08.22.11
On the Howard beat in Jesusland
Interesting story from the Wall Street Journal, on the use of military hardware to hunt wild pigs in Texas.
It’s a Ted Nugent thing and illustrates the way the country has sorted itself, irrevocably. Pasadena isn’t anything like the places described in the piece. It might as well be another planet with alien locals and customs with which you’ve no desire to mix. The feeling’s mutual, I presume.
The men advanced in the sweltering, pitch-black night, scanning the landscape with night-vision goggles and armed with semiautomatic rifles fitted with silencers …
The prey in this high-tech hunt: feral pigs in pastures near Madisonville, Texas. Hunters Chuck Coiner and Frank Hahnel, clients of guide service Tactical Hog Control LLC, killed five wild porkers that June night, including a 30-pounder that took five bullets to finish off …
Tactical Hog Control, started in 2009 by Texas ranchers Clark Osborne and Mr. Dreher, is among a handful of next-generation outfitters across the South offering a new style of hog hunting designed to appeal to hunters’ inner commando. Each client on a nocturnal hunt with the two men suits up with roughly $40,000 of military-grade gear, including semiautomatic rifles like the DPMS AR-10 …
“I believe every man in the U.S. has a tactical gene,” said Rod Pinkston, an Army veteran and former Olympic sharp-shooting coach whose Jager Pro guide service conducts high-tech hog hunts in western Georgia. “They’ve always wanted to be a soldier, a SWAT team member. We’re the closest thing to combat that these guys are ever going to experience.”
Well, now, here’s the thing. All these guys, the salesmen and the hog hunters, could join the army. It’s not like opportunities to go overseas and get involved in the real thing are scare and limited only to a select cadre of Nick Furies.
This is Ted Nugent land, too, as the Journal piece makes abundantly clear.
Nugent runs feral hog hunts in Michigan for profit. And when that state moved to outlaw ownership of such hogs, which are deemed an invasive species, Nugent went to the governor to complain.
The ban on hog ownership hits him in the bank account.
The paradox, which Nugent has tried to obscure, is that some of the private hunts, those which keep the hogs on property, have contributed to the problem of hog control in the wild … which, in turn, has led to even more people offering wild boar hunts on their ranches. And to state laws calling for the eradication of the animals.
It’s the definition of a conflict of interest.
And it is here where the Michigan law banning ownership of hogs has struck at one of the planks of Nugent’s hunting business in the state.
Near the end of the WSJ piece:
Messrs. Osborne and Dreher have shot hogs on their East Texas ranches for two decades. Not until 2009 did they start enticing would-be Rambos. Their Tactical Hog Control offers hunters a six-hour hunt, beginning at dusk, for $500.
“We don’t fear the night … we own it!”
Great website. Really. Why don’t they have T-shirts?