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

Missouri does not want you to hunt wild hogs.
They claim better success with them doing all the removal.
I am from Missouri and they have yet to show me that this is true...

“The take of feral hogs is prohibited on conservation areas and other lands owned, leased, or managed by the Conservation Department. Hunting hogs on other lands is strongly discouraged.
Instead, report feral hog sightings to 573-522-4115, extension 3296 or online. The Conservation Department and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, along with other partners and hundreds of private landowners, are working to eradicate feral hogs in Missouri.
When hunters shoot feral hogs, it complicates efforts to remove these pests. Hogs are social animals that travel in groups called sounders. Shooting one or two hogs scatters the sounder and makes trapping efforts aimed at catching the entire group at once more difficult, because hogs become trap-shy and more wary of baited sites. With their high reproductive rate, removing one or two hogs does not help to reduce populations. Anyone who observes a feral hog or damage caused by feral hogs should report it to the Conservation Department rather than shooting the animal so we can work together towards eradication.
Releasing hogs is illegal. If you see someone releasing feral hogs, report violators to your local conservation agent.”

When it was legal to shoot them it was encouraging people to release them into the wild resulting in an increased hog population.

They are absolutely correct in that.

If you have trained professionals that have hog control methods in place and potential to rid many hogs from the system, hunting them makes the hogs wary, nocturnal, and much harder to catch using methods that can and will take multiple hogs at different locations.

Hunting ain't putting a dent in them.

We're from the government, and we know what's best.

Well... Perhaps you can tell us about the areas of wild hogs that hunters have rid us of?

Have heard that said here by those who have their fingers in the government pie...I don't really give a flying ƒuck what they think and shall continue to do as I will.

Bwahahaha!

As long as it's not with an AR, right?

Pretty sure they exist here.

Perhaps you can tell us the areas where the trappers/pros are successful?

I know a few spots in GA where the pros supposedly decimated the hogs, only to have them back again...at the cost of taxpayers.

Is there any place where an invasive species, once established, has been eradicated for good?

I'm certainly not in the know regarding feral hogs, but it seems like the best one could hope for is to manage the population.

Some of the effective areas of hog elimination have been done by USDA Aphis, and some are done by university agriculture studies.

You can get close to 100% control, but it has to be maintained.

"Only to have them back again"... LOL.

Well, Ace... If you could solve that problem, you'd be a rich man indeed.

Reminds me of the 100% guaranteed eradication of insects around my house, that I keep paying for every quarter for the past 15 years!

Look at Bigfoot, what is there 1 or 2 in the world, tops? How many professional hillbillies have been hunting him down and they can't kill his ass off either!


Sorry, but when operation government/professional anyone does anything right it's always upfront and always ends up fucqued up later on.

Same law here in Illinois. Funny that MO did this since they were bragging how hunters had removed the hog problem from Ft. Leonard Wood a few years back.

Hogs aren't going anywhere no matter what. *might as well hunt them

I love missouri’ans...

SHOW ME !!!

LOL..

I suspect the "magic bullet" to control wild hogs will include biological weapons.

Planting the right disease into the hog populations with little collateral damage. (That's the trick)

Anything else is spinning our wheels.

Screw worms. Med fly.

Well, yeah.

Couple islands in the Aleutians have been rid of rats and foxes. The rare subspecies of geese are doing much better, even re-establishing on places the rats and foxes had totally eliminated them from.

That sounds great. I wonder what it would be?

At least shooting them on private land is still legal. Their destructive and by law you can shoot any state protected wildlife that destroys your property. Hope the Conservation Dept trapping methods works for them as the coyote trapping has! Not safe anytime of the year in my area for Coyotes, Armadillos, wild Hogs (not that we have that many, Groundhogs. Their not farmer friendly and farmers are not friendly with them. GW

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.

Big business here to hunt the damn things. People pay good money to kill the sorry bastards. Took this three weeks ago. Killed 4 of them plus caught one in a cage trap.

You just know so much that isn't so.

But please continue..

No, no they aren’t. No one gives a damn about them except to cuss them these days.

we had wild hogs back when i was a sprout,, domestic stock that had went feral from the free range days and had been holding out for 20-30 years,, when I was 10-12 yrs old the last ones were killed,, and now these russians hogs have been introduced,, they have thousands of acres of oaks and creeks and lakes,, they wont be killed out around here unless a virus gets em,, MDC wont,, hunters wont either,, too many deep hollows with water,,

That's good news, but isolated islands are not comparable to the continental infestation.

