(Copied From NOLA.COM Web Site)

BATON ROUGE -- Feral hogs, beware. Legislators have you in their sights.

The Louisiana House voted 87-0 Tuesday to allow the trapping of feral hogs -- which the law calls "non-game quadrupeds" -- year round and without requiring a permit. House Bill 294 by Rep. Major Thibaut, D-New Roads, now heads to the Senate for debate.

Thibaut said the wild hogs reproduce several times a year and have dozens of offspring at a time, creating a growing problem for farmers and some suburban landowners. Thibaut said his bill would not require a special permit to trap or bag the wild hogs, but it does give the Department of Wild Life and Fisheries the power to issue guidelines on taking the critters.

Thibaut said if the feral hogs are hunted at night, his bill allows hunters to use any type of firearm, but the hunter must notify the parish sheriff's office 24 hours before blasting away.

If his bill passes, Thibaut said, the only place the feral hogs "will be going is to the skinning shed and the barbecue pit."

Earlier, the House voted 90-4 for House Bill 169 by Cameron Henry, R-Jefferson, to allow silencers on weapons used to hunt nuisance animals, such as feral hogs and nutria.

Henry said the silencers are available now, but any individual who gets one has to obtain a special permit from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. "This would allow limited use of them" for hunting, Henry said.

Henry's bill also goes to the Senate along with House Bill 64 by Rep. Bobby Badon, D-Carencro, that would allow crawfish farmers or landowners to shoot not only possum, raccoons and nutria, but also otters, mink and muskrat -- all creatures that poach on crawfish farms, eat unharvested crawfish and ruin equipment.

Badon's bill allows the farmer to blast away at the nuisance animals with either a rimfire rifle no larger than .22-caliber or a shotgun no larger than 12 gage that uses nontoxic shot no larger than BB-size pellets. The hunting can be conducted year round during daylight or night hours "with no bag limit," according to the bill.

I was watching a show "Hogs Gone Wild" and it was a real eye opener. One would never know the damage and problems they create unless they live in a hog infested area. Its no wonder the Wisconsin DNR wants any "wild hog" shot.

A guy that was shooting a rifle at the range on Tuesday mentioned that he used it for shooting hogs. I told him I wish we had hogs around here. But maybe the damage they would cause wouldn't be worth it. It would just be nice to have game to hunt all year long. After I said that he said that they are over run with hogs in Texas, and they just shoot them and let them lay there. He said the Buzzards have to eat too. Not too long ago a relative showed me some trail camera picture of deer and hogs feeding at a game feeder. Not all at the ame time but on different occations.

Looks like another state is getting serious about wild hogs. The state of OK has never got it right despite the fact that the southern part of the state is totally over-run with wild hogs.

i've trapped and shot over 35 wild hogs off one 160 acre place since December. Was nice to go there last weekend and not find one hog track after the recent rain. Deer tracks were all over the place for a change.

i'll not let a hog lay and rot. They all go to someone who wants hog meat. It's a lot of work to field dress and skin hogs but its worth it. Wild hogs do not have three litters in one year. Some wild sows do not even breed until they are over two years old. The vast majority of sows have only one litter per year. Litters range in size from 4 to 12 pigs. If the sow raises half of her pigs to 40 pounds she has done a good job: Coyotes and bobcats get a lot of pigs.

If hoof and mouth disease ever breaks out in LA, OK and TX the cattle industry will be ruined because the disease will be quickly spread by wild hogs.

That disease.. that is what that show was explaining. The hogs basically act as carriers and spread it to the cattle. On the show there was one rancher that was telling about his loss should such an outbreak happen. That's why these people were killing hogs on his place.

Falcon.. are the land owners happy to see someone want to hunt hogs down there, or are they more interested in making money over them?

In Missouri the they are KOS according to the MDC. No limit and basically no restrictions.

It's hard to find a place to hunt unless you know someone. i have permission to hunt a few places in OK and one in TX by the Red River. Some farmers are afraid of the liability. Some have been bitten by hunters who left their gates open, cut their fences or shot livestock. Most of the ranches are leased to deer hunting clubs who do not shoot enough hogs.

Wife and i are lucky to own three places of our own: None are fit for farming except for hay cutting or pasture. We don't want cows because they mess up the ponds and eat the game plots.

California is also a state with a huge hog population.
There's a National Feral Swine Mapping System that updates their hog distribution map monthly that's partly based on sighting reports:

http://128.192.20.53/nfsms/

Their map is slightly different than the standard feral hog map below that acknowledges known populations in places like West Virginia, North Carolina, Wisconsin etc...


http://www.hunter-ed.com/wildlife/large_mammals.htm

My state only has a very small but growing number of moose that have recently been moving in from neighboring states and they cause a lot of damage to forests by stripping the bark off many trees.
They've become not just a nuisance but a deadly hazard on public roadways in many parts of New England where not enough hunting permits are issued.
They're like having a horse on the loose in an urban/suburban environment.