Are Wild Hogs Territorial?
 

There is an article in September issue of Field And Stream magazine referencing Dr. Stephen Ditchkoff of Auburn University. Dr. Ditchkoff and his graduate students accomplished some very serious wild hog studies on Ft. Benning, GA. Several graduate students based their theses on that study.

It appears that wild hogs are eating lots of snakes and amphibians:

http://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0SO8...yQ_m4k2B26o2Uc-


Dr. Ditchkoff says sounders are territorial and their areas do not overlap.

http://www.fieldandstream.com/articl...st-feral-swine

I know nothing about the habits of wild hogs on Ft. Benning, GA.

Couple years ago during the serious drought i saw a sounder of 45-50 wild hogs SE of Faxon, OK that i had observed several times 20-25 miles west of that area. That sounder hung around their new area and we eliminated about 30 of number.

Hybrid Hogs may be evolving and it seems they can be some different from true Boar. 800 acres home range sounds way small to me. Sounders may settle into an area and if unmolested stay there for months, but here they typically cover a rough circle with a radius of 5-10 miles Pi X R squared. Roughly 100-300 square miles.

They may settle into an area as long as there is food, cover and water, but the home range can be huge. Depends on geography, rivers to be crossed, food supply, weather, hunting pressure and other factors.

We aren't interested in eradicating them, we try to manage them and use basically the same techniques that we have been using for 500-600 years.

Our basic philosophy is not to let them settle in and try to keep them on the move. All the farmers suffer a little, none suffers all the damage.

Planting Corn for fuel and bureaucratic meddling has changed the game. The Corn accelerates growth and sexual maturity. Giant corn fields are a dandy habitat for Hogs. The Bureaucrats (policy makers) are political and change the rules on a whim. Makes no difference to them that the techniques for managing Boar has evolved over centuries, they know better.

They tend to forage in squad and platoon sized units (10-20), sometimes for short periods in larger groups, but usually not for long.

If somebody shoots the lead Sow, the Sounder often breaks apart, sometimes for months. About half the time it breaks down into age groups. The other half the time one of the leaders older daughters takes over, but reorganization may be a long term process and not short term. It can take them awhile to reorganize, days, weeks and sometimes months. IMO this is the reason they discourage hunting them some places, a cohesive Sounder is easier to trap.

Our solution is to hunt them in the middle age years. Big enough to be worthwhile, not so large they reproduce (much). We avoid shooting the lead Sow, it makes the Sounder much more predictable. The lead sow teaches them how to survive, how to cross the road, where the safe places are, where to find food and how to avoid hunters.

Ours isn't a perfect system, but it has been working successfully for hundreds of years, not so well the last 20 years. The bureaucrats insist on fixing it beyond all repair (FUBAR).

http://www.fieldandstream.com/articl...st-feral-swine

I thought this quote was interesting. I obviously do not know how much ranges will overlap, but I do know that notable exceptions for overlap are where you have concentrated resources, such as a crop field, where multiple sounders will use the same resource. In dry areas, the concentrating factor can be water sources.

While sounders may be "territorial," it isn't as if they are known to defend their territories.

Boars, on the other hand, are not territorial and some cruise over long distances.

I thought this quote was interesting, especially because at least part is not accurate.
Farm hogs may not crap where they eat, but ferals certainly will. I have found hog poop under the feeder on numerous occasions.

Here is a video a buddy of mine just posted showing a hog pooping right before getting to eat, but you can see him searching the ground the entire time before he gets to the food.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YZH...ature=youtu.be

There are few absolutes when it comes to hogs.

I'm with Double Naught. Few rules will apply all the time, you can pick out tendencies though. From what I learned, Hog hunting in California and Europe, Feral Hogs and true Boar have many of the same tendencies. I think most of the differences are adaptations to specific areas.

I've seen grain fields covered in Hog crap. The Hogs also chew up the grain and spit the hulls out and swallow the juice. You find piles of chewed grain husk all over the place.

Two smaller sounders will join up, I've seen it numerous times. You have to figure Hogs are social, the social structure isn't always static, especially for adolescent Hogs and Boar. And the structure changes if the sounder is scattered by hunting. The orphan members may join another sounder. What I'm saying is the social structure can be fluid for various reasons. But the base unit always seems to eventually revert to the a Lead Sow, a few of her older daughters and then it kinds of pyramids in age groups, with the younger hogs being more numerous. Adolescents seem to fairly often split off from the main group and cut corners, run ahead and do what teenagers do.

I think maybe these guys were seeing what I've noticed on numerous occasions. Some places tend to have fairly large fairly static game populations and it isn't exclusive to Hogs.

Military bases often have a tendency to have large, fairly static, game populations. Amazing to see a fully mature Bull Red Deer (elk) walking though an artillery impact area. Few people out there, no hunters. They get used to all the shooting and bombs going off. Or an ammo storage facility overrun with Roe Deer. Whenever we'd go for Tank gunnery practice, I'd take my fishing pole and crossbow. I've caught some really nice Trout in a stream right under the Tank guns. Shot some nice porkers raiding the garbage cans in tent city. Not many hunters on a military base, game seems to find it more hospitable than other places, even with all the noise and bombs going off. Military bases are IMO kind of a micro habitat that various game animals adapt to. It also tells you something about the more common habitats, when the wild game prefers the bombs.

Yes, adapted to specific areas, and I would add also maybe to particular situations.

--------------------------------

Thinking back to above, "territorial" is probably the wrong terminology to use, though that was the terminology from the article. Since hogs do not actually defend their territories, they are not territorial. In the case of the article, they simply have non-overlapping home ranges.