Ask five trappers which hog trap is best and you’ll get six answers and one argument. The fellow who sells nets says nets. The fellow who sells gates says gates. Your neighbor says the one he welded in 1994, and he’ll show you if you’ve got an hour.
Here’s the funny part. They’re all a little bit right, because the best hog trap depends on the hogs. One old boar wandering through is a different job from fourteen hogs plowing the same pasture every night.
So this page doesn’t crown one trap. It gives you one plain verdict, then seven picks by situation, with the research and the owner reviews behind each one.
We build three of the traps on this page. Some links to other products are affiliate links, and we may earn from qualifying purchases.
Key Takeaways
- For a whole sounder, a corral trap is the best choice. Mississippi State calls corral traps the most effective type for catching large groups of pigs.
- In a Georgia study, corral traps caught more than four times as many pigs per trap-night as box traps.
- Box traps suit one or two hogs. In that same study, fewer than 10% of adult-boar visits to a box trap ended with the boar inside.
- For trap-shy hogs, a drop trap. Suspended traps had an 88.1% removal rate in an Oklahoma study.
- A 2025 study of 31 professional trappers found drop, corral and net traps all effective.
- We build three of the seven picks here. For two of the seven, the best answer isn’t ours, and we say so.
Why Trust Us: How We Chose These Traps
Let’s get the awkward part out first. Boss Hawg builds hog traps. Three of the picks on this page are ours, and we think they’re the best in their class. So yes, we’re biased, and you should read this page knowing that.
Here’s how we’ve tried to keep it honest anyway. We’ve reviewed our own traps the way we’d review anyone else’s.
- One yardstick for every trap: how many hogs it catches according to published studies, what steel it’s made of, what it costs, and where you can really buy it.
- Every pick gets a weak point, including ours.
- Two of the seven picks aren’t ours. Where another kind of trap fits your situation better, we send you there.
- We read owner reviews. Our team read what owners wrote about the other traps named here, on store pages, a maker’s review page and hunting forums. When we say “from the reviews we read,” that’s what we mean. We did not run our own side-by-side field test, and we won’t pretend we did.
- We quote no reviews of our product. We looked for public owner reviews of them and didn’t find enough to quote fairly.
As for where we come from: the shop started out trapping hogs that were destroying its own property, then removed hogs for local ranchers under contract. The traps came out of those years.
The best hog trap, by situation
The best hog trap for most landowners is a corral trap big enough to hold the whole sounder. A steel box trap is best for one or two hogs, and a drop trap is best for hogs that avoid gates.
A sounder is a family group of feral hogs, usually sows and their young. Most hog trouble comes in sounders, which is why the verdict leans the way it does. Bronson Strickland of Mississippi State University Extension put it bluntly: “The bigger the trap, the better. Small box traps are occasionally used to catch an individual hog, but that is not our goal.”
Find your situation in the table and go straight to that section.
| Your situation | Best trap type | Our pick or partner | Market price for this type | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | One or two hogs, or you move the trap often | Steel box trap | Boss Hawg Standard | About $550 to $700 |
| 2 | A whole sounder that keeps coming back | Corral trap | Boss Hawg Big Pen | $2,900 to $3,500 for packages with a gate |
| 3 | A sounder you plan to haul away | Pen with a loading ramp | Boss Hawg Pro Pen | Quoted to the job |
| 4 | Hogs that walk up to a gate and stop | Drop trap | Boss Hawg custom build, or a stock drop trap | From $2,295 |
| 5 | One person, ground you can’t drive to | Net trap | Partner: a net trap. We don’t build one | From $2,500 |
| 6 | A tight budget and a free weekend | Home-built corral with a bought gate | Partner: gate and parts | About $715 in parts |
| 7 | Nothing standard fits your site | Custom trap | Boss Hawg custom | Quoted per build |
Three of these seven are traps we build as standard models, two more are custom builds from our shop, and for two the best answer is someone else’s. Market prices are other sellers’ listed prices, checked 3 October 2026. We quote our own traps to the job.
If you’d rather see our full lineup first, it’s on the hog traps for sale page.
How to choose: the four questions that decide it
Four questions pick the best hog trap: how many hogs you see, whether they have dodged a trap before, how you will move the trap, and what you can spend. Hog count matters most.
Don’t guess at the first one. Put a trail camera on the damage and count. Texas A&M AgriLife says the number of hogs in the sounder “will be your guide as to the trap size.”
| Question | If the answer is… | Look at |
|---|---|---|
| How many hogs? | One or two | A box trap |
| A group | A corral trap | |
| Have they dodged a trap before? | Yes. They walk up to a gate and stop | A drop trap |
| How will you move it? | Pickup bed, by yourself | A box trap |
| Trailer or flatbed | A corral pen | |
| On foot, alone | A net trap | |
| What can you spend? | Under about $700 | A box trap, or a home-built corral |
Hog count decides the type; the other three questions decide the model.
