How to build a hog trap from panels and T-posts

Texas A&M AgriLife's corral trap publication says most feral hog management efforts should include large corral traps, which can reduce hog numbers quickly, and AgriLife has published the design in detail. This guide follows three of its sources: the Hog Trap Design page by Billy Higginbotham and Don Neuendorff, the extension publication L-5524, Corral Traps for Feral Hogs, and Higginbotham's article on manual triggers. Building the trap is only half the job. The other half, pre-baiting until the whole group walks in, is in our guide to how to trap feral hogs.

The Texas A&M corral design at a glance

Sources: the design page for the specs; the notes on smaller pigs, post strength and trigger placement come from L-5524. AgriLife's trapping page gives the same 4 ft post spacing and says there should be no corners anywhere in the trap. Higginbotham's trigger article adds his own floor: he won't build a corral trap with less than about 80 ft of perimeter, and he adds two to five panels when a sounder runs to 25 or 30 pigs or more.

Can you build a hog trap with cattle panels?

People do, and AgriLife's own trapping page says "the primary components of a corral trap are cattle panels, t-posts, a headgate, and a trigger mechanism." But AgriLife's detailed design is more specific about the panel: 4 x 4 in squares, 5 ft high. Here is how a standard cattle panel compares, using one maker's published specs.

OK Brand (Oklahoma Steel & Wire) lists its cattle panel spacing as "2-4″, 7-6″" with 8 in between the vertical wires. Read as count and size, that is two 4 in gaps and seven 6 in gaps, and the math checks out: (2 x 4) + (7 x 6) = 50 in, the listed height. So compared with the AgriLife spec, a standard cattle panel is 10 in shorter, and its largest opening (6 x 8 = 48 sq in) is three times the area of a 4 x 4 square (16 sq in).

Two cautions follow from AgriLife's own tips. Its design page says to "use small enough mesh to catch all hogs, even juveniles," and L-5524 credits the 4 x 4 mesh with keeping smaller pigs in. And the design page warns that hogs pile up and go over the top at corners, so height matters too. AgriLife doesn't publish a cattle-panel version of the design, so we can't hand you a sourced fix for one. If you're buying new, buy to the spec.

Materials list and how much to buy

L-5524 lists the materials for the example corral trap in its photos. It's a starting point, not the only way:

• Lifting head gate
• 13 T-posts, 6 ft
• 4 sheep/goat panels, 16 ft by 52 in
• Roll of tie wire
• T-post driver
• Lineman's pliers or a fencing tool
• A 4 ft two-by-four (the door prop)
• A 4 in hook and eye latch

Note the example uses 52 in panels, while the design page and L-5524's own general description say 5 ft. Since the design page warns that hogs may go over the top, we'd build to the taller of the two.

Worked math for an 80 ft trap

Using Higginbotham's 80 ft minimum perimeter and the 4 ft post spacing:

• Panels: 80 / 16 = 5 panels at 16 ft, or 80 / 20 = 4 panels at 20 ft. L-5524 shows the panel ends overlapped at each join, which uses up some length, so buy a little over.
• T-posts: 80 / 4 = about 20 posts around the perimeter, plus the posts on each side of the gate.
• Weight to haul: OK Brand lists its 5 x 16 ft 4 x 4 utility panel at 68 lb in 4-gauge wire and 49 lb in 6-gauge. Five panels come to 340 lb or 245 lb, before the gate. The one hog trap gate Amazon sells, The Hunt Supply 6 ft drop gate, adds 155 lb by its listing.

Panels and T-posts are a farm-store purchase: Amazon doesn't carry 16 ft livestock panels (our product search on 2026-09-19 returned woven-wire rolls instead). The gate and trigger are the parts you can buy there.

How to build a hog trap in 9 steps

1. Pick the site first. Put the trap on a hog trail between food, cover and water, where a truck and trailer can reach it in all weather and out of the way of floodwater (L-5524). Brush or trees inside the trap are fine and can camouflage it and give shade, per the design page and L-5524. Site selection is covered in step-by-step detail in our trapping guide.
2. Set the head gate. L-5524 says most head gates are secured with steel T-posts on each side of the entrance, attached to the gate with doubled baling wire, with the posts fitting snugly against the gate.
3. Tie the first panels to the gate posts with doubled wire (L-5524).
4. Join the remaining panels to one another before driving more posts, overlapping the ends (L-5524). An extra pair of hands helps: one person holds, the other ties.
5. Pull the panels into shape. Form a teardrop with the gate at the narrow end, or a circle, with no hard corners (design page, L-5524). In wooded areas, L-5524 notes trees can be used for support.
6. Drive T-posts about every 4 ft and tie the panels to them, leaving no gaps along the bottom (design page, L-5524).
7. Brace the door. For saloon or top-hinged doors, the design page says to brace at the top and bottom so the doors can't be forced open from inside.
8. Rig the trigger at the back. The design page's version: run a wire from the door prop through baling-wire eyes on a line of T-posts to the far end of the trap, and stretch it at ground level over a hole filled with bait. Hogs rooting in the hole pull the prop and the spring-loaded doors shut. L-5524 notes some builders use picture-framing wire, strong enough to spring the trap but able to break if a hog gets tangled. For other options, including remote triggers, see our hog trap trigger ideas.
9. Lock the gate open and start pre-baiting. The design page says to pre-bait with the gate locked open until hogs are regularly entering, then set it.

Choosing the gate and trigger

The gate is the part of the trap that has to be right, and L-5524 says most corral traps are built with saloon-type gates, drop gates or lifting rooter gates. The trade-offs, from AgriLife:

• Saloon and lifting (rooter) doors can be propped open, and after the first hogs are caught, more can push their way in (L-5524).
• Guillotine (drop) gates, like saloon gates, close only after a trigger is set off (AgriLife trapping page). That makes the trigger the whole game: it should fire only when the sounder is inside.
• Width: the design page's 32 to 36 in total opening is the floor, so hogs pass through without tripping the door when they first enter.
• Share it: the gate doesn't need to be in place until the trap is set, so AgriLife suggests sharing gates with neighbors.

We compare the two main gate styles in guillotine vs saloon door hog traps. If you choose a drop gate, the trigger decides how selective the trap is. A remote trigger lets you drop the gate by phone once a camera shows the group is in, which AgriLife's trapping page says can help catch complete sounders but costs more and needs cell service.

On Amazon, the choice is narrow: one purpose-built drop gate and two cellular triggers. The gate is The Hunt Supply's 6 ft guillotine door; its maker, J4 Welding, says it rides a 7 ft rail and opens to about 4 ft high. The same shop's cell-activated trigger drops a gate on a phone call. The generic relay is the budget, wire-it-yourself route.

Safety while building and trapping

After the build

Trapping feral hogs on private property is legal in Texas, but moving them alive is not, except to a few destinations under Texas Animal Health Commission rules. L-5524 itself points trappers to TAHC before any transport to a holding facility or slaughter. Our guide to what to do with trapped hogs in Texas covers those rules line by line. For the trap systems and parts worth buying rather than building, see our best hog trap systems, and the rest of the trapping guides are on the hog traps hub.