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Unaware they’re about to be caught, a group of nocturnal feral hogs take the tasty bait in a remote-controlled trap.

Bubba Ortiz baits one of his feral hog traps on a ranch in the New Braunfels area. The owner of Ortiz Game Management gets hired out by property owners whose land is being rooted and ravaged by the powerful, destructive and omnivorous animals.

A group of hogs chow down in one of Bubba Ortiz's remote-controlled traps. Little do they know that, with the press of a button, he can drop those doors and capture the lot.

A group of feral hogs look for a way out after being caught in a remote controlled trap.

Bubba Ortiz checks for signs of feral hogs at a ranch pond. The hogs are wildly destructive, causing approximately $118.8 million in agricultural damage each year.

A small notebook logs the weights of feral hogs caught in Bubba Ortiz’s traps.

NEW BRAUNFELS — The hungry feral hog could smell the sweet corn scattered on the ground, beckoning. His brain, however, issued a stern warning: Could be a trap.

Senses on high alert, the hog sniffed the air and surveyed his surroundings, hesitating when he reached a suspicious gate. But other hogs already were past the gate, feasting on that sweet, sweet grain, and he despaired of losing out on his share. Oh, the temptation!

He stepped forward, surrendering to the aroma. And then — bang! A pair of doors dropped down, closing the trap behind him.

“Hogs are really smart animals, and they’re not easy to catch. But they’re also slaves to their stomachs. Hunger always wins out,” said Bubba Ortiz, perhaps the best hog trapper in the state and the owner of New Braunfels’ Ortiz Game Management and Hog Removal of Texas.

Ortiz designs and builds circular steel-mesh traps, like the one that caught the unfortunate hog. About 20 feet in diameter, with walls 5 to 6 feet high, the cages have remote-controlled doors he can close with the push of a button while watching a livestream video on his phone or laptop, often from the comfort of his sofa or bed.

An angry feral hog attempts to escape just after the drop doors close and he realizes he's trapped.

On ExpressNews.com: The most hated animals in Texas, feral hogs have their charms

Customers pay him to set up and monitor the traps on their land, and then to deal with the hogs that get caught. Ortiz regularly posts videos of hogs being captured on his company Facebook page.

Video after video shows them thrashing wildly about the moment the doors come crashing down, throwing themselves against the steel-mesh walls in a futile attempt to break free.

Feral hogs are the No. 1 nuisance animal in Texas, according to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, causing approximately $118.8 million in agricultural damage each year. And that doesn’t count the havoc they wreak on golf courses, airports, school yards, lawns and other nonagricultural property.

Ortiz is one of just a handful of full-time feral hog trappers trying to limit that damage.

Bubba Ortiz baits one of his hog traps.

Tom and Judy Myers, who own a 400-acre farm in Comal County, have been relying on Ortiz to remove feral hogs from their land for more than seven years. The first year, they say, he removed 140 pigs.

“They were knocking down our fences, and tearing our lawn and garden upside down,” Tom said. “Bubba’s done a good job keeping their numbers down, but there’s plenty still out there. I’m 80, and they’ll still be here when I’m gone.”

The Myers have gotten their fair share of revenge by butchering and barbecuing several of the pigs Ortiz has caught through the years.

“But only the small ones,” he said. “Once they get big and spiky, they’re not good eating any more.”

Ortiz got started in the business when he and his dad began trapping hogs on their ranch in Atascosa Country. As word spread, other ranchers began asking them for help. He became a full-time trapper in the mid-1980s.

On ExpressNews.com: Teen takes down nearly 400-pound feral hog terrorizing Texas ranch

He insists he doesn’t have a vendetta against feral hogs. In fact, he kind of admires them.

“They’re doing the best with what they have,” he said. “Unfortunately, when they do that, they destroy crops, overturn fields, contaminate ponds and strip resources from the land. I don’t hate them, but they do need to be controlled.”

Bubba Ortiz cleans up the pens where he temporarily houses captured feral hogs. He butchers some and sells the rest to game ranches where they are hunted for sport.

Ortiz is also the go-to guy for the city’s aviation department when hogs get a little too close to the runways at San Antonio International and Stinson-Mission Municipal airports.

