Wild Hog Bagging Sadists In Bandera, Texas
Part II: The Bandera Wranglers and The Boys & Girls Clubs of Bandera County
In my previous article (Part 1) I brought attention to a horrific pig torturing event called wild hog sacking that’s taking place in Concan, TX this upcoming Sunday at the Frio River Fest. Teams of two brutalize two very young pigs at a time inside a small ring all while children and adult spectators watch, cheer, and applaud them after they’ve dumped two helpless pigs, one on top of another, into a burlap feed sack. As disturbing as that event is, there is a similar event that is even more atrocious happening in Bandera, TX this upcoming Saturday (UPDATE: this event has been postponed due to weather and is now scheduled for April 1st) called the Ham Rodeo. Bandera is known as the “cowboy capital of the world” and the city promotes this “family fun” event prominently on the homepage of their website and on their social media.
I’ve extensively documented the Bandera Wild Hog Explosion (now called the Ham Rodeo) and when I first exposed and campaigned against the event in 2019 it did get cancelled, but in less than 24 hours it got picked up by a new organization and resumed as normal, but under a new name. The event was carried on by the Bandera Wranglers and went from being called the Wild Hog Explosion for the first 16 years to Bacon Bash in 2019. For whatever reason, they changed the name again after 2019 to Ham Rodeo. The Boys & Girls Clubs of Bandera County and the Bandera Wranglers have been the beneficiaries of the funds raised from this misery fest since 2019.
Free-living pigs are captured by trappers and are brought to Mansfield Park in Bandera where crowds stand around the arena fence and sit in bleachers to witness an afternoon full of mockery, pig screams, pig blood, and endless loud banging sounds against the fence. One panicked pig after another desperately tries to flee their abusers by jumping full speed into a tall metal fence, which only ever results in crashing extremely hard headfirst. The violent impact leaves many of the pigs with wounds and bloody mouths and faces, what the announcers mockingly refer to as “nose bleeds.”
Pigs are called names like Spam, Porkster, Count Pigla, Ham Chop, Sausage Patty, Jennifer Lopig, and Daisy Porker. Police officers and emergency medical services are there to protect humans if anything happens, but nobody is there to offer any aid or protection to the pigs. They don’t even get access to the bare minimum- food and water.
I haven’t witnessed the event firsthand since the Bandera Wranglers took it over, but for the years I attended complimentary programs would be handed out that were all essentially the same year after year, but with a different front cover. All the programs I still have describe the event on the cover as “Loads of Family Fun & Laughter.” This is how the annual Wild Hog Explosion programs detailed the event:
The Wild Hog Explosion is pretty damn exciting. First you start with about 150 wild hogs that vary in size and age. Then you take a group of willing humans that also vary in size and age! Match up the size and weight, put one hog in the ring with two nervous people and challenge the humans to catch the smart, fast, and loud wild hogs! The object is to catch the hog, put him in a feed sack and get him to the finish line! Teams are judged on time. Oh, and you only have 1 minute to catch the hog before the whistle blows! Most of the time the hog wins...but not without a lot of action, adventure and tons of laughs, generally from the hog!
Plan to spend the day and bring the kids! They can enter the Bicycle Rodeo, a Hog Catch for runts (ages 3 & 4), piglets (ages 5 & 6) and shoats (ages 7 to 9).
It's not just other people getting in on all the action; you can compete for prizes too! Enter the Hog Catch and have a chance to win a great belt buckle! If that's just too much action, you can enter BACON BINGO! Top prize is $1,000 and all proceeds go directly to the Bandera Library. Wow, fun and supporting the Library too!
Most of the time the hog wins...but not without a lot of action, adventure and tons of laughs, generally from the hog!