Hogs that have learned to avoid traps are called trap-shy. You’ll know them when you see them on camera: they eat right up to the gate and never step through.
Best for one or two hogs: a steel box hog trap
A steel box trap is the best hog trap for one or two hogs and for ground where you must move the trap often. Texas A&M AgriLife notes box traps typically catch only one or two adult pigs.
A box hog trap is a heavy-duty steel cage, about 4 by 8 feet, with one gate and one way to enter. Some people call it a hog cage trap. AgriLife lists its strengths plainly: box traps are “relatively easy to move and can be set quickly,” they fit “in the bed of a pickup truck,” and “one person can quickly place traps in areas with fresh hog activity.” It also says they suit trapping “in a relatively small area.” If you have ten acres and two hogs, this is your trap.
Our pick: the Standard hog trap. It’s 4 × 8 × 3 feet, fits a full-size pickup bed, and one person can load, haul and set it. It comes with a trip wire and swing gate, and there’s a hinged-floor version for getting hogs out. The frame is 1½-inch, 14-gauge square tubing with 6-gauge wire welded to it. For a price, call the shop at (254) 725-4554 or ask a Texas dealer.
Its weak point, and every box trap’s: it’s not the right tool for a sounder. And here’s a finding that surprised us. You’ll read online that box traps are “for lone boars.” A Georgia study watched what hogs actually did.
| Box trap | Corral trap | |
|---|---|---|
| Adult-boar visits that ended with the boar inside | Fewer than 10% | Not reported |
| Entry rate, all pigs (entries per visit) | 0.37 | 0.71 |
| New pigs caught per trap-night | 0.05 | 0.23 |
| Cost per pig caught | $671.31 | $121.28 |
Hogs entered corral traps about twice as often as box traps, and big boars mostly stayed out of the boxes. Source: Williams, Holtfreter, Ditchkoff and Grand, 2011, Journal of Wildlife Management, from one site in Georgia in spring 2008.
So a box trap is best for a small number of hogs that aren’t yet wary. A big, suspicious boar may well walk around it.
Single door or double door? Door count matters less than the gate type. AgriLife explains that swing gates and lifting gates allow more than one hog to be trapped, because the next hog can still push in. A sliding drop gate falls once and that’s the catch.
From the owner reviews we read. The other steel box trap most people can buy is the Voorhies 3-door trap at Tractor Supply. It held 4.1 stars from 189 reviews when we checked on 3 October 2026. Owners liked the build (“It’s built well and is strong”) and several reported real catches, including one who found four hogs in it the morning after baiting. The complaints were worth noting too. One owner felt hogs “don’t really push through the gravity doors.” Another said smaller pigs could get out through the larger openings near the top. A few were unhappy about shipping cost.
Partner options for a box trap setup:
- Voorhies 3-door steel box trap at Tractor Supply, listed at $549.99 on 3 October 2026
- Cellular trail cameras to count your hogs before you buy anything
- Hog attractants for pre-baiting
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Partner products are listed separately from our own and never replace them.
Best for a whole sounder: a corral trap
A corral trap is the best hog trap for a whole sounder. In a study from Gorgea, corral traps caught more than four times as many pigs per trap-night as box traps, at about one-fifth the cost per pig.
A corral trap is a large pen of panels with a one-way gate, built to catch a whole sounder at once. A trap-night, by the way, is one trap set for one night. Mississippi State calls corral traps “the most effective type of trap for catching large groups of pigs.” Texas A&M AgriLife’s advice on size is two words long: “Bigger is better!”
The reason is simple. Catch three hogs out of twelve and you haven’t solved a quarter of the problem. You’ve taught nine hogs what a trap looks like.
Our pick: the Big Pen corral hog trap. It’s a pen of welded steel panels, sized to your site and your sounder. Same steel as the Standard: 14-gauge tube frames with 6-gauge wire welded on, not tied on. It can be taken down and moved when the hogs shift ground.
Its weak points: Trap setting time is longer than a box trap, it needs a trailer to move, and it doesn’t include a loading ramp. If you need to haul hogs out, see the next section.
The budget route: build one. A home-built corral from farm-store panels, T-posts and a bought steel gate costs about $715 in parts at today’s prices. It works, and Texas A&M AgriLife publishes the design. You trade money for a weekend of labor and wire ties in place of welds. The full sum is on our hog trap cost page.
