Apocalypse Sow: Can Anything Stop the Feral Hog Invasion?
texasmonthly.com
texasmonthly.com
Of course, hunting hogs with a rifle makes people feel like they're helping. But shooting at these hogs, even if you bag a few, actually diffuses a herd across wide areas. It breaks up what was previously a single, easily trackable group. The young hogs reproduce like crazy and soon you've got two or three as many hogs.
Other states have banned the practice of hunting for this reason, instead favoring the capture of the hogs. It seems to me that as long as it's profitable to hunt and spread these hogs, there will be an increasingly large hog problem in the US.
If separating results in three times as much reproductive success why do these animals group up in the first place?
Farmers that really want rid of them use big net/cage traps that catch a whole sounder at once, because escapees learn to spot the traps and spread the knowledge apparently. Not sure what they do with the meat.
That's a strange -- and dangerous -- thing to say for an American of European origin.
It’s a reference, of course, to “Leiningen Versus the Ants” by Carl Stephenson, http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/lvta.html.
Can’t hunting be more dignified?
PS: No vegetarian here - I just posted you a suckling pig recipe!
--- helicopters and truck mounted mini-guns and suppressed sniper rifles with $18k thermal optic.
This all sounds like people wanted to spend money on those things rather than humping around shooting day in day out to suppress the threat. Also it's an activity that costs money. So what's cheaper than dealing with the problem. Scaring it onto your neighbors property.
Not saying you can't wipe them out, but it's hard, even with expensive optics and firearms.
I like the idea of training military marksmanship hunting pigs, but there is a difference in environmental damage between a rifle, and machine guns.
You can actually, legally hunt the hogs from the air with automatic weapons. People have done it.
But it's really expensive, and not particularly efficient, nor is it methodical.
Hawaii has this problem as well, not the scope that Texas has, they have teams of professional hunters that go out at night to hunt them.
Folks want them gone, but at the same time they don't just want anyone running around on their land either. Some places in Texas have a bounty on them, $5-10, but you I don't know if you can just leave them to rot in place. With price of ammunition and gas, plus all the rest, $5 isn't necessarily a profit making enterprise.
I don't think anyone would want be around an area where 100 hogs were slaughtered and left to nature for composting. The ecosystem may well be able to reclaim only so much.
History begs to differ.
Do you really think in the history of militaries, they tend not to follow orders well?
Original European settlers brought over domesticated hogs during colonization. I believe to raise and to hunt. They eventually were abandoned or got out and starting breeding with wild hogs.
because they are domestic pigs gone feral, plus a minority of boar-pig hybrids resulting from the contact with wild boar.
> This is the original wild species of pigs (…) I think wild boar would be better
Feral hogs are not the same thing as wild boar. The latter are the ancestor species from which pigs descended, whereas the former are domestic pigs gone feral plus a minority of hybrids. Western wild boar have a chromosome count of 2n = 36, whereas pigs (including the majority of feral hogs that aren't hybrids) have a chromosome count of 2n = 38. Hybrids typically have 37 or 38 chromosomes.
> We also don't call wolves 'feral dogs,'
… because they aren't, just like wild boar aren't feral hogs. Wolves aren't domestic dogs who went feral but just wolves who stayed wolves. So the equivalent of the wolf in the porcine world would be the wild boar, not the feral hog, of which the equivalent in the canine world is… a feral dog.
Although the domestic pig as we know it today took hundreds of years to breed, just a few months in the wild is enough to make a domestic pig turn feral. It will grow tusks, thick hair, and become more aggressive. https://mybosstools.com/fun-facts-domestic-pigs/