The Wild Hog Explosion program continues:
The wild hogs used at the Wild Hog Explosion are humanely trapped in special hog traps where the animals enter pens for feed and cannot escape. Wild Hogs are like domestic hogs in that to treat them for diseases they must be caught and bagged as in our competition today. Like a rodeo event, a wild hog catch is an event that mirrors how they are caught for disease treatment. Great care is given to our animals to make sure they stay hydrated and cool and are not allowed to participate more than twice during one day.
The Wild Hog Explosion was originally put on by the Bandera-based Warriors Heart organization and the funds raised went towards the Warriors Heart Foundation and the Bandera County Public Library (the Kronkosky Library of Bandera County). All participants who want to assault pigs and throw them into bags must pay to compete. Participants can do as many rounds as they want as long as they are willing to pay ($30 is the current entry fee per team).
The really young children go first. They enter the arena and stand against the wall. A sea of baby pigs are forced into the arena and the children are instructed to chase the pigs and then touch them after the whistle blows. They are rewarded with a red, white, and blue ribbon after they achieve touching a pig. Unsurprising to me, many of the children go beyond just touching the pigs; some of them drag them across the ground and some children pick them up and drop them down to the ground.
After all of the ribbon rewarding is over, it’s time for teams of two children to chase a pig, capture them by any means, throw them into the burlap feed sack, and run across the finish line. As the kids chase the frightened pigs around, some parents yell at them to jump on the pigs and lift them up by their ears. The pigs are at an extreme disadvantage no matter what age range of humans they are in the arena with, which explains why most humans are never nervous to approach, capture, and bag the pigs.
As the event goes on the humans get older and so do the pigs. No matter the ages and strength of the pigs, they all express the same loud and bold resistance and opposition to what’s happening to them. Protests begin with the animals themselves, all people like me do is amplify their protests.
Before and after each event I investigated I’d try to make sure to document the conditions of the pigs inside their pens to show how they were situated and how they were confined for the entire duration of the event without any sustenance. One time before the event began when I was photographing some of the pigs from outside of their pen a man interrupted my shooting and said “Hey jump in their with the pigs and take pictures, they won’t hurt you.” I replied “I know, but how do you get in?” He explained to me that he was actually joking and that I shouldn’t go in the pen with the pigs because “they’ll beat my ass.” I told the man I thought the feral pigs only attack humans when they are provoked and he essentially told me I was wrong.
Maybe I was actually partially wrong in a way because the pigs at this event are clearly provoked repeatedly and I’ve never even witnessed any of them attack a child or adult. The pigs who had tusks when they were trapped have them ripped out prior to the event, but some still have the means to attack and defend themselves, such as their body strength and their teeth. Yet, I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing the pigs attack any of the humans. If these pigs are so dangerous then why was a child who couldn’t have been more than about twelve-years-old working in the arena for every single round of hog bagging when I attended in 2017, even with the largest pigs of the day? And if the pigs are so dangerous then how has Billy Walker, the very old frail man who works in the arena, managed to get by year after year without getting knocked over or injured in any way from any of these feral pigs?
The residents of Bandera, TX didn’t appreciate having their hog bagging event exposed to the world in 2019. Of course there is always the typical “this is our way of life” and “if you aren’t from Texas then mind your own business.” Let’s also not forget about human supremacy, the widespread implicitly understood idea that we are the supreme beings of the world and that nature and all nonhuman life belongs to us to manipulate, destroy, and do as we please with. Self determination is for us to pursue, not for others.
A major reason why I waited as long as I did to expose the Wild Hog Explosion was because I was trying to find a prominent animal rights organization who would be able to bring much greater attention and manpower to try to get this event shutdown. I’d supply all the footage, I didn’t care one bit about credit, and they could use their resources and large following to help usher in an end to this madness. I had one animal rights organization who I greatly respect tell me they’d do it, but they never followed through; I don’t think they even looked at my footage after I sent them a hard drive. I also spoke with multiple interested people at PETA about the event, which led to nowhere, so I figured I better go ahead and start putting this event on blast as well as I was able to myself.
