HansETX

Well... it happened again. The first time it was the Mother-in-Law's house and now this time it's the Brother-in-Law that got visited by the pig fairies in the middle of the night. Now, I believe in Karma and I've been on the good and bad of that, but these Wild Hogs are destroy our yards one family member after the other. This is the worst yard damage that I've ever seen..

I was able to drop 3 of them and had one that dang near jumped in my lap..

MudderChuck

Nice video, I enjoyed it, thanx.

HansETX

Thanks for watching! The State of Texas is considering poisoning wild hogs to stop the spread but I think that they are just trying to figure out how to do it.

MudderChuck

I read some of the articles about a year ago from Texas A&M, they didn't sound too encouraging. They were trying to figure out something that would kill Hogs, but wouldn't get in the food chain and hurt other animals.

In the sixties in So. Cal. the ranchers put up pens high enough to keep cattle out, but low enough for a Deer to jump and put poison Corn in there. The idea was to poison the Deer and keep them from transmitting disease to the Cattle. This was going on just on the other side of the mountain from a Condor preserve. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to figure out what happened, they ended up poisoning Condors.

I doubt poison is the answer.

Traps seem to be the more efficient way to do it.

HansETX

Yeah, I don't like the idea of poisoning... Trapping and hunting seem to be the only option but I don't think we can shoot enough to control the population.

falcon

There is big money in wild hogs. The hog hunting "ranches" charge hunters big bucks to kill fenced in hogs. Hog doggers and trappers sell wild hogs to the "ranches" and to meat processors. Until recently OK Bubbas were releasing hogs into the wild. Many of the hogs i killed looked like dirty show pigs, they came from stock sales.


The Oklahoma Department of Agriculture promulgated new rules for wild hogs.


1. No new hog hunting "ranches" will be licensed.


2. Folks transporting wild hogs must notify the OK Ag Dep't 24 hours in advance of the transport of wild hogs.


3. Hog doggers and hog trappers may not place wild hogs in pens. The hogs must remain in trailers until they are transported.


4. All hog hunters at the "ranches" must buy a $25 hog hunting license.


http://www.kellysolutions.com/OK/swineindex.asp


The hog population is down dramatically in some of the areas i hunt. There are no more dirty show pigs.


This year i've by hunted down and killed over 25 large boar hogs. Killed another 40 or so mature sows and about 60 pigs.


The owners of the hog hunting "ranches" are crying:


https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q...9AF5&FORM=VIRE

rogerstv

What do you believe is the driving factor behind the lack of population control?? Population too large, lack of hunters, breed too often, people releasing them, too much cover.....

We have coyote problems in my part of IL to the extent hunters cannot eradicate them. We may control the population, but can not eradicate which in my opinion is the majority consensus. But, we don't eat coyote. So, not many hunters willing to make the effort it takes to successfully hunt them. Most every hunter I know will shoot a coyote every time presented with the opportunity e.g. while deer or turkey hunting.

Thinking like a simpleton, I would believe if pork chops, ribs, bacon, and sausage were available 24/7/365 for the expense of a bullet people would have the population in check if not extinct. By all accounts I've read, the meat is good.

If the feral hog problems are as reported and shown by your video, why does it take $500+ to hunt private property in the south for an out-of-state hunter?

I hope the government does not start a poisoning program. Doomed to fail.

Oldtimr

The problem behind the lack of population control in the south where the problem is the worst is that once a population has been established they reproduce so rapidly it is almost impossible to get ahead of it. They can have 3 litters a year and they can have the first litter before they are a year old from what I understand. I do not see poison being a solution because of the risk of secondary poisoning. Who ever laid the poison would have to be on site to immediately remove the carcasses in order to do it safely. Trapping is the better solution and in areas of the south those trapped hogs are provided to food banks and utilized, something you cannot do with poisoned animals. Short of a disease that would rage through out the populations, I doubt we will ever see the end of wild hogs in the US. Remember, it was the Spanish explorers who initially brought them here and released them for food for themselves. How long ago was that? Just look at how much flooding there has been in the south because of hurricanes etc. Flooding breaks up sounders and spreads them to places they may not have been and then they expand their populations there. I believe they are here to stay.

MudderChuck

Here we have less of a problem, true Wild Boar only breed once year, while the escaped domestic hogs and the Wild Boar domestic hybrids in the U.S. can throw a litter multiple times a year.

But we have a problem here also, part of the problem here is they are planting a lot of Corn, Corn seems to accelerate growth and make them sexually mature quicker.

And thirdly is over regulation, some by well meaning types who just can't resist drafting new laws and regulations (just to justify their own existence). And others who are anti hunting and think they are doing wildlife a favor by lobbying for ever stricter, hunting, Hunter and license laws. It is possible to regulate something to death or make it so difficult or complicated people just give up and go do something else.

One county/state here outlawed any hunting, you hear stories every day about Boar mugging little old ladies for their groceries on the way home from the store. In another state they are talking about active duty soldiers hunting them down. Might be fun for the soldiers, likely to be really dangerous for hikers and mushroom hunters. I have a mental image of the woods echoing with the sound of full auto fire.

https://media.giphy.com/media/v8omVdExrQ9ig/giphy.gif

falcon

Quote:

What do you believe is the driving factor behind the lack of population control?? Population too large, lack of hunters, breed too often, people releasing them, too much cover.....

All the above plus bureaucratic incompetence.

Since 1999 I’ve spent thousands of hours hunting, trapping and observing wild hogs. Most of the wild hogs around Cache, OK have Eurasian boar blood from imported hogs released all over the area. Wild hogs in the other areas I hunt don’t appear to have these genes. Until recently many of the hogs i killed in one area resembled dirty show pigs. They were purchased and turned loose.

The fish and game biologists take information from commercial hog raising operations and apply it to wild hogs: That is a big mistake. Wild sows don’t have three litters per year, that’s impossible. In a year when mast is plentiful or where feeders are running 27/7 some wild sows may have two litters per year. Many of the wild sows we hunt and trap have never borne a litter.

Wild hogs live a hard scrabble life compared with domestic hogs. Any sow that raises four pigs to six months of age is a great mother. Any lactating sow will nurse any pig from the sounder. They will even nurse stray pigs.

For many years some friends and I have used portable hog traps. But portable traps don’t work well. You catch a hog or a few, the rest escape and are trap shy. Corral traps are the way to go. One young guy made enough money in high school trapping wild hogs to pay for four years of college. He caught up to 38 hogs in corral traps.

The fish and game “experts” in states with budding wild hog problems never apply methods that have worked in other states. They hire folks to study the problem.