Wild Hog Bagging Sadists In Sabinal, TX

Part III: The Sabinal Lions Club

The burlap feed sack used for the “wild hog catching” sessions at the annual Sabinal Wild Hog Festival. As the event goes on the bag develops an increasingly large volume of blood stains, which ought to be a constant reminder to all involved how cruel this event truly is.

This is my third and final rundown article on the unbelievably sadistic feral pig bagging events in Texas. I’ve published these articles in order of when each event takes place and how large each event is.

My first article was on the wild hog sacking event at the Frio River Fest in Concan, TX. The Frio River Fest public pig assaulting is the smallest of the three events and takes place during one day of the annual spring break festival (previously called Rio Frio Fest). My second article was about the Ham Rodeo (previously called Wild Hog Explosion and Bacon Bash), which takes place in Bandera, Texas and incudes one day of continuous pig assaulting. The Ham Rodeo was supposed to be last weekend, but was postponed to April 1st due to the weather forecast, according to the Bandera Wranglers. The final pig assaulting event of the three is the 31st Annual Wild Hog Festival in Sabinal, TX, which is a two-day event that is set to take place this upcoming weekend (March 25th and March 26th) and is hosted by the Sabinal Lions Club. My main video exposing the Sabinal Wild Hog Festival can be viewed here.

A feral pig screaming in terror and pain right before they get dumped into a burlap feed sack and dragged across the finish line.

Sabinal, TX is in Uvalde County (about an hour from San Antonio) and according to an article on Sabinal.org the town is known as the “Wild Boar Capital of the World” and the “Bow Hunting Capital of Texas.”

So, if you want to walk on the wild side with your bow and arrow, come to Sabinal. But, please, take down a few, or a lot, of wild hogs!

Two feral hog friends at a farmed animal sanctuary living life in peace away from people who view them as nuisances to be exterminated.

The Sabinal.org article continues:

The good news is Texans love to hunt, and they love a challenge. So, Sabinal residents adapted and turned the feral hog problem into a win for their community. Several ranches in the area double as hunting lodges and offer safari-style packages and lodging for hunting parties. Because feral hogs are so abundant, they are fair game all year round and thus can provide steady revenues for ranchers and outfitters.

As much as people will state that they hate feral pigs and want them gone, the truth is that people really don’t want them to ever go away; the pigs provide a source of thrill and adrenaline for hunters and they provide a large source of income for hunting ranches and other pig-murdering capitalists. There’s a term called “pork chopping,” which is shooting feral pigs down from helicopters. People pay tons of money to go on these aerial pig hunts. I was around some hunters at the Rattlesnake Roundup in Sweetwater, TX and I overheard a woman talking to a fellow lover of killing animals about how much she loved going pork chopping. Another reason why people don’t want the wild pigs to disappear is because humans are hooked to their traditions, including the Sabinal Wild Hog Festival hog bagging event. If there weren’t any more free-living pigs to trap then they’d have to do away with their beloved tradition, which is likely not something most of these attendees would be onboard with.

Two teenage bullies rough and bag up a small pig while an engaged crowd watches from the bleachers at the Sabinal City Park bleachers.

The very first hog bagging event I attended was the Wild Hog Explosion in Bandera, TX. While the madness was going on an attendee recommended I go check out the Sabinal event, which was even bigger than the one we were at. I was shocked to learn that there was more than one of these events being put on. I had assumed that the Wild Hog Explosion was just a one-of-a-kind event, but nope, I was very wrong.

I witnessed a lot of panicked and desperate pigs in Bandera trying to jump over the fence to escape humans chasing them, resulting in wounds and bloody faces the announcer called “nose bleeds,” but this was actually a far more frequent occurrence in Sabinal. As a result of a much smaller enclosure and being chased for a longer period of time the pigs suffer many more injuries.

A pig jumps headfirst into the fence at full force as the announcer stands next to them on the outside of the fence.

