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

Exactly. The whole Hatfield/McCoy thing got really kicked off over a hog.

Yup, and there were a lot more, and much more deadly feuds than that one. That one was just close to the New York Times.

A really excellent read: "The Backwoodsmen: Stockmen and Hunters Along a Big Thicket River Valley" by Thad Sitton. All about the way it was,
and why it was. This is a 310pg book from Oklahoma Press.

I'm not old enough to remember free range livestock, but I remember when anyone pretty much went wherever they wanted as far as land and hunting went. As long as you closed gates and didn't mess up stuff, nobody cared or was expected to care what you did. The only time you needed to watch where you went was that first week of deer season when you might not hunt in a certain area because that was where the "Johnson Camp" was located.

I actually remember not hunting areas during of our OWN property during that first weekend of deer season because that was a territory of another camp and they hunted there. Our camp was twenty miles away in the hills.

Things are different now. Leases finally killed that style. Once people got used to the idea of paying for a lease, they didn't want to waste any of their time messing around on somebody else's place. If they were paying for a lease, they wanted to be there. And if they were paying for it, they wanted to make sure that someone who wasn't paying for it wasn't there.

The land I lease is still open range. The last precinct, in the last county, in the State.

The issue then becomes to what extent did/do feral hogs require the presence of humans? The gist I get is that in our somewhat cherry-picked popular view of history the role of the hog in terms of ecological impact and economy is seriously overlooked.

Truly feral cattle for example, famously prospered in Texas after introduction even in the absence of humans, so did horses.

It could be, as implied here, that now that everyone and his brother ain't shooting every one they see as recounted here being the way it was in the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, that hog numbers can explode.

Certainly way back in the late 17th/early 18th century the first arrival of free-ranging hogs were a major pain to the crop-dependent Indians of New England and the source of many complaints. King Philip's bunch eventually adapted to the point they were eating pork for sustenance and using pigskin for leather.

At present, feral hogs in Mexico, feeding on acorns as they do, are regarded as a threat to some populations of the band-tailed pigeon, which also depends largely upon acorns. Current thinking is an abundance of hogs along the advancing frontier may have been one more of the nails in the coffin of the acorn- and mast-dependent passenger pigeon.

Birdwatcher

I'm going to need a link for that because I studied the case of the passenger pigeon pretty hard and I do not recall ever seeing hogs mentioned at all.

The passenger pigeon was killed simply because it couldn't nest. Once the northeast was covered in rails and telegraph lines, it was simply too easy for hundreds and even thousands of market hunters to descend on roosting sites and kill millions of birds in a week or two. And when the adult birds picked up and moved away to a new spot, rinse, wash, and repeat.

According to National Geographic, the introduction of swine into the Big Thicket, along with hunting, was what eradicated the black bear. This, they believe, was because the bears needed the fall acorns to survive hibernation.

Holy Smoke! Best of all outcomes, an inpromptu google leads to cool info.....

http://www.passengerpigeon.org/states/Texas.html


Numerous references allude to the importance of oak mast (acorns) in fattening free-ranging hogs and to the competition between wild pigeons and pigs for this resource. Upon their arrival the immense flocks of pigeons quickly decimated the food available to hogs, as well as to squirrels, turkeys, deer and other species that also fed on mast. Given this consequence, arrival of the pigeons generated considerable anxiety. In 1872, pigeons were destroying the mast in Cherokee and Madison counties. During 1874 Marion, Grayson, Houston, Smith, and Titus counties were adversely affected. Depletion of the mast was so great in Anderson and Jasper counties during 1875 that it threatened the food supply for hogs. Concern for the mast crop was reported during 1881 from Houston, Nacogdoches, Van Zandt, Bastrop, Burnet, and Smith counties.

The case for hogs being a threat to passenger pigeon comes from Chapter 6 in the excellent book "Disguised as the Devil: How Lyme Disease Created Witches and Changed History" (2008).

Birdwatcher

So, your still all saying that hogs are the best-adapted animal to most of the N.American ecosystem. Why would we fight that again? And doesn't anyone realize that it is a losing battle?

Discounting politicians, I've not heard of such. Having seen what they can do, in very short order, you should be careful what you wish for.