BPS, i can understand your concern; you have never dealt with hundreds of hogs on your property. Every hog we shoot or trap gets eaten by someone. BTW: Its a lot of work.
I also have been told if you have a hog problem and think your going to even put a dent in the population just by going out and hunting you are sadly mistaking
You were told right. Hogs are an invasive species-vermin. One cannot control the hog problem by hunting alone. i tried that on our three properties for years while the hog population expotentially increased to the detriment of the deer and small game.
A sounder of hogs traveling across country is like a giant vacuum cleaner going over the land: They eat all the eggs of ground nesting birds; they eat the smaller turtles. At one of our places the quail population went to nearly zero. Beginning in the winter of 2010 we trapped hogs there with a vengeance: The quail population has rebounded nicely. Some big boar hogs get a taste for fawns; i've seen that. They also eat young calves.
Contrary to the myth put out by the TV hog hunting shows; hog dogging does not work. The dogs hit a sounder of hogs and they catch one or two; the rest run off to another place to commit their havoc. They will be return.
Falcon.. I was reading that you can catch some diseases from handling these wild hogs with your bare hands.. is that true?
Yes, it is true. i sometimes hog hunt with a medical doctor who puts on long medical gloves that extend above the elbow before field dressing hogs. Dollar store kitchen gloves do it for me.
http://www.huntinghog.com/wild-hog-d...and-parasites/
Feral hogs, like any animal, have the potential to carry
diseases and parasites. Although they have the ability to spread these diseases to livestock and humans, the transfer from feral hogs to humans and livestock is not well documents.There are two diseases associated with feral hogs and
Russian wild boar that have been documented. Feral hogs can commonly carry pseudorabies and swine brucellosis, although many hogs do not. Other diseases feral hogs may carry are tuberculosis, tularemia, and even anthrax.
There's a learning curve to successfully trapping them.
Semisane, it was a very long learning curve for me. But we finally got it right.
Nothing dulls a hunting knife like field dressing dirty hogs.