Thankfully many of my followers were outraged about this event as we should all be and they helped immensely to spread awareness and build pressure to end it once and for all. After weeks of campaigning we were met with signs of success that I celebrated, albeit prematurely. Warriors Heart and the Bandera County Library stated that the event was cancelled, as well as the local paper.
I don’t recall ever in my life going from being so happy to so disappointed in such a short timespan. In less than 24 hours I found out the awful news from a Facebook comment of a Bandera local telling me the event was back on. The Bandera Wranglers, an organization that I previously never heard of, weren’t going to let the event disappear. At this point I was approaching what felt like burnout.
As the campaign got more heated with the event being put back on schedule, media attention from San Antonio (one hour from Bandera) came about. KSAT 12 (ABC) and KENS 5 (CBS) both ran reports on the upcoming controversial Bacon Bash. Both reports highlighted interviews with locals including residents, the mayor, and members of the Bandera Wranglers.
In the KSAT 12 report Brandon Nicholson, Vice President of the Bandera Wranglers, denied that the event I was exposing was the Bandera Wild Hog Explosion. He claimed that it was another event I was exposing and that I was falsely stating my footage was from the Wild Hog Explosion. I swear animal sadists have no limits to absurdity of the lies they’ll tell or the way they’ll treat living beings.
In the same KSAT 12 report the reporter echoed more of Nicholson’s absurdities, suggesting that the hog bagging event is “a way to deal with the feral hog overpopulation problem.” It’s funny how we’ll call just about any species of animals overpopulated except our own. And since when is torturing animals for fun a way to deal with any problem in the world at all?
In the KENS 5 (CBS) news report the mayor of the city of Bandera, Suzanne Shauman, thought if only people could see this abuse in person they could see the good that it does:
I think those who are condemning this whole project need to come see it, need to see the good that it does.
The news report ended with the reporter saying that the event organizers claimed my photos were “photoshopped to make it look like the hogs had been tortured.” Sadly, the reality is that the hogs in the photos look like they are being tortured because they indeed are being tortured.
Since I was unable to get PETA onboard with this campaign on my own and I thought PETA would probably be the best chance these pigs had, I urged my followers to keep tagging PETA on social media and ask them to do something about this event. After a little while, PETA got in touch with me and they were onboard to help out. Unfortunately the combined efforts of my work and PETA’s advocacy weren’t able to stop the 2019 event, but they did send in an undercover investigator to document it. You can view their 2019 investigation of Bacon Bash here.
According to PETA Foundation veterinarian Dr. Christine Capaldo, such abuse could cause serious and painful injuries: “It is never acceptable to carry a piglet suspended by one or two legs as this will place excessive pressure on the leg joints and result in injuries such as dislocations, and muscle, ligament, or tendon rupture.”
Many pigs were so desperate to escape their tormenters that they tried to dig under or leap over barriers, many crashing headfirst into the metal fencing surrounding the arena again and again. One pig got her hoof caught in the fencing and struggled to wrench herself free. Many sustained open, bleeding wounds, their blood spattering the arena and the contestants.
PETA veterinarian Dr. Ingrid Taylor noted that one pig “impacted the fence so hard with his face/head that he bent the metal, … at least one pig appeared uncoordinated and disoriented after impacting the metal fence,” possibly indicating a concussion, “and one pig was possibly limping after impacting the fence.”
Some Texas animal rights activists peacefully protested outside the Bacon Bash in 2019 and the Ham Rodeo in 2020. In 2019 one local hog bagging supporter offered to pay the entrance fee for some of the activists so they could come see the action firsthand. Activists took this person up on their offer and were willing to go in and bear witness to the abuse. However, the staff working the entrance wouldn’t allow the activists to come inside, despite the fact that they weren’t going to do anything besides stand around peacefully and watch. All throughout my campaigning against the Wild Hog Explosion locals and organizers were saying that people just need to come see the event and all the good it brings, yet when activists followed through on this suggestion they were rejected entry to come see it firsthand.
