Monterey — If there are hogs that need killing, Jody Greene, Tracy Greene and Jeff Goeggle are on the job.

The trio makes up Double G Hog Control, and they have taken a love for hunting and desire to protect their neighbors to a new level.

Greene said it all started when his daughter’s boyfriend came to meet the family and brought some night vision equipment with him.

Greene said he fell in love with the clarity of the night vision and had to get some for himself.

“I’ve seen night vision around here, but I really wasn’t impressed with it because you couldn’t see very far with it,” Greene said, “But he bought a scope and you could see well over a thousand yards with a little moonlight. I said, ‘I’m going to get one’ because I have a hog problem.”

Hogs have become a major problem for local farmers around the Miss-Lou because they like to eat farmers’ crops such as corn and beans, and Greene and Goeggle said it was great that hunting could be so beneficial to farmers and their agriculture.

“It’s a really serious problem and a lot of our economy is based on farming, everywhere you look its farm area,” Greene said. “We see it first hand at night and it’s devastating for farmers.”

Greene’s neighbor had issues with hogs on his property, so when he heard that Greene was taking the initiative of getting rid of his hog problem, the neighbor asked Greene to come by and get rid of some hogs for him.

“The farmer next to us saw what we were doing, and he wanted us to kill a few hogs for him,” Greene said. “I bought my wife, Tracy, a set of night vision goggles so she could come with me.

“I begged Jeff (Goeggle) to come with me, but he liked to use dogs to hunt. I took him one night and after that, he bought all of the equipment too, and that’s when Double G Hog Control was born.”

Greene said their method for the hog hunts start before the night of the slaying.

“If we have time, we’ll go check out the land so we can know every nook and cranny,” Greene said.

The trio heads out to the property after dark and unleashes their equipment, which consists of buggies, assault rifles equipped with night vision scopes and night-vision goggles

“It looks like a Tom Clancy novel when we go out with all this equipment looking like Navy Seals,” Greene said.

Tracy is the spotter because she has the best eye sight and hearing, Greene said. Once they find the hogs, usually in packs ravaging through crops, they inch closer to their target.

“We get about 50 yards away from them and decide who’s shooting which hog then we’ll count to three and after that first shot, everything is game,” Greene said. “You shoot until you’re out of bullets.”

Goeggle said he keeps at least 500 bullets with him each time he goes out because sometimes it takes more than one bullet to kill a hog.

Since the spring of 2013, Greene and Goeggle said they have killed 420 hogs for people around the Miss-Lou, and they haven’t charged any one yet.

“We just like to have fun,” Goeggle said. “It doesn’t seem right to charge people for something that’s fun.”

Goeggle said he and Greene were raised to never waste meat, so as often as they can, Double G Hog Control gives away as much hog meat as they can.

“Sometimes we stop at a service station to give away the hogs,” Goeggle said. “One time this group of men pulled up with a truck, and they left with a truckload of hogs.”

Sometimes, however, Goeggle and Greene have to leave most of the hogs behind.

“If it’s too hot, we’ll leave them and let the buzzards have them,” Goeggle said. “You kind of feel bad because it’s wasteful, but they’re a nuisance.”

Goeggle and Greene may not hunt hogs for money, but the passion for helping people and having fun along the way fuels their business and their intent to carry it on for many years to come.