh, but they but they definitely need both.
SPEAKER_10I want to hone in on that last statement. They can live without both. How often typically does rattle snake feed?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I think out in the out in the field, if if they have the opportunity to eat, you know, a couple of rats a month, they're they're going they're going to. So, you know, they might be snakes that feed, you know, weekly, uh, but but more more often I think it would be uh every couple of weeks to to a monthly, uh, just depending on, once again, the food source. Uh, but we've we've seen snakes, we saw some snakes that were sealed under a house years ago. There was eight or nine snakes under the house, basically a year and two months after it was sealed, there was one snake still alive. And it wasn't in good shape. All the other snakes had recently died from you know, from the time we got under. I would say they, you know, a lot of them live a year plus under there without without food other than bugs that they could catch, maybe, uh, and water. And um before before they wound up dying from being able, unable to get out.
SPEAKER_10That kind of brings up another question about their their diet. Typically, you know, you mentioned the rodents and the and the rabbits. Uh I wasn't even aware that they even eat bugs. I guess if you're it's a last resort situation, they'll eat insects.
SPEAKER_05Probably, yeah, probably beetles, uh, things like that, uh, especially the the baby rattlesnakes. And and and another thing we've had lots and lots of uh people saying they're seeing a lot of baby rattlesnakes this year. Baby rattlesnakes, you know, they're born in August. They're born live, they're not hatched, they are born alive, and they're they're usually happening in August. So if you see a a small rattlesnake this time of year, small being under 18 inches long, he was usually born, he or she was usually born in in August. And um, you know, those those snakes then initially are just gonna have to live off of whatever they can catch. Now they can they can catch mice and they can eat mice, um, but you know, not every not every mouse is gonna be small enough for them to eat. So they will um they will utilize anything they can, pretty much.
SPEAKER_10Great information from Andy Lee, local snake expert and hunter. Speaking of that, uh what kind of deer movement are you seeing out there? I know you got some cameras up somewhere, surely.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Well, I I think w we said the other night that um that we've become we used to to hunt big big horned deer uh in our in our family owned land in Nolan County, and and now we just become trophy hog hunters. So um lots of hogs. We have hardly seen any deer. Um but we have um we have seen a lot of hogs. More more so many more hogs this year than we saw last year. Um our deer numbers were better last year. Uh the deer are probably there, they just won't come in, you know, because of of the hogs. And you know, we I think this last weekend we we uh we were able to harvest eight or ten total hogs, uh, including three really big boars. So that's that's what we're focusing on. We're just giving giving what God gave us, I guess.
SPEAKER_10You're listening to the Lone Star Trail, and it's time once again for House Rules with Dayton House. Dayton is a retired government trapper, a firearms expert, an outdoors enthusiast, and a true Texan. At 76 years old, he's still going strong and enjoys sharing his passion of the outdoors with others. Well, we're back with Dayton House on House Rules here on Lone Star Trail. Dayton, thanks for being here again. Well thanks. Glad to have. You're a wealth of information, Dayton. And uh, you know, it's been a long career as a government trapper in Texas. Uh you've you've seen a lot of country, done a lot of things, and you're still hard at it uh out there. Uh you said three to five nights a week, you're out there looking for hogs, uh, you've had some success. Uh you all it seems like you're always sending me pictures of something that you you've you've trapped or or caught. And uh, you know, as we get in colder, the colder months, this is the prime trapping time of year where uh food gets a little more scarce and and hopefully predators will come in to uh to set ups. What what maybe what from either from current nowadays or from days as a official government trapper, what what was your go-to uh foothold trap setup when you'd go to set something in the ground?
