Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Article about TX feral hogs.

Good article.
Interesting about the number of pigs estimated killed. Myself and many other landowners never report kills and they never see a meat processor.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/outdoors/tompkins/5194208.html

stumpy

Good article. I didn't know the hogs had been purposely transplanted all over the state.

Jaywalker

I don't imagine one hog in 10 killed gets to a processor - between folks who work up their own and just leave them lay, so maybe there's a bunch more killed every year than we realize...however, there is no way to keep the numbers down or wipe them out other than poison or disease.

DJ

If I read that right, they surveyed only two processors that supplied the restaurant trade.

A lot of piggies get cut up at home, or by the local cut-and-wrapper. JMO, Dutch.

I wish the TP&W would ask each hunter how many hogs they killed last year just like they ask about the number of migratory fowl.
That would be an interesting number, even if you factored out the TX brag factor.

stumpy

We killed 5 last year.....4 one morning. Our new lease has more hogs.

Anyone see that the only means not available for Texas hog elimination is poison?

Stan I can sort of understand the poison deal. I don't know of one that would work. Can't just go to scattering poison all over the woods because you would kill any resident animal that eats it while hogs move all over the country and would be hit or miss getting into it.

BCR

I understand as well but, you often hear of poisoning as a method of controlling hogs.

I reckon some form of drought, or hog virus will be what reduces the exploding population. I'm concerned for fawns every year.....

I did a couple of articles on feral hogs about five years ago and was told then by a fish and game biologist that there were some 2 to 4 million in Texas. I hunted on a ranch northwest of Abilene and it was an absolute blast. I shot three big sows with three different lever guns. I would go back to Texas in a heartbeat for that type of hunt. The country was similar to our ranch here in eastern Montana except for the red clay and mesquite. It was a "poor man's elk hunt." Lots of walking. Still, having seen the damage those pigs were doing I fully sympathize with Texas landowners. Feral hogs are like 300-pound omnivorous prairie dogs.

When I go to the Laws and Regulations class for pesticide license renewal, they make a lot of noise about poisoning hogs. You will kill black headed buzzrds at the same time and that we were told is a penitentiary offense.

Everybody knows that whole cottonseed will kill hogs deader than a hammer. Be carefull because it will also kill horses.

Davis Chase

I have never heard that cottonseed kill hogs......East Texas with all it's thickets may be a place for cottonseed baited stations! No horses on our lease.

What is it of cottonseed they are feeding the deer down south these days??? Thought it was just that, in a ring of hog wire,stuffed full and full of protein.... Hogs would certainly get to that down south?

Jeff

Hey, maybe that's why I've never heard that it harms hogs.....of course, I've never heard that it was for deer either.

Someone will chime in here and give us the low down.

It is generally fed to cattle. Most neighbors buy it from the gin at harvest time by the truckload. I have never heard of feeding deer with it, but they have a complex stomach (chew the cud) like cattle. Simple stomach animals like horses and hogs will die if they eat enough of it. they will eat plenty if given the opportunity.

Check the label on cattle feed. If it has cottonseed in it, it will say, usually, do not feed to horses. Call a local large animal vet and ask him...