Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Wisconsin free of feral hogs at last.

Thanks to U.S. Dept of Agricultural, Wisconsin is now feral swine free. Now they are going to take what's left of the $20 million congress gave them and concentrate their eradication efforts to the south.

Good luck the government is coming to help you.

http://www.swnews4u.com/m/section/163/article/26425/

Porcine marauder meets his match
David Krier
Apr 16, 9:04 a.m.
By DAVID KRIER

A 350-pound feral wild boar that had been tearing up the landscape around Bell Center for years recently met his match in the form of J. D. McComas, a USDA feral swine/disease technician who had been tracking the beast since last June and finally caught up with him thanks to the March 22 snowstorm.

“He was a fully mature, very evasive boar with plenty of food and places to hide,” said McComas, who is based in Sun Prairie but has been working with seven landowners along Sand Creek between Bell Center and Rolling Ground. “He disappeared for the winter, which was very unusual. I don’t know where he went.”

McComas had 12 trail cameras set up in the area and had photographed the animal, estimated to be 5-8 years old, a number of times over the past 10 months. He had also collected scat samples and recorded hoof prints.

But his big break came following the late March snowstorm when he caught the animal on his trail camera and was able to then track him through the snow, jumping him from his bed and fatally shooting the big boar.

McComas is part of the state’s Feral Swine Task Force, which is a collaboration between the DNR and USDA to eradicate feral pigs in Wisconsin. It is part of a national effort that began after Congress recently allocated $20 million to implement a national feral swine management program in all 39 states where there is a recognized feral swine population.

“We’re starting in the north and working our way south to states like Texas where the problem is huge,” McComas said. In Texas it is estimated that 3.5 million feral swine do $60 million in crop damage each year. Several counties pay bounties of $5-$10 per pig tail, with Caldwell County near Austin paying out 5,500 bounties in the first nine months of 2014 alone. Companies like Helibacon near Houston offer two-hour helicopter hog hunts with AR-15 machine guns for $1,800. Hog hunter Bubba Ortiz shot 469 feral pigs in the city of San Antonio last year alone.

In Wisconsin, the feral swine population is mainly located in central and northwest Crawford County. In September 2008, a 55-year-old former Gays Mills area game farm owner was accused of releasing 31 feral hogs near his farm on Feb. 9, 2002. It is believed those feral swine are the origin of the wild pig population in Crawford County.

Robert Scott Johnson, who owned the hard Rock Elk Farm on Little Haney Road, was accused of releasing a trailer load of wild hogs that he brought to the area from San Marcos, Texas. Witnesses said he wanted to establish a population of wild hogs around his elk ranch so hunters could also hunt them.

Over the years private hunters and the DNR have trapped and hunted the descendants of that first group of wild hogs to the point that they may have now been eliminated with McComas’ recent kill. At a public meeting in January 2009, the Wisconsin State Director of USDA Wildlife Services, Jason Suckow, estimated the Crawford County feral swine population at 10 animals.

Between 2002 and 2009, wildlife management officials estimated that nearly 300 feral pigs had been killed in the Gays Mills/Petersburg/Bell Center area.

“We can eliminate them right here, right now,” Suckow said at the 2009 meeting. “As long as we have co-operation from everyone.”

McComas said that time may have now arrived, although he couldn’t be positive that all feral pigs in the area had been eliminated.

"All I was able to detect in all this time was that one big board," he said. "We are going to continue to monitor this area for quite a while and we want to work with area land owners right away."

"the Wisconsin State Director of USDA Wildlife Services, Jason Suckow, estimated the Crawford County feral swine population at 10 animals."

If there are even 10 left, that can turn into a hundred or more in a year's time. Better keep after 'em until they are ALL eliminated.

Myron

Hog hunter Bubba Ortiz

is this his baptized name?

Hunted this area for years. Once in my teens I was squirrel hunting with a Ruger 10-22 on a large dormant farm. Heard something really noisy coming through the woods across a draw from me, and saw a couple large swine with about a dozen little ones. Never knew if they were feral or just escaped from a neighbors pen. I did know enough to just sit still and let them feed through.. rather than see whether the 40 grain .22 was a match for mama pig.

Ha.

Not going to happen in Wi.

Yet, people charge you if you want to come shoot some. Isn't that like me charging the Orkin man to come kills bugs under my house?

That estimate of 10 was in 2009, but you are right we must be vigilant.

roundoak,

Yes, I noticed that too, but how does anyone know when they are all gone? They are pretty good at staying out of sight, and there are too many square miles of territory to scout it all thoroughly.


We supposedly have a few in Ohio, but they seem to be kept in check by a few guys who hunt them aggressively. No limit, 24/7, year 'round with any weapon - rifle, etc.

Myron

Fun to shoot, good to eat, but they are vermin. I wouldn't wish them on anyone.

Exactly.

Hogs in Texas aren't a problem at all. If they were there would be folks begging someone to come kill them instead of charging an arm and both legs to kill one or two.

Several years ago my son and I went down to try and find a place to shoot a hog. Ended up talking with a game warden thinking he may know where problem hogs were, who, at the of the conversation gave me his card and asked me to call him if I found someone who would let us kill hogs.

Hogs in Texas are nothing more than a highly profitable renewable resource.

BS, you can't kill them all. Hogs will be back in greater numbers than ever. We shoot everyone we see on our place in Ms. We also trap them and run them with dogs and stab them. Once you think you have them under control. 50-100 more will show up.

Eddie

Hope we never see them here.

Typical reporter.

As a side note, USDA Wildlife Services is NOT a regulatory agency. They try to help with coyotes, hogs, invasive grasses, and the like.

They have also been doing so with a rapidly dwindling budget. Obama has basically de-funded them because the tree and bunny huggers don't care much for killing coyotes.

Perhaps this is the shot in arm the agency needed to continue.

Idaho has only 1 very small herd. It's been there for a long time and for some unknown reason, they haven't spread, possibly because it's a high desert area and there isn't enough feed. The IDFG website says that there aren't any but my partner saw some of them last summer while fishing. Considering where they are, they had to have been released. It's too isolated for them to have wandered in on their own.

Wisconsin free of feral hogs? You obviously haven't been to a tailgating party at Lambeau........

You think??

Hang around a while!!

Now, I might be wrong and the southern boys here will say I'm full of BS. I doubt Wisconsin would ever have a hog problem. The reason is cause the winters are very harsh, there isn't much to eat in the winter for them. In summer there is plenty of food but not for 3 months , the ground is frozen down for 3'. Also, in fall there is 300,000 bow hunters in this state and 600,000 gun deer hunters wishing there was a deer to shoot. If a hog comes by they would be shot on the spot. Coyote and bear hunters would be more than willing to track these hogs through the snow and kill them. Any hunter could track these pigs , or bait them in. Also, they can't reproduce nearly as fast as down south.. . And if we were down to 10 hogs with no help from the government, I think they made my point. I have also looked into " hog hunt" down south. Everyone wants me to pay them for a lease, or pay for a hunt of some sort . The excuse seemed to be,, ,,, ,, wweeelllll, hunters on my land is a liability. Ya, right.. Several of us on another sight replied, with some very negative posts to the land owners that were complaining , but then making excuses when several on the board offered to shoot some.

Why haven't wild hogs "taken over" Europe and Russia?

Are they simply filling an unfilled niche here in the USA?