From the owner reviews we read. The gate is the part most home builders buy. Tractor Supply’s 3-door hog trapping gate held 3.8 stars from 36 reviews on 3 October 2026. One owner reported “13 hogs in a night.” The main complaint was shipping damage. One owner had to straighten the frame and reset the doors before it “worked as it should.” Our takeaway: a steel gate that arrives bent is a common story, so inspect it before you sign for it.
REQUEST A QUOTE: CALL (254) 725-4554
Tell us how many hogs your camera shows and what the ground is like. We’ll size a Big Pen to it.
Partner options for a home-built corral:
- Hog Slammer “V” Gate on Amazon, a hog trap gate. Check today’s price and reviews on the listing
- Hog trap trigger on Amazon. Check today’s price and reviews on the listing
- 3-door hog trapping gate at Tractor Supply, listed at $349.99 on 3 October 2026
- T-post drivers and rebar tie wire for setting panels
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Partner products are listed separately from our own and never replace them.
Best for catching and hauling: a pen with a loading ramp
A pen with a loading ramp is the best hog trap when you plan to haul hogs away. The Boss Hawg Pro Pen is a welded panel pen with panel gates, a trip wire and a loading ramp.
Catching the sounder is half the job. The other half is getting a pen full of unhappy hogs onto a trailer, and most traps leave that part to you. Texas A&M AgriLife’s corral design thinks about it from the start: it puts the gate where it funnels hogs “toward a trailer backed up to the gate for loading.”
Our pick: the Pro Pen hog trap. It’s the Big Pen idea with the loading side already solved: the pen, the gates, the trip wire and the ramp come in one order.
Its weak points: it costs more than the pen alone, because you’re buying the gates and ramp too. And we size it to your site, so there’s no catalog price to compare.
If you already own a way to load hogs, the Big Pen does the catching for less. The loading steps and the Texas rules for hauling live hogs are in our guide to hog trap trailers and loading ramps.
Best for trap-shy hogs: a drop trap
A drop trap is the best hog trap for hogs that have learned to avoid gates. In an Oklahoma study, suspended traps had a removal rate of 88.1%, against 48.5% for corral traps.
A drop trap is a rigid pen hung a few feet in the air that falls around the hogs. There’s no gate to walk through and no wall at eye level. Benjamin Buckley, a USDA APHIS district supervisor, told Great Days Outdoors that drop traps are “often utilized when feral swine have been educated from previous trapping activities.”
Now the other half of the evidence, which sellers tend to skip. In 2025, University of Georgia researchers studied more than 850 captures by 31 professional trappers. They found drop, corral and net traps all effective at catching whole groups. Drop traps did best in acorn season, when hogs lose interest in bait.
So a drop trap isn’t magic. It’s the right answer to one specific problem: hogs that already know what a gate is.
Our pick: a custom drop trap from our shop, built from the same steel and sized to your sounder. Its weak points: it’s heavy, it takes time to set up, it’s built to order, and a phone trigger needs cell service at the trap site.
Stock drop traps from other makers are listed from $2,295. Our drop hog traps page compares them with prices and covers how they work.
Partner options that finish a drop trap:
- 12-volt electric winches for raising the pen
- Deep-cycle 12-volt batteries for power in the field
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Partner products are listed separately from our own and never replace them.
Best for one person on remote ground: a net trap
A net trap is the best hog trap when one person has to carry everything in. A 2025 study of professional trappers found net traps effective at catching whole groups, though they needed slightly more bait per pig.
This is one we don’t build, so there’s no Boss Hawg pick here.
A net trap is a ring of heavy netting on posts. Hogs push under the net to reach the bait and can’t find their way back out. There’s no gate, no trigger and no steel to haul. One maker, Pig Brig, says its trap needs no cell service and that one person can set it up in under an hour. Its systems are listed “starting at $2,500.”
From the owner reviews we analysed. Net traps have the most enthusiastic owners of anything on this page, with a caution attached. On Pig Brig’s own review page, one owner wrote that he “caught 14 of the 16” once he set it. Outdoor Life reported in February 2025 that a Georgia family caught 41 hogs in one net after baiting “for a few weeks.” On a Georgia hunting forum, owners reported catches of 12, 18 and 23 at a time.
The cautions came from the same places. Owners said it can take weeks of baiting before hogs get comfortable, and that now and then a hog escapes or damages the net. One forum user caught “2 deer, 1 dog, and 8 cows” along with his hogs, which is what can happen with a trap anything can push into. Another did the math we’d do: the price “is worth it only when hogs damage costs you that much or more.”
One fair warning about those reviews. A maker’s own review page shows what the maker chooses to show, so we give the forum posts more weight.
