Free Maps For Hunting Boar In California - Sounds Too Good To Be True!

And is not or not quite yet.
 
Attracted by the promise of hundreds of private places where one can hunt boar in California, over 200 to be precise,  I visited the website.

First, the home page is very hard to read and loads very slowly. That turns me off. Next, my overall impression is that this site is a work in progress. The home page has several short paragraphs running down the right side of the page. They look like they might hold a promise, links or at least something that could guide you to specific information. There is nothing linked to them.

A row of radio buttons however does indeed lead to boar hunting information – among many other hunting categories. A Google map of northern California reaches as far south as Monterey County, but not beyond it. It has little location flags on it. Click on one of them and a new page promises free boar hunting maps/information on locations in specific counties.

The catch?
A click on the link gets you to a sign in page to request more and detailed information on boar hunting places in the County of your choice. Completing the form and submitting it as requested will only get you a chance to be contacted by phone by a ranch owner – at best. It could also be a sales person.
No up front information on the location of the ranch, the wild pig population or any mention of access fees and prices for boar hunts on the property.

To make matters worse, this sign in sheet or request for information is generic. It is not very likely that every county of your interest has 6 private ranches for bird hunting and 52 properties within a 3 to 4 hour drive. Or 2 big game properties and 21 within the above specified drive time. The links on this form to specific locations only link you back to a very slight variation of the page you just came from.
All links I tested, main and sub-links, always produced the generic sign up/request form.

Judging by the text on the home page many of the over 200 boar properties in California are BLM properties or military installations. Access information and other details is available for either one of them without the detour of a request for information.

I presume that there is also information on PLM land somewhere in the lists that are not accessible from the home page despite the title “Private Property  For Boar Hunting listed”. There is nothing listed. Or I could not find it.

PLM listings are also available on the Net. They are unfortunately notorious for extremely high prices for access and big game hunting. If you want to pay 1,000.00 dollars or much more for a wild pig or a deer then a PLM property could be of interest. But you do not need a 'free map' for that.

I clicked on “Recommended Sites”- Nothing. A list of hunting categories shown beneath it did however produce active links. I visited 'hunting'. It had a number of links to hunting sites. I recognized many of them as highly commercial sites from all over the world. Among them are at least two spammers that attempted in the past to use our comment feature to spam their product.

Boar hunting in Argentina for example is not very practical when you live in Southern California and want to go on a quick weekend hunt somewhere close by. Or is it? Is South Africa anywhere in California?
 
Oh, one more thing. There is a casual mention on the home page of private hunting clubs as source of some of the hundreds of boar properties.
'Recommended sites' does indeed list one private hunting club: Wilderness Unlimited. No mention of  any other private club at all. Of course, there are several.

I used to be a member of Wilderness Unlimited for a number of years. When I became gravely ill and could no longer make use of my membership, Wilderness Unlimited treated me quite unfairly. I say this to caution you that one could accuse me of a bias. However, I stick to the fact as much as required to give a fair report.

All private hunting clubs suffer from several disadvantages as I have pointed out in my writings. Membership fees are high, most properties with wild pigs are located far north in California. That is a big setback when you live in Southern California. The club's have limited boar hunting seasons and during those times the ranches are frequently devoid of wild pigs but teeming with hunters. You can find in my writings why that is the case. Unless you live close to a cluster of Wilderness Unlimited ranches and go wild pig hunting at least a dozen times or more per year, it is cheaper to book one of the low-cost guided hunts. Regardless of what interested parties might tell you.
 
Expect a call from a salesman when you fill in that request form, of course.

Other private hunting clubs have very similar procedures and issues.

Overall 'free boar hunting maps' holds promise, possibly as a link farm. But the maps come for a price: The price of a salesperson or other interested party contacting you. That information request form is a great tool to collect a database of hunters that can then be mined by e-mail or direct contact to sell you hunting related items.
 
In my humble opinion the site needs improvement to be genuinely useful to boar hunters.
At this time it definitely strikes me as a work in progress with more commercial potential for the owners of the site than practical use for wild pig hunters.
Now fire away.
PJJ