They're so bad in Texas that we are pretty much allowed to kill them any way we can. They can be hunted at night, year-round, with any sort of spotlight, night vision, thermal imaging, bait, you name it. It's even legal to hunt them with suppressed weapons and machine guns. Some people who have secured the appropriate permitting, insurance, and done lots of proper prior planning kill them by the droves using helicopters.
I got one tonight, in fact just got home and cleaned up/deflead a little while ago. 310lbs according to my ancient cotton scales, nice boar with some tusks that impressed me enough to save the skull for a European mount. Fortunately I had help and a winch to get him loaded up. Change of plans after getting a new scope mount in from Canada and getting my M1A back together and loads tested this morning, I opted for that instead of the Marlin and used John Ardito's Lyman 311-679 cast of water-quenched 2/3 clip-on/stick-on WW pushed with 36 grains of IMR 4320. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to recover the bullet because it made it clean through just behind both shoulder blades, taking out a rib on each side and leaving a giant hole on the off-side. The "armor" on this one was only about half an inch thick over the ribs. Normally I try to shoot pigs behind the ear but this was a long shot for me (115 yards, kneeling offhand, in the twilight) and it wouldn't sit still to smile and wait for the flash, so I did the best I could with a solid lung shot and it was pretty much DRT. Anyway, almost no wasted meat and it's all sawed up, washed, and dripping in a gutted coke machine. Ought to be ready to eat in about a week.
