Originally Posted by
falcon
MudderChuck is right: Hogs do some serious damage to crops and the environment. The potential for far greater damage exists: Imagine an outbreak of hoof and mouth disease spread by wild hogs.
Hogs may be responsible for the spread of E Coli to a spinach field in a case where three folks died. E. Coli spread by wild hogs has gotten into pristine streams.
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/13/12/07-0763_article
i don't hear a lot of complaints abut hog damage from my numerous OK farmer/ranchers friends. They are more concerned about drought, green bugs in the wheat and boll weevils.
There is one big problem in attempting to control the wild hog population; the states don't talk to each other. There seems to be little or no state to state coordination.
The same thing going on here, all kinds of hunting has been politicized. Politics drives the regulation, not common sense. Sixteen states in Germany, two have a Hog hunting ban.
It really isn't funny but I laugh when I hear some of the stories coming out of the Hog friendly states. One kind of sticks in my mind, a little old lady went shopping on her bicycle, a Hog knocked her off her bicycle and ate her groceries, pretty much the definition of a mugging. Hogs seem to have a thing about bicycles, especially the young boars, a lot like dogs, some go after them. The same people that write pages of leash laws for Dogs think Hogs running wild through town are a good thing.
Another state wants to enlist the military to help control the Hog population. The politicians think a bunch of soldiers running through the woods with automatic weapons is the answer.
My State is biting it's own tail, getting a hunting license here can cost $2000, the test is 1600 questions. Mostly a spin on gun control, they make it so hard to get a hunting license getting a gun legally is near impossible. The reasoning being if you aren't a hunter what do you need a gun for? Locally they advertised for hunters in the newspaper to help with the Hog problems. The state forest managers charge way to much for a Hog hunt. Policy is seriously fragmented and there seems to be no coordination, long range planning or forethought.
For hundreds of years there was some sort of balance between the number of hunters and the Hog population here. Since it got politicized, for various reasons, things have gone way out of balance. All the states have hog problems, in some it is totally out of control.
The latest brainstorm is to reintroduce wolves to control the Hog population. All I have to say about that one is FUBAR. People see these videos if people interacting with semi tame wolves and think they are all like that, cuddly wolf toys. While in some towns in Russia people don't go outside unarmed because of the wolves.
In England since the Fox hunting ban there have been numerous instances of Fox chewing on babies in their cribs. Mange is a plague. And the people feeding the Fox and thinking how cute they are have no idea how many parasites that a Fox is spreading around in their gardens.
I honestly think things are going to get way worse before they get better.