On the first day of the Wild Hog Festival there are three separate sessions (10 am, 2 pm, and 6 pm) and on the second day there is a 10 am session before the Ultimate World Championship Wild Hog Catching Contest commences at 2 pm. For each round teams of two have up to three minutes to catch a pig by any means necessary. The only thing that disqualifies a team is kicking a pig, but anything else is fair game. The goal is to get a pig into a burlap feed sack as quickly as possible and then rapidly dragged across or thrown over the spray painted finish line. The winners of each division take home a Wild Hog Festival belt buckle and the “best” teams compete in the World Championship Wild Hog Catching Contest for the “ultimate bragging rights for a year” according to the Wild Hog Festival’s official website.

The Wild Hog Festival shirt displays a pig with tusks, but just like the other two hog bagging events the Wild Hog Festival never uses pigs with tusks. They make sure to keep the pigs as defenseless as possible.

Before the team competitions begin there is a “performance” for children 3 to 9-years-old. Children who are 3 to 5 enter the ring first and line up around the wall while piglets who are 5 pounds and under are forced into the ring to be chased and tormented again and again. The children are instructed to grab a piglet and hold onto them, which they get rewarded for with a blue ribbon that says “I Caught A Pig.” This same event is repeated for children 6 to 9 afterwards, but this time with piglets who are around 10 pounds.

Children aged 3 to 5 inside the arena being rewarded blue ribbons for grabbing and holding onto piglets. As you can see near the center of the frame, a young boy continues to hold on and not let go of a piglet, despite the fact that they’ve already received their ribbon.

Most, if not all, of the parents try to grab photos of their children holding onto distressed piglets. Some parents do so from inside the arena and others stand behind the fence or sit in their seats.

A father snapping a photo of his daughter holding onto a piglet before she’s handed a ribbon.

Some of the children are so unaware of what’s going on that an adult will take their hand and place it onto a baby pig for them. There are always some children who are scared of the pigs or disinterested in participating in this event that their parents forced them into without any form of consent in the first place.

A boy with a ribbon crying while his father lifts his arms up as if he accomplished something. The boy made it clear he wanted no part in this event, but his father forced him the whole way through.

Parents will take advantage of the completely weak, vulnerable, and helpless pigs as well by grabbing them and holding them up for their own photos, taking an opportunity to show off just how foolish, careless, cruel, and frankly pathetic they are.

A mother holds a piglet upside down by one of their legs for some photos, clearly showing she lacks the maturity to even be a mother in the first place.

Some children are too afraid to approach a piglet, but there’s still hope for them to get a ribbon. The pig wranglers will walk around the arena with a piglet hanging upside down, making for an easy grab.

A child receives a ribbon after grabbing onto the baby pig that a man walks around the arena with upside down by one leg like they are nothing.

A father tries to encourage his reluctant son to touch this piglet. The last thing these parents want is their children not becoming mini versions of themselves.

After all of the children ages 3 to 5 get a blue Sabinal Lions Club ribbon, it’s time for the piglets and the children to be replaced by piglets who are slightly bigger and children who are a little bit older.

Children ages 6-9 stand by the wall waiting for the whistle to blow. Once the whistle blows they run full speed at the piglets.

A girl is a moment away from having the special ribbon placed into her hand. I wonder what the kids and parents do with these ribbons after the event.

A terrified piglet tries to hide behind a boy’s leg in an effort to not get grabbed, picked up, or dragged anymore.

The piglets used for the older children are prone to worse handling given that these children have more strength to pick them up and hold onto them.

A girl smiles while holding a piglet in a terrifying position as her sibling (or someone related to her) snaps some photos. This is top notch conditioning for a culture of animal abusers and killers.

Some children pull so roughly on the legs of the fragile baby pigs that I wouldn’t be surprised if injuries occur before the main action begins.

A boy pulls onto a little pig who communicates with their vocalizations and movement that they want to get away and be left alone. Children are conditioned from a young age to disrespect bodily autonomy, consent, and the interests of others.

