FTW Ranch Kudos

THE ARTICLE about the FTW Ranch breeding Asian wildlife to save species no longer hunted in their native lands was great. I was particularly interested to see Tur in the equation. There is a lot of exotic hunting and ranches out there, but you don’t hear a lot about people working toward goals like this. That is great to hear.

Chip Nielsen

LOVED THE STORY of saving Asian exotics on Texas soil! I had no idea there were hog deer on any ranch in Texas. That alone was worth picking up the last issue.

Robert Gibson

Editor: The FTW Ranch has a great breeding program for some beautiful and interesting species. It’s great to see that kind of thing being done here in Texas.

Reader Questions

IS IT POSSIBLE I saw a warthog in South Texas? It certainly looked like one crossing the road late at night down in McMullen County?

Perry Fountain

Wharthog sightings have been reported in South Texas Photo: Adobe

Editor: It is possible. There are a few free-ranging warthogs in South Texas and there have been sightings in McMullen County. I wasn’t there, but it was most likely a feral hog with large tusks or little hair due to mites, but there actually are some warthogs from exotic ranch escapes in South Texas.

WHAT IS YOUR OPINION on the odds of Texas producing a state record speckled trout within the next five years?

Joe Anderson

Editor: The odds are low. I wrote an article for our e-newsletter, The Fish & Game Report, detailing the trends of record trout catches, that touched on this to some extent. One of the issues is freeze kills and I showed how both the current record Bud Rowland fish and the Jim Wallace fish both lived through freezes, with the Wallace fish living through at that time, one of the largest in history. The last kill did a lot of damage to trout in the area most likely for a record-the Lower Coast. And we have had incredible amounts of coastal habitat degradation and loss since both of those records were taken, which is almost never considered. I think the Rowland fish has a good chance of being a permanent state record.