The screw worm and med fly are more to the point. If there is a biological trick that can be applied without collateral damage, I'm all for it. But it seems to me that the government paying for trapping or shooting is not the best plan. It does smack of the nanny state problem of being both cause and effect. At any rate, I can see it is a frustrating situation - kind of like what we have here with people planting their favorite invasive fish.

hanco, that's a classy pig rifle you got there. - T.S.

Previously being a wildlife specialist (govt. hunter if you will).. I have contemplated this very thing. Many times.

I really tend to agree with you to a point.

I had a hard time swallowing those people like a very few sheep ranchers getting govt. help with predator problems they would be better served forming an association and taking care of the problem themselves. It wouldn't cost ranchers much to hire a trapper/hunter to concentrate on THEIR operations exclusively.

I know. I used to get called every time a certain rancher even found an coyote turd that was months old... If I would have spent 10 hours a day on that ranch, they still would have bitched.

You kill the predators around that ranch, and it benefits that particular ranch too.

But certain things cause so much damage, like the feral hogs, that the economic impacts are so large, that the losses are ultimately passed on to consumers... Like you and I, and everyone else.

USDA had a chance to eradicate the fire ants when they were still in a relatively small area... But everyone thought it would have been too expensive to do so..

Now fire ants cause 10's of millions of $$ in damage. Wonder what we should have done, if we could go back 50 years or so and evaluated cost compared to what we know now.

Some of that is entitlement. Some is needed.

Throwing the baby out with the bathwater isn't going to help anyone.

Good points.

The key is getting the best bang for the buck.

Nothing so far has been in the least bit effective, unless large concentrations of efforts and resources are piled into one area. Then the area has to be maintained.

Obama didn't do us any favors by gutting the USDA Aphis programs. He damn near de-funded them... due to the nature of politics, and anti-hunting/killing, save the predators BS he was fully onboard with.

I doubt Trump is building those departments back either.

some kind or type of bio-engineered control technology is needed.

there's pros & cons, but we gotta do something, right?

sure there's money to be made in the "disease."

but overall we need to control the problem.

right now hogs are a problem.

hogs are a money-maker.

which is it on average?

Thank you, I’m a newcomer to 99’s. I bought that rifle from Fireball2. That little rifle will shoot sub inch groups at a hundred. I hit the two little pigs on the run. One dumb pig came back a little later. Four other 99’s have infiltrated my gunsafe.

Rockinbar is correct, most places can’t shoot enough to make a dent unless you shoot em by the tens or hundreds from a helicopter.

Trapping can buy you some time, how much depends on your neighbors.

The abundance of hogs here has to be seen to be believed, even inside the city limits. Even in areas without feeders. This place floods, nobody can build along the creeks, which is where you find the hogs.

Don't know about all this , I don't have the faith in my local game managers that some of you do. I shoot every hog that I get into my sights. At the least it sure makes me feel that I'm doing a part to help with the problem. I have heard other hunters in my area say they only shoot them when it's a good time to. They are scared of spooking the deer etc. , etc. I have killed deer 5 minutes behind killing a hog . The way I see it , every sow I kill is one less that will be dropping more., but I ain't particular with what it is . A dead hog is a good hog.

Me too

I don't *feel* discouraged, so I guess it's OK.

I have a personal stake in this and knowledge first hand. Having a farm in Lawrence /Dade county MO. I have personal caught people turning hogs loose. I sometime regret not killing the SOB on the spot . I hate the city hunters wanting to hunt the hogs almost as bad. I shot and let lay or drag off if in a bad area to let lay everyone I see. My local problem is only minor compared to some areas . I coming MDC for trying to do all it can .

You're correct in that the @ssholes turnin hogs loose is the problem.

So make *that* illegal, insteada tellin everbody else not to shoot em on sight, which used ta be the rule.

Used to be no license, no size restrictions and no limit.

No doubt the governor's nephew, or somebody high up in MDC, is a "certified" hog eradicator.

Understand what your saying kind of agree. But if its illegal to hunt hogs as such the "want" for pigs will lower and some of the releasing will lower ( hopefully)
No easy fix or answer.

There's logic on both ides, but I always try ta err on the side of freedom.

This also exposes a bigger issue, that MDC can ban somethin on "their" land that isn't in the wildlife code.

I don't like *that*, either.

Yeah, and DEC banned the use of the pesticides they use and now we are overrun with rodents.

Kansas has the same rules. They’ve whittled a small but growing population down to a smaller and contained population with hogs in only a couple of areas.


The way I see the hog problem, landowners that make a living in the land hate them. But a few that have recreational land want to charge hunts for them. They release them. Hogs spread to unwanted areas.