Once the children are done tormenting pigs in exchange for ribbons and making mommy and daddy proud, it’s time for the main action to begin. Divisions for the hog bagging competition include light weight (ages 10-14), middle weight (ages 15-18), heavy weight (any ages), and women (any ages). Participants are allowed to partake for up to two rounds for each of the four sessions throughout the two days.

The Sabinal Lions Club professes to care about the safety of everyone involved: “To promote safety, only sow (i.e. female) hogs are used in the contest.”

An EMS worker sets up the EMS station on the field. Although a minor injury is an occasional occurrence at this event, it’s the pigs who get the worst injuries, but they are never given any aid or medical attention period.

The current registration fee is $40 per team and $5 per child who grabs a pig for a ribbon.

Other than when the pigs are forced into the ring, the pigs are mostly kept out of site. They linger in pens behind the big bleachers without food or water, just like what I observed with the other two hog bagging events. All of the pigs are trapped within a week of the event and they are continuously reused throughout the two days, whether their face is covered with blood or not.

None of the pigs want to enter the arena. They all resist and often have to be dragged out towards the chute.

From the How To on the official Sabinal Wild Hog Festival website:

• You and your team partner enter the set-up arena armed with a burlap sack

• A hog is set loose into the arena

• When a whistle blows, start chasing the hog (not the other way around)

• Catch the hog

• Bag hog in the burlap sack

• Quickly pull the hog across the finish line

• The bagged hog and both partners must cross the line

• Fastest time wins

Each team has 180 seconds to capture a pig, get them in the bag, and across the finish line. Most teams, especially teenagers and adults, accomplish this in far less than two minutes. Young children are usually the teams who take the longest to complete their mission.

Two girls struggle for a little while to get this pig in the bag, but they get them in there and across the finish line in less than the three-minute time limit.

As I’ve stated before in at least one other article, all animal rights protests always begin with the animals themselves. They protest through body language, movement, and vocalizations. Some humans are able to perceive these protests from the animals themselves and they simply don’t care, while other humans are just so unbelievably oblivious. I’ve heard the announcer say numerous times during his commentary while the pigs are screaming and resisting being bagged, “I wonder what these pigs are thinking.”

A frightened little pig looks down into the bag they are about to be dumped into before they are roughly dragged across the ground to the finish line.

The little pigs are very fast runners, but they aren’t all that much of a challenge for the humans to catch; especially as they search for a way out under the wall or after they bounce back down to the ground from colliding with the metal fence.

How such young humans can already be so cruel and willing to hurt innocent beings who’ve done them no harm blows me away.

While the very vocal young pigs desperately search for and attempt ways out, they scream loudly while being dragged, picked up, and thrown into the bag. While the humans sit and watch like apathetic, thoughtless zombies in the stands, the pigs in the pens have to endure the torturous sounds of the plight the other pigs are going through.

Look at the disturbing contrast of expressions on the face of the human vs. the face of the pig.

One year the announcer wore a shirt that had a happy and relaxed pig poking their head out of the bag. This illustration is just as preposterous as the happy pigs we see on grocery store and farmers market packages of animal flesh.

The announcer proudly wears his shirt that depicts a happy pig used for the “wild hog catch.” The bottom of the shirt commemorates a member of the community who passed away. If Earl is really watching, hopefully by now he can see how messed up and wrong this event actually is.

The wranglers are just as merciless as the people who capture and bag the pigs. They often pick them up out of the bag by only their ears, a bold behavioral mark of complete indifference.

Just like the hypocrisy of human society in general, people young and old have this incredible misconception that you can simultaneously be deliberately cruel to animals and love them too.

A girl who just finished off brutalizing and traumatizing a pig wears a shirt that says “KEEP CALM and LOVE PIGS.”

Participants are not allowed to kick the pigs unless they don’t mind being disqualified, but picking pigs up by their ears is totally okay.

A girl uses this pig’s ear like a handle to hoist them into the air and carry them to the bag. I’m sure her smile was contagious and shared by many strangers in the crowd.