“It’s not so much them tearing up the airport grounds,” said Marcus Machemehl, the city’s airport wildlife biologist. “If an airplane were to hit a hog, it’d be catastrophic, even for a large commercial jet.”

Back in 2014 Ortiz removed between 100 and 200 hogs living along Salado Creek near the San Antonio airport, and he’s currently trapping several dozen in the park areas surrounding Stinson, Machemehl said.

“Bubba’s successful at what he does,” he said. “And I know he works with other city departments, too, like the parks and rec department.”

According to Ortiz, feral hogs are as clever as a child of 5 or 6 — and even more destructive. So he has to employ hog psychology to trap them safely and efficiently.

“They learn, they teach, and they communicate,” he said of their smarts.

After setting up a trap, for example, he’ll leave the gates open for several days so the hogs grow comfortable coming and going while enjoying the deer corn he scatters on the ground.

“But I’ve seen a sow stop her (young) from going into the trap because she can tell when I’ve set the trip wire,” he said. “So now I have to camouflage the mechanism to fool them.”

Bubba Ortiz loads corn into his truck. Feral hogs are such a nuisance, they can be hunted anytime and by any means in Texas. All a hunter needs is a license and the landowner’s permission.

Adult hogs will also send younger ones into a trap as scouts. If Ortiz gets impatient and drops the doors too soon, the adults left outside will scatter, never to return.

Ortiz charges clients a $150 setup fee plus a minimum rental of $35 per day, per trap. That includes scouting, placement, baiting, the technology needed to monitor the trap and hog removal. The price is higher for jobs farther away.

On ExpressNews.com: Pig out, hunters: Feral hog bounties offered in Hays, Caldwell counties

He butchers and sells some of the hogs that he captures, charging $100 to kill, skin, gut and split a carcass so it’s ready for the barbecue. He sells the rest of the hogs to fenced game ranches where they are hunted for sport.

Ortiz is often asked why he doesn’t just shoot the animals he captures, since a trapped and angry feral hog can be a dangerous creature. But killing them on-site isn’t that simple.

“Say you shoot 20 pigs,” he said. “What are you going to do with the carcasses? The landowner doesn’t want them because they’ll attract scavengers and predators, and if he raises cattle or other livestock that can cause problems. So then you’ve got to remove and dispose of hundreds of pounds of meat.”

Killing hogs this way also causes them to release a stress pheromone, creating what he calls a “dead trap.”

Feral hog tracks are seen on a private ranch in New Braunfels. The hogs that are the bane of today’s landowners are descendants of domestic pigs first brought to Texas in the mid-1500s.

“The rest of the hogs now know that something bad happened here, so they won’t go anywhere near that trap for a long time,” he said.

Ortiz is aware that in certain quarters, what he does might be controversial, so he tends to keep a low profile about certain clients, such as city governments.

On ExpressNews.com: For $35,000, Texas company lets you gun down feral hogs with an M16 from a helicopter

“You’ve got mayors who hire me to clean up their city parks but don’t want to wake up to find people protesting in front of their house,” he said.

The hogs that are the bane of today’s landowners are descendants of domestic pigs first brought to Texas in the mid-1500s by Spanish explorer and conquistador Hernando de Soto, who brought them for trade. Several escaped into the wilds of the New World.

Despite the best efforts of full-time trappers, weekend sportsmen and the occasional helicopter hunting tour, Ortiz said he isn’t optimistic that the feral hog population will ever be brought completely under control.

Instead, he said, the hogs should become a self-sustaining food source for hungry Texans. He proposes the state open its own processing facilities and pay trappers and hunters for bringing in hogs on the hoof.

“They could either sell the meat or use it in free lunch programs for kids,” he said. “They could even teach prisoners to do the butchering so they’d have a trade when they’re released.”

rmarini@express-news.net | Twitter: @RichardMarini

Richard A. Marini is a features reporter for the San Antonio Express-News where he's previously been an editor and columnist. The Association of Food Journalists once awarded him Best Food Columnist. He has freelanced for American Archaeology, Cooking Light and many other publications. Reader's Digest once sent him to Alaska for a week. He came back.