The City of Lindsay is adding a new fall event to Garvin County’s festival lineup. The city’s inaugural Hawg Harvest and Fall Festival, Sept. 25-Oct. 2, will include a weeklong feral hog hunt and will wrap up with an all-day festival featuring a sanctioned Kansas City Barbecue Society Cookoff, a free concert and other fall festival fare.
“We knew we wanted to do a fall festival, but we needed something to build it around,” Lindsay City Manager Rebecca Niernberger said.
One of their biggest goals was to create a festival that would not just serve citizens, but also draw in tourism from around the region and possibly beyond.
“We focused on how we could bring people in from outside Lindsay,” Niernberger said.
During one of the planning meetings someone suggested a hog hunt and then the real brainstorming got underway. City officials and employees worked on how to incorporate a hog hunt into the fall festival idea by building on the theme of hogs or pigs, including adding events like the barbecue cookoff.
Sam Tarver, electric superintendent for the city, said the hunt is also an opportunity to assist landowners with decreasing feral hog populations.
“We have a lot of hogs, which can create problems for property owners, including crop degradation,” Tarver said.
As the event has come together, Niernberger said the response has been largely positive and the city is working now to get word out to those who may be interested in entering the hog hunt.
The hunt will begin Sept. 25 at 3 p.m. The entry fee is $200 for two man teams, and $50 for each additional team member. Teams are allowed up to four members. Teams must be signed up and all entry fees paid before the start time.
The Big Pig Hunt will run all week and is a competition for the largest hog. Hunters will be allowed to weigh-in their biggest pig each day between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. Weigh-in will be at the Lindsay Fire Department, 102 W. Creek.
The 24-hour contest for Most Pigs (by weight) will begin at 1 p.m. on October 1 and run through 1 p.m. October 2. Hunters must be in line to check in by 1 p.m. for their pigs to be counted. Check-in for most pigs will be on Main Street.
Hunters can hunt in Oklahoma and Texas and must obey all local and state wildlife and hunting laws. They must also have permission to hunt hogs on private property. All hogs must be feral, free-ranging, wild hogs and must be hunted from the ground, tree stand or box blind.
The event will culminate in the Hawg Harvest Festival on October 2 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. in downtown Lindsay.
For more information and a complete list of rules and regulations for the hog hunt, visit the “Lindsay Hawg Harvest and Fall Festival” Facebook page.