The people in each division who are the most ruthless are usually the ones who end up getting the best times and taking home a brand new belt buckle. There are two sisters who also attend the Ham Rodeo in Bandera and always put on an impressive performance for those who get a kick out of this public display of barbarism.

Two vicious sisters who never hesitate to hold back one bit. From what I’ve seen, I think they must have a large collection of wild hog bagging belt buckles at their home.

Two sisters winning more belt buckles to add to their probably already large collection of hog bagging winner belt buckles. Are these belt buckles really worth the means to win them?

A brutalized pig who was assaulted by these two teenagers and has blood on and around their eye. It’s the time that matters to these people, not the treatment.

This teenager runs with this pig to the bag his teammate is holding for pig dumping. A long stream of blood splatters out of the pig’s mouth.

A bloody pig being held down by a teenage boy who ended up winning the division. As if the bag isn’t already bloody enough, it’s about to get even bloodier.

Two teenagers hold up their newly rewarded belt buckles for a photo. They should be ashamed of themselves, yet they seem to be proud.

I can’t even begin to fathom what the individuals used at these events go through physically and psychologically. Equally, I can’t begin to fathom how people enjoy this show of mockery, humiliation, and brutality. If the pigs aren’t looking terrified and hurt then they are looking sad, worn out, and in need of help; some help, any help.

A pig looking worn out, desperate, confused, and in disbelief at what’s being done to them. There is no way they can even begin to rationalize what’s taking place.

This pig looks sad and defeated. They appear as if they know there’s no way out of this ongoing torture they are being subjected to.

After the children and teenagers show off what cruel bullies they can be, it’s time for the adults to show off the same disregard for life. Although women are kept away from typical rodeo events like bull riding and tie down calf roping, the women here can show off that they can be just as rough and aggressive as their male counterparts.

A woman traps a pig between her legs and feet while her partner grabs the sack.

A man catches a pig after they land backwards from jumping up and crashing into the fence. Like so many other pigs being used, they have a pool of blood around their mouth.

Just look at the evil screaming from this man’s face. Ugh.

Before the bag and after the bag. Disturbing and more disturbing.

The bag is essentially a hell within a hell within a hell.

The only part of this pig that got out of the arena was their snout and not even for a full second.

The same man in the last photo lifts the pig out of the sack and carries them in the air by their ears.

One of the common ways people capture the pigs at this event is by jumping onto them against the wall, crunching them in with nowhere to go.

The oldest woman I’ve seen participate in the hog bagging also happens to be the most ruthless too. Here she is lifting a whole pig up by their ears.

The winner of the women’s division smiles for a photo with her ebelt buckle.

As the event goes into the darkness the whole feel of the event takes on an additional layer of darkness. How exactly are these people able to sleep at night?

A pig being used again in the nighttime session. There’s no way to keep track of how many times these pigs may be used before the event is finally over and they are taken away to eventually be killed.

A worn out pig being dragged into another round of hog bagging at night. Pigs typically sleep 18 hours a day, but certainly not the pigs used for the Sabinal Wild Hog Festival.

What can you do?

Please share about the Wild Hog Festival and urge other people to share as well.

I have a petition against the Wild Hog Festival that you can sign and share here and you can also watch and share my video that exposes the Wild Hog Festival here.

In Defense of Animals created an action alert against all three hog bagging events that you can sign here.

You can contact the Sabinal Lions Club directly on their Facebook and email them at sabinallionsclub@gmail.com

You can contact the sponsors of the Wild Hog Festival and voice your opposition:

First State Bank of Uvalde - 830-278-6231 & their Main Street branch - 830-275-5858

Regal Meat Custom Processing - 830-261-4000 & info@regalmeattexas.com

rNetworks - 830-580-3278 & info@rnetworks.net

Sanford Irrigation & Landscaping - 830-278-6820 & office@sanfordwaterworks.com

If you have any other ideas please let myself and others know.