Cleaning and roughly butchering hogs was an add-on cost at the ranch I went to in April 2019 in North Texas near, and just below, the Panhandle. I was the only hunter of the 8 present that bagged animals and paid for this service. All the others did this themselves, to their individual preferences / skill sets. The first night one old boy hit the intestines with 2 other people working near him at the designated spot, a concrete pad with galvanized metal roof and a couple of hand winches. My hunting buddy on that trip and I skedaddled to the bunkhouse and stayed there the rest of the evening, the other guts cleaning their kills just had to grit their teeth and finish up what they were doing. The same guy who drove around dropping us off and picking us up twice a day and scattering (a little) corn at sites that didn't have line of sight to a feeder took all the skins & offal from everyone's pigs off to dump in a gut pit on the property without extra costs.
My hogs cost $50 each to skin and quarter, and this guy used the gutless method. Some ranches east of where I live require hogs to be cleaned by staff, self-serve is not an option, and have a sliding scale from $50 to $150 per hog depending on live weight.
Yes
@gizmo, I would say your approach is certainly "valet" and personalized relative to the typical Texas hog hunt ranch I've seen on the internet. While my experience in 2019 was a significant cut above the experience Zim posted, it's not a spot I plan to return to. The package I was on included 2 hogs per hunter with additional hogs at $150 each, for a 2 night 2 day package. So my typical observe the effects after I take shot still worked for me as I got my 2 hogs just fine that way and I doubt if I personally would have had a good shot lined up before the other hogs scattered after my shot. The two I bagged were along a dirt road firing lane (a little) corn was scattered along after dropping me off so the other hogs had cover extremely close when I took my shots.
There was zero night hunting allowed, stand hunting only allowed near dawn & dusk, spot and stalk hunting available in between morning pickup and afternoon dropoff, unstructured. We were told to just talk with each other and head out in different directions for spot & stalk. Not a huge property at 625 acres but not tiny either, limit was 8 hunters at a time, so other than midday spot & stalk activity I didn't feel I was at additional risk from the other hunters. So, not terrible, but not exceptional either and I know I can find something that suits me better elsewhere next time.
There's hog hunting excursions by helicopter using fully automatic weapons (included in the package cost) if just blasting a lot of hogs in the guise of pest eradication. Not my tastes and only barely qualifies to be called hunting IMO, but everyone has individual tastes.