SPEAKER_06Years ago we used the uh long spring number four new house, and now most of them have gone to the double coil spring. They're a little uh neater package and not as hard to bed in the dirt, but uh the old long springs was our go-to. Uh in the sheep and goat country we had better fences, we were able to put out snares where the coat was crawling under the fence, so oftentimes we'd use 30 or 40 leg hole traps and then maybe uh six to eight hundred snares, and that's impossible to cover and check your snares that often. Uh new rules have uh restricted the use of M44, the sodium cyanide gun, and uh they also wanted us to uh check our steel traps every three days and the snares once a week, and so if you've got out six or eight hundred snares, you do good to see them once a month, not every week. So our our go-to has always been the leg hole trap. And uh my favorite bait was uh pick up coat scat one end of the county and bring it to the other end and then pour a little bobcat urine on it to make the old coat mad and he'd think bobcat's in my area and they'd always smell of it. If you didn't have a uh coat scat from one area, just pick up some dog scat out of the yard and uh they're gonna smell of it. Or if you had some old rotten meat, well dig a dirt home, put a little of that meat in there. Oftentimes the couch are not going to eat the bait, they're going to just sniff of it and go on, or they'll urinate on it. So uh the bait is uh something that uh you didn't really have to be selective in. If you use the same bait all the time, the coach is gonna get used to it. So I'd recommend changing bait nearly every month, or certainly as much as you changed underwear, you ought to change bait at least as often.
SPEAKER_10Okay. All right. Well, okay, so you know, you see these guys on YouTube and you read a lot of stuff, and you know, novice trappers like me, we we tend to gravitate toward that kind of thing. And uh you see these guys get real uh worried about, you know, they're not putting any, they're not putting their knee in the dirt next to the trap, they're not, they're using, you know, three layers of gloves. They're uh how important do you think that is to to to prevent your scent uh from getting on the traps?
SPEAKER_06My rule was your trap ought to be clean enough to eat off of. Uh you when you caught an animal, they're always gonna leave blood and hair and scent on it, and we'd take a steel brush and brush all that off, or take it to the carbourse and power it off if you needed to use it the next day. But uh I hung mine out. I had enough traps that I could let them air out or the sun cure everything out, and we would uh use this never I never put the same trap back out. Now in East Texas, where the coats were more plentiful, they would stake their traps out and catch a coat. Well, they'd just shake the blood and dirt off of it and put it back in the same hole. And uh coat got smart, well, the next coat came along that afternoon and be a dumb one. So you could nearly always catch another coat real quick there. But where we didn't have many coats, you had to be real clean. I used a drop cloth and I would kneel on that, and of course use gloves. But uh if you uh are a smoker or someone that chews, you get in the habit of spitting on the ground or you're nating near there, and the coats are gonna smell that. Your vehicle's gonna smell like smoke every time you get out. Well, the coach says, Yeah, the trapper's been here, I can smell him. So uh I believe that cleanliness is next to godliness in trapping. That's how important it is in the sheep and goat country. Good rule. Good rule.
SPEAKER_10Uh what you said you wanted your traps clean enough to eat off of. I see a lot of guys uh dying in waxing traps. Did you ever do that?
SPEAKER_06I did not. Uh it might be a benefit, but it was more trouble than I thought it was worth. Uh oftentimes we needed the trap the next day or a week, and so we just uh hurriedly cleaned them up and washed them as best we could and then let them air out as long as we could. And the snares are the same way. Uh when they make a snare cable or aircraft cable, whatever you want to call it, there's a oil that is used in the manufacturing to keep it from rusting. And the cows seem like to like to lick on those snares, and oftentimes that was a problem. You'd put out a fresh snare and the cow would lick on it, and she'd get it around her tongue, and you'd catch the old cow by the tongue. Now that's a rodeo there in the making, and uh only time I ever caught one by the ear, it hung in the uh uh ear tag of the cow, and the rancher laughed about it and said, We'll just call her old snare ear, and her ear finally rotted off, but uh he didn't want to catch her and take the snare off. But if you get one around the tongue, it has to come off, and or the cow will lose her tongue, and that's a real problem then. How many cows did you catch by the tongue in the day? Uh perhaps not even one a year. Okay. But if you let those snares hang out and wash them occasionally with water, well uh you can a month the snare will be usable. And so if you hear of anybody catching a cow by the tongue, it's because of the oil that they were leaking on the snare, and it's the trapper's fault for putting them out before they were clean.
SPEAKER_10Well, that's all the time we have for the show today. We thank you for stopping by and joining us on the Lone Star Trail. We invite you to come back next week, same time, same place, and you can find us on Facebook and write to us at Lone Star Trail Radio at gmail.com. We'd love to see those hunting pictures and stories. From all of us here at the show, thanks for listening. So long.
