FINDING HOGS
Some basic truths must be addressed about hunting hogs in California. For one, while there certainly are wild hogs on some public lands, their numbers are usually low. In fact, the California Department of Fish and Game claims that 95 percent of the annual harvest occurs on private land.

Jim Matthews, publisher of the quarterly California Hog Hunter Newsletter, notes that there are a few hogs on some national forest and BLM land. However, some of those pigs are transient and if that's the case, you simply can't depend on them to be in the same place twice.

"Sometimes you can find a place where some pigs regularly travel from private agricultural land to public land bedding areas," Matthews says. "And you might be able to ambush them at dawn or in the evening. But to keep out of trouble, you've got to know where the public land ends and private stuff begins and where the nearest legal access -- which might be a mile away -- is."

The boar on my office wall, which I killed in 1966, came from a private ranch in the Coast Range. There was nothing easy about that hunt with long-time hog hunter Eldon Bergman and his pack of hounds, yet it remains one of my most memorable pig hunts of all. I still remember following Bergman on my hands and knees into a dank pig tunnel in thick brush where one very irate, bayed boar was fighting off the dogs. Eldon and I were almost in the middle of the melee when I got a clear shot and put the pig down for the count. It doesn't get much more exciting than that!

I don't know what the population estimate for wild hogs was in the 1960s, but today there may be more than 400,000 of them in the state's oak woodlands. According to the DFG, there are at least some wild hogs in 56 of the state's 58 counties. As usual, the biggest numbers are in the Central Coast Region. Monterey, San Luis Obispo, Mendocino, Sonoma and San Benito counties all produce hefty numbers of pigs each year.

Of course, when you say that most of the wild pigs reside in oak woodlands, you're talking primarily about foothill regions, which are mostly private property. It's not impossible to get permission to hunt on private ground, but it isn't likely these days, unless you're a good friend or related to a landowner. That's why there are so many hog-hunting operations in the state.

Through reaching agreements with landowners, literally dozens of guides have arranged to conduct organized hunts on private land. And that's why so many hunters opt to splurge once in a while and book a guided hog hunt, which can cost from $600 to $900 for two days in the field, depending on services rendered. That's a lot, but when you realize that you might hunt on public land for years before you ever get a chance at a boar or sow, it puts the fees into perspective. What's more, compare the low success on public land with the near 100 percent success rate enjoyed by guided hunters.