the USA ferral hog situation ....

[BradLantz]

Arkansas really started seeing hogs come back during 2001-2005 .... and from 2005-present it seems everyone now is seeing/killing hogs

Our turkey population peaks in 2001/02 and has went down 75% in the past decade

Coincidence?

[robtattoo]

I think half the problem we had here in TN (and this from someone who's only been here 3 years) was the restrictive hunting regulations regarding hogs. The TWRA was complaining about the ever increasing population, but the regs stated that hunters could only legally take wild hogs & feral pigs during Deer season & only with the legal weapon at the time (ie no rifle hunting for hogs during bow season) That gave us 1/3 of the year to legally take pigs from public land, meaning the pigs had the chance to breed twice during the 'off' season!
This year, the TWRA has de-regulated hogs from a game species to an invasive nuisance species. 'Awesome' you'd think, but they have also banned hunting them on public land, except for a few select WMAs ??? To me this makes no sense at all. Either de-regulate them properly & let us hunt them year-round by any means nescesarry or ban their hunting altogether on public land. Landowners can now slaughter hogs wholesale, by any & all legal means & are allowed to admit 10 named hunters per year to hunt their land, which is fantastic as far as the control issue goes. However, we simply cannot legally take a pig on 90% of our public land which is where the TWRAs concern should surely be aimed.

[Jeff Strubberg]

I agree, Rob.  You're going to end up with public ground with no understory at all with those policies.  I imagine the concern has to do with multiple use land and gun hunting year round causing accidents.  

Missouri say kill em.  Dynamite em, poison, shot 'em with a howitzer, whatever.  Last I heard, we were down to two localized pockets of hogs, both on public ground.

[Missouri Sherpa]

I have spent more than a little bit of time in Texas looking for hog hunting leases.  I find that the only thing most Texas landowners hate more than hogs is having someone sneaking around with  weapons hunting hogs and creating a liability.  Paying tresspass fees helps and a 2 million $ liability policy makes it more palatable to them.

According to information from the Texas University extension, in spite of all efforts to control hog populatons in Texas feral hog populations have been growing by 15% per year for a long time.  The only thing that puts a dent in their rampant growth is gunning them from helicopters.  Helicopters with a pilot and marksman rent at 350 to 500 per hour.  A good hog gunner can kill a hog about every 6 minutes in the air.  Costs 50-75 per hog killed.  Some places will do it by the acre, typical cost around 75-85 cents per acre.  In areas with lots of grain and peanuts this is a neccessary cost to stay in business.  Not practical in a lot of situations.  Texas will never be rid of hogs.

We have hog hunting available south of Dallas-Ft.Worth and in west Texas near Odessa if any of you are needing a place to go.

[Troy Breeding]

Thanks JDB,

Finally someone putting a sinceable reason to the high cost of hog hunting rather than making the land owner sound like a greedy money grabber.

I find your assessment much better than the "because the next fellow will pay to play".

Troy

[PaddyMac]

Instead of paying the bounty to the hunter, pay the bounty to the landowner. To get the bounty, the landowner has to contact fish & game and they'll send "certified" hunters out who will hunt responsibly. Hunters who want to hunt pigs for free to fish & game and sits and talks and gets an address to go to. Boom-badda-bing.

[Aunty]

Hunting can and will eradicate pigs eg dogs,bows,trapping and boomsticks. If money is there people will jump on the band wagon as for killing them it's the same as shooting rabbits up in Cromwell we carnt take a bow got to take boomstick and we carnt pick them up. He said you are here to kill nothing else so that's what we do 400 to 500 rabbits a day is the norm. Or you could do what our government does and just 1080 the pigs.

[smokin feathers]

one tx county tried bounty's one year. they ran out of money in less than a month and the bounty was cheap!!! If you have insurance, traps,dogs, suppressors and night vision you can hunt a lot of tx land for free. Actually it has nothing to do with hunting,ethics or any of the such, the game is too kill as many as you can. We killed over 500 in 1 weekend(helicopter) on a certain ranch in south tx earlier in the year.(shot 5000 rounds of ammo!!!) And we take lots out of town and on golf courses as well. I have shot them out of peoples yards off golf courses at night with them never even knowing what was going on.(300 black out and a good can take care of the problem). Lots of hogs were spread over the state to introduce something else to hunt especially in e tx because there were not many deer in deep etx in the 60's-through almost 1990. I know people who went to south tx and caught hogs with dogs and brought them back and turned them loose. old time deer dog hunters couldnt hunt deer with dogs no more so they brought in hogs to run and shoot like they did deer. then they started just cutting boars and turning them loose and trying to grow trophy hogs, letting sows go etc. We do depredation on a national wildlife refuge and even at that some of the guys I know will turn the boars back loose in the marsh so they will be big fat and have some cutters on them the next time they are caught.