PETA vigorously increased their efforts against the Bandera Ham Rodeo in 2020. They had a mobile billboard truck with one of my images driving around the Texas Governor’s Mansion, the governor’s office, and the capitol in Austin, TX. PETA was calling on Governor Greg Abbott to end these events. They also met with Greg Abbot’s staff, informed state authorities about Texas law violations that were being committed, asking sponsors to cease their support, and they had the celebrity Woody Harrelson send a letter to Greg Abbot condemning the event.
PETA filed a lawsuit against the Bandera Wranglers in June of 2020, accusing the Bandera Wranglers and their event of violating Texas cruelty laws and posing a dangerous zoonotic disease risk when the blood, feces, and urine of the pigs spreads to humans. The Ham Rodeo was called off in 2021, but resumed again in 2022. Unfortunately, the Bandera Wranglers beat the PETA lawsuit.
Of course the Bandera Wranglers had to sell the cliched PETA (People Eating Tasty Animals) shirts at their sadistic event. Can’t these people come up with anything original?
I believe we should teach all children that cruelty towards animals is wrong and these lessons should start at as young of an age as possible. Living beings simply shouldn’t be used as a means to an end for any purpose whatsoever. We all are born deserving of self-determination and a right to bodily autonomy. Humans are more likely to grow up being decent to humans and other animals if they aren’t role modeled behavior that’s disrespectful, abusive, cruel, and downright sadistic. Children should be taken to see and interact with animals living with dignity and protection at sanctuaries, not where animals are treated like garbage, such as at zoos and hog bagging events.
If the people in Texas don’t want feral hogs to be able to access and eat any of their crops then they can take proactive measures that don’t involve trapping, torturing, or killing. We have the technology readily available that can be used to keep hungry animals away from the food we grow for ourselves and our own benefit.
Please help spread the word about this barbaric event by sharing this article and other content of mine such as my new Bandera, TX Wild Hog Bagging video.
Click here to view the contact information for the beneficiary and all of the sponsors for the 2023 Ham Rodeo. There are 25+ sponsors.
Stay tuned for the announcement of one more of these events that’s coming up. I’ll be exposing this next one for the first time ever and there will be more time for us to all do something about it. I’m also pleased that a prominent animal rights organization will be amplifying these criminal events tomorrow.
“Flesh eating is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act, which is contrary to moral feeling: killing. By killing, man suppresses in himself, unnecessarily, the highest spiritual capacity, that of sympathy and pity towards living creatures like himself and by violating his own feelings becomes cruel.” — Count Leo Tolstoy
“Compassion for animals is intimately connected with goodness of character; and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.” - Arthur Schopenhauer
"It is my view that a vegetarian manner of living, by its purely physical effect on the human temperament, would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind."- Albert Einstein
Whether or not wild pigs are overabundant and destructive to the environment, I don't know, though I've read that. A few years ago we saw that the extremely civilized, educated, urbane Bay Area professor Michael Pollan wrote a book called "The Omnivore's Dilemma," telling the story about how he prepared a complete multi-course meal in which all the ingredients were made or grown or retrieved by himself. He interpreted "omnivore" (quite without need) to mean in part "carnivore," and decided to learn how to hunt a little, and to go after a wild pig, judging them to be the wild animals who are most expendable. I don't know; it seems to me he made a few bad ethical decisions there, even if in principle he's right that the North American environment can do without the presence of those pigs.
Anyway, in Bandera, Texas, those people don't need any excuses for being mean to those pigs. They're just bullies who love showing off how they can inflict pain and terror on sentient beings much weaker than they are. And then they bully their kids into thinking it's all fun, a lot of laughs. "They know it's wrong but they do it all the same"--that's a definition of hell.
It's too bad the big animal protection agencies didn't make more of this, except for PETA to some extent. And the spray-painted pro-animal message, alas, was not good activism or advocacy.