74 SPORTS ILLUSTRATED
citizens have been slow to take se-
riously. And Texas, in many ways
still a republic unto itself, presents
its own unique challenges. States like
Kansas and Missouri have banned
hunting wild pigs on public lands
in a well-received (if counterin-
tuitive) attempt to stamp out sport
hunters’ motivations for releasing
hogs within their borders. But some
95%of the LoneStar State’s 268,000
square miles are privately owned—
and fiercely so—meaning that any
attempt at coordination will have
to involve scores of landowners. A
systematic government response is
next to impossible.
Necessity, however, is the mother
of invention. And Texas is Texas. So
there had to be another, bigger way.
SID MILLER
is one of those private landowners; he
farms wheat and hay on about 1,200 acres south-
west of Dallas. He’s also the Stetson-wearing com-
missioner of the Texas Department of Agriculture,
and before that he served for 12 years in the state
House of Representatives. It was in the latter ca-
pacity, in 2011, that he finally grew fed up with the
wild pigs that so often munched on his crops. He
had tried trapping and gunned down a few hogs
himself, but he thought the conditions existed for a
more creative approach. So, “I used some cowboy
logic,” he says.
What Miller concocted—a very Texan blend
of deregulation, private enterprise and arms
escalation—became known, to his enduring amuse-
ment, as the “pork chopper” bill. His legislation
(which passed 141–1) enabled ranchers and air-
craft operators to charge for helicopter seats with
the express purpose of hunting wild pigs, which
in Texas requires no license. Naturally, this bill’s
passage drew more attention than usual. “There
was some of, you know, Look what Bubba’s doing
now,” says Miller. “But people soon realized how
serious a problem it was.”
Many also recognized a business opportunity.
Among them: Blume, with his chinstrap beard and
passing resemblance to Baker Mayfield. After a few
stabs at college, he says, he was “fumbling around
at life,” working at a military-training company and
failing to catch on with the French Foreign Legion.
Eventually he started helping an acquaintance book
aerial hog hunts, and in late 2013 he got to know
a former Air Force mechanic, Richard Potts, who
owned a four-seat helicopter. Blume brought the
bushy-goateed Potts into the fold, and that was
the start of Last Shadow, which today zips clients
around a 300,000-acre zone surrounding its base
in Temple, smack between Austin and Dallas.
More than 100 businesses—with equally play-
ful names, like SwineTime and HeliBacon—are
currently permitted to offer such trips (though for
many, hunting is primarily a sporadic side venture).
These outfits typically cut deals with the landown-
ers whose properties they patrol, some paying for
the right to shoot on said soil, and they face state
and FAA restrictions regarding where clients can
shoot, relative to roads and houses. In the case of
Last Shadow, roughly 75% of clients come from
outside Texas—some hunters, some thrillseek-
ers, some curious visitors looking for a uniquely
local adventure.
Whoever that is, no one’s taking home a freezer’s
worth of pork loins and baby back ribs. In the time
it takes to land a helicopter, other wildlife are typi-
cally already feasting on any gunned-down pigs.
(Besides, the USDA requires predeath inspection
in order for meat to be sold or donated.) Instead,
Blume sells customers on the experience, as well as
the benefit to the local ecosystem. “We get laughed
out of a lot of places,” he says. “A lot of hunting
groups, research groups, they don’t consider us
real. And I get it. The perception is, Hold my beer;
here’s your rifle. Bunch of Texans riding around in
helicopters, shooting guns. So there’s that stigma.”
(Blume is, in fact, pretty popular locally. “I get calls
SHADOW
OF DEATH
The Last crew,
including
Pot ts (second
f rom lef t),
Lewis and Blume
( far right).
FERAL
HOGS