Poison is not the way to go, i have seen several try it and end up killing every thing but the hogs. I have seen farmers use timec and kill everything around, they got a few hogs but killed way more non target animals.

If the state would pay the pro's the battle would go a lot better but dont know if that will ever happen. wish they would do like what my dad did in australia, they would pay for all the shells and wages to shoot as many parrots as you could possibly kill. Hogs aint going nowhere anytime soon, people have to stop treating them like game and dont let it bother them to shoot them on sight no matter where you hit them as long as they die!!! a good hog is a dead hog if you recover them or not!! (I like to eat them as well).

[mrjsl]

Originally posted by robtattoo:
I think half the problem we had here in TN (and this from someone who's only been here 3 years) was the restrictive hunting regulations regarding hogs. The TWRA was complaining about the ever increasing population, but the regs stated that hunters could only legally take wild hogs & feral pigs during Deer season & only with the legal weapon at the time (ie no rifle hunting for hogs during bow season) That gave us 1/3 of the year to legally take pigs from public land, meaning the pigs had the chance to breed twice during the 'off' season!
This year, the TWRA has de-regulated hogs from a game species to an invasive nuisance species. 'Awesome' you'd think, but they have also banned hunting them on public land, except for a few select WMAs ??? To me this makes no sense at all. Either de-regulate them properly & let us hunt them year-round by any means nescesarry or ban their hunting altogether on public land. Landowners can now slaughter hogs wholesale, by any & all legal means & are allowed to admit 10 named hunters per year to hunt their land, which is fantastic as far as the control issue goes. However, we simply cannot legally take a pig on 90% of our public land which is where the TWRAs concern should surely be aimed.

The situation is much the same in Louisiana. The state WF wants more killed, but the regulations result in all public lands being pretty much a sanctuary for hogs, and as long as the current regs remain, hog populations will never decrease. The feds are more proactive. At least one NWR has a rifle season for them in March this year.

[Kevin Dill]

I would think that part of the solution lies in education and media. Take my state (Ohio) which has a budding pig population and the problems that go with them. Ohio needs to continue to educate ALL OHIOANS on the pig invasion and what they can do about it. They DO need to make it very clear that pigs are a danger to Ohio's wildlife and ecosystems, and that they are an invasive species to eradicate. Ohio should make this abundantly clear to every person who buys a license or hits the ODNR website for anything. The attitude must be "Pigs are not game animals. Feral pigs are a danger to our wildlife populations and should be destroyed on sight".

This same educational (and attitudinal) approach should be extended to all rural landowners and farmers. "Notify the DNR, and continue to kill as many as possible".

Part of the war is getting people OFF the fence about their feelings toward pigs. Like most of you, I have no problem killing a rat or mouse by any means at my disposal. Vermin, simply put. Feral pigs in Ohio need the same treatment, and that's my personal plan should they ever arrive at my farm. I submit that if pigs carried diseases that threatened our deer herd, the state and our hunters would kill them like roaches.

Maybe one other strategy is this: Make it illegal to possess a feral pig, dead or alive.

[Jeff Strubberg]

Alive, agreed, dead, all you've done is insure that a guy can't put a dead hog to good use feeding someone.

Let's start blasting and fill the larders at some of these food pantries that are constantly hurting.

[tuscarawasbowman]

Originally posted by Kevin Dill:
I would think that part of the solution lies in education and media. Take my state (Ohio) which has a budding pig population and the problems that go with them. Ohio needs to continue to educate ALL OHIOANS on the pig invasion and what they can do about it. They DO need to make it very clear that pigs are a danger to Ohio's wildlife and ecosystems, and that they are an invasive species to eradicate. Ohio should make this abundantly clear to every person who buys a license or hits the ODNR website for anything. The attitude must be "Pigs are not game animals. Feral pigs are a danger to our wildlife populations and should be destroyed on sight".

This same educational (and attitudinal) approach should be extended to all rural landowners and farmers. "Notify the DNR, and continue to kill as many as possible".

Part of the war is getting people OFF the fence about their feelings toward pigs. Like most of you, I have no problem killing a rat or mouse by any means at my disposal. Vermin, simply put. Feral pigs in Ohio need the same treatment, and that's my personal plan should they ever arrive at my farm. I submit that if pigs carried diseases that threatened our deer herd, the state and our hunters would kill them like roaches.

