Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Don’t Shoot Feral Hogs in Missouri

Arkansas did the same thing. Then this year started hunting them out of helicopters. I guess shooting them does work. We don't have them yet where I normally hunt. But I did happen onto a family in the Ozark national Forest once. I shot the 4 pigs I saw in the head and passed on the boar. Those 20 pound pigs were some of the best meat I ever ate. The sow ran at me and I shot for her shoulder running. She dropped but got back up while I was reloading and hopped over a ridge where I couldn't see to shoot again. I wish I had a place closer to kill a few piglets to eat every year.

Had the same issue here in Washington State. They found feral hogs in a wildlife management unit outside of Moses Lake. Instead of opening unit to hunters they spent conservation money to hire gun in helicopter to kill them.

They eradicated coons in SE Alaska. Much feral stuff in AK was government sponsored. Reindeer, elk, bison, pheasant and much more.

You can’t hunt them out, and unless you happen to trap the only sounder in its entirety before they get established, I don’t really think that you can trap them out. YOU CAN run them out. If you get after them with dogs enough, you’ll run them out of an area until a new sounder moves in. Then you run that one out. Sometimes you can get rid of them for a couple of years that way.

But the way they are, by the time you notice that you have a few hogs, you are overrun with hogs before you know it.

If they'd quit putting piles of corn out there would be fewer. We stopped putting corn feeders out for the deer two years ago, haven't seen a hog or even a track since.

We got rid of Elk, wolves, buffalo, passenger pigeons and almost all of the deer in the East without any govt intervention.

I'm not sold on that as being a cause either.

Down here the hogs prefer to stay in the thick creek bottoms where they eat what is there. You don't see them in times of heavy rain and plenty of food. When you do see them again, it's shocking how much they have multiplied.

I do brush control on some ranches where no feeders exist at all. They have hogs too.

The olive farm that I manage has lots of hogs, but no feeders. But it has lots of water...

I'm thinking the water is more critical than the feed. The hogs only seem to spread westward along the waterways.

tain't many in the desert...

Funny! My thought when I read the OP was "I bet they want to buy a helicopter and have some fun!". They just need enough pigs to justify it.


Jerry

Hunting out of a chopper is pretty expensive per animal.

More than most places want to pay.

And again, you have to maintain, or they come back.

MDC flew current river for 2 days last year,spent $30k doing it,, not one pig was killed,, that month I had 2 friends kill 44,, 1 killed 10 in a trap the other killed the rest in 2 weeks with dogs and horses,, when Im squirrel hunting and I see hog,I will kill hog,,If I run up on an MDC trap I will back away,, but this not hunting the kings boar on kings land or we will ticket you Mr taxpaying peasant will not work for me,, period,,

All of Indiana over a hundred years ago, with muzzle loaders.

Not quite the same thing we are talking about here, is it?

They are like any other vermin, rats, mice, hogs. If you have them and then you FEED them, you will have MORE of them. The more they are fed, the more you will have.

I’ve said the feed thing for a long time. And though hogs certainly don’t need corn to thrive, that extra bit of nutrition might be the difference between a sow having two litters in a year and three. And then it might be the difference between three or four piglets surviving long enough to breed and seven or eight.

I wish someone would introduce some feral Maine Lobsters to OKLAHOMA!

Are you NOT talking about killing out wild hogs?

They were hunted out of Indiana along with deer as well.

From the original settler times to the mid to late 1800's ALL HOGS RAN WILD through out Indiana AT LEAST from the OHIO river to Indianapolis and probably north of there as well. It was common practice to feed and fatten hogs on wild Chestnuts until the blight killed them out. It was a common comment a squirrel could travel the length of Indiana in nothing but Chestnut with out ever touching the ground.

It is a pretty common to see pigs roaming the common streets of near any "town" you search for historical photos in Indiana.

[img]https://www.glocktalk.com/media/rushville-3rd-morgan-where-the-library-is-now.10558/full[/img]

They may have run wild in Indiana just like they did everywhere else, but they were still livestock back then. They belonged to people who went out and got them and drove them to market or butchered them. And I guarantee you that there were half the thickets in Indiana or anywhere else back then that there are now.

Before the blight chestnut was by far the most common tree in the eastern US.

As long as you have water, you are gonna have pigs if they are established in that area. I don’t know what they eat in Burnet county, but the little bit of corn we put out doesn’t support the hundreds of pigs on the place I hunt. I catch a lot, but none of the other guys on my lease trap them. They shoot a few, but that doesn’t do cshit. I doubt if anyone is trapping much around me. I’ll never run out, they reproduce so quickly. The Aoudads are getting bad also. I shoot every one of those bastards I see too. They will never get rid of pigs. People will keep letting them loose.

They are livestock now. The live stock of the people who are cultivating them and turning them loose.

The difference now verses then, people had enough sense not to DELIBERATELY FEED THEM BACK THEN and when they were some place they didn't want them, they killed them.