Where steel still wins: a welded pen doesn’t tear, and it can be loaded out through a gate and ramp. If you can get a trailer to the site, we’d still put up a corral.
Partner option for a net trap:
- Boar Blanket Feral Pig Net Trap on Amazon. This is a different brand from the one in the reviews above, so read its own reviews and check today’s price on the listing
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Partner products are listed separately from our own and never replace them.
Hog traps to skip, and three mistakes that beat any trap
Skip any trap built for raccoon-size animals, however it is labeled. Texas A&M AgriLife describes a hog box trap as a heavy-duty cage about 4 by 8 feet, and warns that captured hogs will test the trap.
Search a big online marketplace for “hog trap” and you’ll see plenty of “live animal cage traps” about 32 inches long. Those are for raccoons, opossums and groundhogs. AgriLife’s exact words on the real thing: “Feral hogs are extremely strong and will test the trap when captured.” A cage made for a raccoon is not going to hold a hog.
Then there are the mistakes. The best trap on this page will fail if you make one of these three.
- Too small a trap for the group. Count the hogs first, then size the trap to all of them.
- Setting it too soon. AgriLife says to keep pre-baiting until hogs are consistently feeding inside and the whole sounder is visiting. That can take weeks.
- Gaps at the bottom. AgriLife again: anything a hog can get its snout under, through or between “represents an opportunity for escape.”
Order a Boss Hawg hog trap
To order a Boss Hawg trap from us, call (254) 725-4554 with your hog count, your ground and how you will move the trap. You get a recommendation, a quote, a build time and freight to your ZIP code.
Here’s why we’d pick our own, bias admitted. Every Boss Hawg trap is built from one published steel spec: 1½-inch, 14-gauge square tubing with bracing, 6-gauge wire MIG welded to the frame, and prime-coated tubing. The designs came from years of removing hogs for Texas ranchers. And one shop builds the box trap, the corral pen and the pen with a ramp, so we have no reason to push you toward the wrong one. The reasons behind each part are on how Boss Hawg traps are built.
If none of the standard models fits your ground, we build custom hog traps too. That’s pick number seven.
Have these ready when you call:
- Your hog count. The biggest group your trail camera has shown.
- Your ground. Pasture, brush, creek bottom or woods.
- How you’ll move the trap. Pickup bed, trailer or tractor.
- Your delivery ZIP code. We ship anywhere in the US. Freight is paid by the buyer and quoted before you order.
There’s a real reason not to wait a season. Texas Parks and Wildlife reports that adult sows average about 1.57 litters a year, with four to six pigs in an average litter. The sounder on your camera this fall is the small version.
Three honest trade-offs. We don’t list prices online, so it takes a phone call. We build to order, so ask about the current build time. And heavy steel is heavy; our traps take more muscle to move than light ones. If your hogs and your budget point to a net trap or a home-built corral, we’ll tell you that on the phone, same as we did on this page.
REQUEST A QUOTE: CALL (254) 725-4554
Tell us how many hogs you’re seeing and where. We’ll tell you which trap fits, and what it costs delivered.
Also check our partner products that go with any trap:
- Cellular trail cameras to count the sounder and watch the trap
- Game feeders for pre-baiting
- Solar panels for trail cameras to keep the camera running
- Hog sorting boards and heavy-duty ratchet straps for loading and hauling
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Partner products are listed separately from our own and never replace them.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most effective hog trap?
In one three-year Oklahoma study, suspended drop traps had the highest removal rate at 88.1%, ahead of drop nets and corral traps. A 2025 study of professional trappers found drop, corral and net traps all effective at catching whole groups.
Is a box trap or a corral trap better?
For a group of hogs, a corral trap. In a Georgia study, corral traps caught 0.23 new pigs per trap-night against 0.05 for box traps. For one or two hogs, a box trap is cheaper and easier to move.
Single door or double door hog trap: which is better?
The gate type matters more than the number of doors. Texas A&M AgriLife says swing and lifting gates allow more than one hog to be trapped, while a sliding drop gate closes once.
What is the best hog trap for a small property?
A steel box trap, if you’re seeing one or two hogs. Texas A&M AgriLife says box traps can be used to remove a few hogs or to trap in a relatively small area.
What is the best hog trap for Texas ranches?
Usually a corral trap sized to the sounder. Texas Parks and Wildlife estimates about 2.6 million feral hogs in the state, and Texas A&M AgriLife says a large corral trap can capture an entire sounder.
Can you buy a hog trap on Amazon?
You can buy net traps, trap gates and triggers there. We didn’t find a full-size steel box hog trap. The “cage traps” listed are about 32 inches and made for raccoon-size animals.