Conservation departments restrict on govt controlled land, and are being successful at it. But every other Billy Bob in the county knows better, and that their AR with a 30 round magazine is the ultimate hog medicine. Shoot a couple before the herd scatters is what they think is keeping them in check.

No amount of evidence will convince them otherwise.

Yep.
Nothing else will eliminate them.

Like Barry says, heavy hunting pressure makes them wary, move, or go nocturnal. They’ll then return, sooner or later. Trapping helps, but the trappers I know continue to take big numbers. Take out one sounder, another moves in. Helicopter gunning helps, but it’s cost preventative. Most farmers & ranchers can’t afford it. Mostly just the biggest & wealthiest can. Then the hogs move onto the smaller ranches. Not feeding corn won’t help, contrary to popular beliefs. Hogs eat every type of crop grown except for cotton. But they will dig up the cotton seeds you plant before they germinate. Plenty of wild crops to sustain them. Acorns, pecans, weed roots, cacti, flowers, mesquite beans, grass, etc. You name it and they’ll eat it. Not to mention bird eggs, baby birds, snakes, mice & rats, insects, carrion etc. They are not picky. As long as they have water, and water ways to travel, they will survive & multiply.

I sure as hell don’t like Govt. interfering with my Ranching or Hunting, but I’m afraid if they don’t ok & implement some type of biological weapon, we are just spinning our wheels and will never control the population. Period.

So long as someone makes money on them, they will still be there.

They do the same thing here.

exactly this

I think you're right.

You just need the dude from the blaser video. Dude smokes every pig in sight.

Yep, the Texas boys are all correct when it comes to hog knowledge and eradication. I'll be damned, weird.......................!!

Rockin', Rost', Chlinstructor and the rest know to let the Pro's do work......... Especially when you consider that 95% of all the feral hogs living in Missouri, live South of I-44, on Missouri Dept. of Conservation ground!

It's rough, rugged, plenty of water and mast crop, 1.5 million acres of very low human population and basically "HOG HEAVEN"!

For [bleep] sake. Listen to guys that have lived with "Privatized Hunting", on flat ground for years.... They still haven't solved the hog problem. I'm speaking of the Texas boys but to, dumb asses here!...

Local hunting of hogs in these steep, rugged public areas of Missouri only exacerbate ecological problems for indigenous wildlife that we so love to hunt and view!

Interruptions from "Dale",([bleep] you Dale), or "Richard", (you too Richard, you dumb ass!), via shooting one hog from a sounder has significant set back for trapping operations

News flash, they aren't dumb....................They move!!

I take exception to the aerial gunning here because I don't think it's cost prohibitive but trapping is!!

If you love your deer, black bears, turkeys, quail, rabbits, squirrels, Warblers, Indigo Buntings, Monarch Butterflies, "Mountain Boomers", let the fuggin' hogs pass on MO public ground!!

X-VERMINATOR

This is old news, atleast two years old but as far as "Bowsinger" is concerned, that transplant doesn't know the Ozark's from the Galapagos. Way too much "Lib" in him for this part of the world!


X-VERMINATOR

Spot-on.

Not looking for validation but thanks!


X-VERMINATOR

Not all of us have only "private hunting" experience...

My job that I mentioned was in NM, where there was mostly Natl. Forest and BLM. It is also one of the recent areas to be advanced in hog habitat, where there were no hogs before. I actually drafted and came up with a hog eradication program that was adopted by means and method by the National Forest Service, Lincoln Natl. Forest, and thus created a permanent position that was filled in the Wildlife Services dept for a hog control specialist.

Are hogs different in private and public lands?..LOL. I've never even seen a hog in Missouri. But I didn't know they were any different.

yes, several. and it's usually a cncerted effort coordinated through the govt that does it.

Here's a recent one
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.co...ompletion-on-alaska-2015sep24-story.html

recreational hunting, or shooting predators or other animals at moments of opportunity doesn't hurt the population. it is well established science. the only thing that could be used to refute that is the virtual erradication of Bison from North america, but even then it was due to over harvest of a large animal that had little place to hide, and was strongly encouraged by the govt in an effort to starve indigenous populations to then control them. but even then, we still have bison being wrong and ignorant might make you feel high and mighty, but you'll still be an ignorant fool if you are told repeatedly something yet choose to believe the opposite, might even make you a democrat!