Maybe one other strategy is this: Make it illegal to possess a feral pig, dead or alive.

Being another Ohioan I 100% agree. The DNR in my opinion is taking the right steps but they need to do more to educate like you said. DNR has gone on record saying they DONT want pigs in Ohio. Now it's time to back that up a little more with flyers,education and whatever else it takes to get those animals outta here.

[robtattoo]

Originally posted by Jeff Strubberg:
Alive, agreed, dead, all you've done is insure that a guy can't put a dead hog to good use feeding someone.

Let's start blasting and fill the larders at some of these food pantries that are constantly hurting.

Absolutely  

[PICKNGRIN]

Apparently, feral hogs are making their way into southern Iowa.  Iowa DNR has a some info on them on their website.  They urge hunters to shoot them on sight.  I am not sure how big a problem it is.

[FarmerMarley]

Wow, very interesting thread going here. Obviously, it's a complicated topic.

I do like the idea of somehow killing two birds with one stone....Turning an overabundance of hogs into food for hungry people sounds good to me!

I'm really hoping to get at least one before spring.

[Kevin Dill]

For those states which have pigs and wish they didn't:

My point is do NOT in any way make the feral pig out to be a good animal. Educate hunters to understand that these are NOT game animals and should not be treated as such. Discourage sport hunting but encourage a "kill on sight" mentality. As for using them to feed the hungry; all well and good in theory, but show how you would realistically put tens of thousands of pounds of wild pig meat in the mouths of one state's people. If you treat this animal as a commodity, it begins to have value for certain people...and you're back to the drawing board again.

Tough though it may be, the best results would come from having every willing person with a weapon kill pigs like they would insects. Apply mercy to the ecosystem...not the animal.

I'm trying to imagine an elk hunter at 10,000 ft smiling as he admires a wet sow and ten piglets rooting through the elk wallow he's watching. Nice.

[Troy Breeding]

Some hunters look at hogs as a problem. Others look at them as another option for something to hunt since most states do not consider them as game and have no regs on them.

I've seen what they can go to the land and problems they cause.

I also look at them as another spieces to hunt.

I don't have to feed my family with what I kill so I consider hunting as a sport. So, I guess you can say I'm one of those caught on the fence.

As stated earlier I've tried to help from time to time when some farmer was having a problem, but more times than not I've been turned away. I've even offered to sign a release of liability. Most times when I've offered and been turned down, the farmer said they would rather have conservation take care of it.

Conservation says they feel like they are trying by sending hunters to help, but if the farmer turns away the help what else can they do? Most CO's have more pressing matters to deal with.

Since moving to OH I've yet to even see a hog or any sign of one. I've looked at the DNR site and it shows hog sighting in my area.

I've talked to the Conservation for my area and they say the few reports they have are most likely farm hogs that have slipped out of the pen.

Troy

[monterey]

I wonder if there are any health reg/issues regarding donating the meat to food pantries, etc.  Maybe some special processing requirements?

[FarmerMarley]

Details....I'm sure that logistically it would be a big pain in the ass to try to feed hungry people with wild pigs taken by hunters in the woods.
There are definitely a lot of legal and logistical barriers to that idea.

I used to work at a farm where we would end up composting tons of perfectly good organic produce even though there was a food bank up the road a couple miles. It always used to piss me off, but there was no easy way to get the food to who needed it. Wild pigs would be even more tricky than tomatoes though...

[smokin feathers]

we have done dog hunting contest and donated the meat and that works to an extent on using them, you can donate meat from trapped hogs too, but when it comes to really putting a hurt on them and gunning them from the air there is no time to pick them up or even mark them as you are chasing others, and you would have to have a whole team of folks on atvs to to keep up and wouldnt be able to get to alot of them. best thing is shoot them when you see them regargless of what it is with or where you hit them.

its fun to hunt them and they do eat great, but you will never get a handle on them doing that even patterning them with cameras and hunting all night long(though if your on a big field with some thermal gear and suppressors you can do some damage). they are vermin and have to be treated as such.

the hard part with controlling them is they move so much and are so nocturnal. they are here today and gone tomorrow and that makes it really tough. doing deer and elk depredation work it is easy to take them day or night, hogs you never know. I had a group tearing a hay field up the last couple of nights but couldnt get out there until last night, stayed half the night and only 1 boar came out by himself to meet the bullet and i had pictures of at least 30 from the previous couple of days.

I guess the main thing most have to remember is that this is a war and its not about being sporting or ethical, its about killing every one you come across regardless of means or methods as long as they are legal and do not harm non target species.