Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire 6 million wild hogs across the USA and Missouri has a plan

wisconsin had a small pop of wild hogs in the south west corner of the state, They never gained a foothold due to deer hunters going apeshit killing as many as possible + the cold cold winters with lots of snow they were poorly adapted.

In Wisconsin I don't think they can breed twice in a year. Too cold, no food in winter. In Wisconsin, by the time winter is done the woods is almost lifeless in huge areas. You can go a long ways and not even see a track of anything. Not even a squirrel or rabbit track. There is nothing for a pig to eat,, unless he lives off of browse like a deer. Do they eat browse like a deer?? Anyway. And like acooper1983 said, we had some. Every cotton pickin deer hunter wanted to shoot one. Farmers got down right mad about folks asking. When it is 20 below zero an mature buck will come in to a pile of corn right in the daytime. A hog will do the same in the middle of winter. We have an advantage over the southern hunters and can track them in the snow for miles. Just a thought, not saying I know it all about hogs.

they eat any and everything.

I think a pure strain russian boar could prolly make it, but a feral hog i dont think would do well as cold as it gets and as snowy as it gets.

You might track them in snow, but hogs are hard to pattern. They might decide to "travel", and go an amazing distance before actually stopping. As to shooting them at night with semi-autos and night vision, maybe so, maybe no. Helicopter hunts with machine guns, as also stated, haven't worked to eradicate them, they just learn to run and hide at the sound of a chopper, and a suppressed rifle won't attract hogs, you still have to find them. The very best way to move them off a property is to dog 'em, and dog 'em hard. They don't like dogs, for good reason, and will move to another area when pressured hard. That's really about the best you can hope for, is to reduce their numbers some, and move them from one area to another. The combination of traps and dogs works well, but again, the majority will survive and just move somewhere else. And, yes, they'll eat about anything, from the bark off the roots of pine saplings to cattle feed.

they might find winter kill pretty tasty.

Yeah, the Russian wild boars do OK. There's a place up in the UP, a high-fence operation, that has 'em. Buddy of mine hunted them in winter there a few years ago. The boars are magnificent.

Only thing that puzzles me is why they took so long to reach present numbers, what was holding 'em back?

I have references to enormous feral hog numbers in East Texas in the early nineteenth century, so much so you couldn't camp out without them overrunning your camp site, and of droves of poor folk living on nothing but feral hogs.

What happened to 'em all between then and now?

Way back in the early Eighteenth Century there were so many free range hogs in New England that the local Indians actually switched to a hog-based economy. King Phillip, of King Phillip's war, being active in the hog trade, disputes related to hog ownership in part kicking off that major bloodletting.

What happened to all them pigs since then?

Likewise in England by the Sixteenth Century, wild boars were exterminated. How on earth did they pull that off back then?

Birdwatcher

Some great question there Birdwatcher, good thinking. I don't have a clue on the answers though.

disease more than likely.

Why do you think that's amazing? We never had to deal with them so how would we know how bad they can be.

In New York State, "Cochecton" down around Narrowsburg is a Delaware Algonquin term dating from at least the early Eighteenth Century, translating to "place of wild hogs".

"Coshocton" as in Coshocton County Ohio, means the same thing, likewise originating with Delaware usage after they removed there.

So it ain't like feral hogs weren't ever in those places before either.

Birdwatcher

Idaho has a very small herd located near JC Strike Reservoir in the so. central part of the state. The IDFG says that they're not wildlife so they don't come under their jurisdiction. They'd like to see them all shot before they start affecting the wildlife. If you see one, bang...although private land trespassing regulations do apply.

There's only 1 way they could have got to where they are...illegal introduction. It's way too far from any other population for a small herd to have just wandered in without help.

When the next great depression hits there will be no more feral hogs.

They are prolific and adaptable. About as smart as an ear of corn.

Up until right around the time that I was born, Arkansas had free range and you had to fence animals out of you crops instead of fencing to keep them in. As a young man there were a few pockets of wild hogs still around but by the time that I was old enough to hunt, they were all gone, in this area. Wild hogs here disappeared between 1950 and 1960. People where they were shot them and trapped them and somehow exterminated them. miles

Hunting with dogs maybe? Maybe that makes the difference, I dunno if hogs can lose a tracking hound, kill it maybe, but out-fox it on a scent trail? I dunno.

Birdwatcher

Apparently wild hogs were in a lot of places that they no longer are. What happened to them? Do ya think one day they all just walked down to Texas to live?

Just this very minute I'm wondering if hunting with dogs ain't the answer to running down every last one of 'em in an area.

That's how it was done back in history, bringing the pig to bay first and then killing it.

Birdwatcher

During the free range days here most people had a stock dog that would ear a hog. Now these hogs were not as wild as a Russian boar (maybe) but they would catch the sows and mark the pigs (castrate and ear mark) with the mark that the sow had. Maybe by keeping the boar population down it helped with the numbers. I don't know and all the ones that I could ask are now dead. miles