Ain't ever gonna root out all the hogs from the Ozarks. Hell, the MDC maps that show the location of hogs in Missouri has been outdated for at least two years. Hogs have expanded their range into new areas and the MDC isn't even aware of where the new encroachment of hogs is. MDC estimates 50,000 hogs in the Ozarks, that has to be a light estimate based off their maps, and last year with trapping and helicopter hunting the MDC killed around 9,000. With hog reproduction rates they aren't holding their heads above the wave. Turning tax paying hunters into criminals isn't helping the cause. Especially considering the USFS says it's ok to hunt hogs on the Mark Twain NF. It's a cluster [bleep] and only gonna get worse. In the meantime most of us Ozark hillbillies quietly shoot hogs when and wherever we encounter them MDC be damned.

hanco, Savage 99s are addictive. The good news is that there is a support group here comprised of very knowledgeable enablers. LOL

Gross over-simplification.


There are two kinds of ranches in Texas - those that have hogs and those that are going to get them.

T.S.

Reading about 99’s on here made me want one. I was wrong about how many have crept in the gun safes. It was 5 not 4. Those 99’s are sneaky!!

Your information is outdated by about two years.
My latest Missouri Conservationist magazine, April, has the most recent numbers.
They eliminated 9,365 feral hogs in 2018 and 6,561 in 2017.
In over 20 years of unregulated hunting the feral hog population spread into over 30 Missouri counties.
In the past 30 years they have expanded from 17 to over 38 states.
Unregulated hunting has not been working.

Every year MDC publishes the latest update on feral hogs. Last year they said that large corral type traps dropped overhead has been found the most effective on catching the whole bunch at once.

Not sure, but I’m willing to give it a go with the Muzzies

There are some things about Missouri's Wildlife Code I do not like (I grew up there, and go back to hunt often). To whit, "Things that are not specifically ALLOWED by the WIldlife Code are prohibited" which is antithetical to freedom and liberty

In other words, if MDC doesn't specifically say you can do it, you can't legally do it. That isn't American, in my book.

This hog situation isn't much different, really. They can't get the job done, and they aren't going to let you get it done, either. Woe be unto you if you do, however.

I grew up in Northern Missouri, and didn't travel to the Ozarks much. The last time I was through there, driving I-44, I did see a sow and her litter just off the highway, about 50 miles east of Springfield. I was coming back from a funeral, and wasn't armed appropriately to shoot them (and wouldn't, off the highway and all that), but if I'd had a good rifle, I could have taken out several, since they were out in the open and quite a distance from any concealment.

Got to disagree. Missouri with their small code book of what you can do compared with the thick bibles of all the things that you can't do in other states.

My neighbors and I have not eliminated hogs but have reduced them to a lower level than anywhere else in several miles proximity by using night shooting, day shooting, and traps, all used with unrelenting pressure. We keep cameras out and keep a lookout constantly for signs of hog damage from new hogs drifting in. We shoot or trap them immediately. The cameras tell us what time to expect our unwanted visitors. I can promise you that even though we still have a few hogs the most well intentioned government program can't match our efforts . The worst method of hog control is hunting them with dogs as that seems to disperse them all over the country while killing very few. A lot of the dog people aren't interested in eliminating hogs and in fact transport and transplant them seemingly in hopes of creating hog populations in new areas to hunt.

what a good coordinated effort may be reducing several of them it's also teaching them the area to be wary of and driving them on to other places. I to shoot everyone I see but do not allow people to constantly hump them because it moves them out and makes them harder to deal with here in Missouri or the bad part is you got the Ozark Mountain region which is fairly rough country but we're now getting the hogs in good Farm country and the destroying thousands of dollars worth of stuff in a few short days because of people hunt them in the Rough Country and drive them to other places

Humping hogs should be illegal everywhere even Appalachia.

Lmao that talk-to-text will bite me every time

I figured that's what happened, but it would still be a good idea to put that off limits. Might end up with an even worse hybrid than the Russian boar.

LOL !

Ah huh. I see.

"So long as someone makes money on them, there are two kinds of ranches in Texas - those that have hogs and those that are going to get them."

Like that better?

My information is outdated by two years? How many hogs did I say MDC killed last year? And how many did you say they killed? About the same number, right?

There are many factors at play well beyond the practice of charging people to "hunt" them. Commercial pig hunting is a very small enterprise in Texas. If those operations were shut down, we would still be overrun by pigs.

You know not of what you speak.

T.S.

if i wanted to board a delta jet from the ATL and fly to big D, and rent a car, where could i go to hunt pigs to help the landowners without having to pay a fee?

i think such an opportunity is non-existent.

pay to play, or some such.

is there a list of farmers soliciting help?

maybe there should be, or not?

maybe there's a bit of PR, and propaganda involved?

is this really a problem, or a bunch of media hype?

i think the rank & file doest complain too much.

As long as feral hogs have a single place of sanctuary, you will have a problem.