Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire The War Against Feral Hogs

https://www.ajc.com/news/georgia-ne...b-damageyear/BTCMZKYFCRD2NHQZIRNBTDWXS4/

By JANET McCONNAUGHEY, Associated Press
5 hours ago
Eight years into a U.S. program to control damage from feral pigs, the invasive animals are still a multibillion-dollar plague on farmers, wildlife and the environment
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Eight years into a U.S. program to control damage from feral pigs, the invasive animals with big appetites and snouts that uproot anything that smells good are still a multibillion-dollar plague on farmers, wildlife and the environment.

These prolific hogs gone wild have been wiped out in 11 of the 41 states where they were reported in 2014 or 2015, and there are fewer in parts of the other 30.

But despite more than $100 million in federal money, an estimated 6 million to 9 million feral swine still ravage the landscape nationwide. They tear up planted fields, wallowing out huge bare depressions. They out-eat deer and turkeys — and also eat turkey eggs and even fawns. They carry parasites and disease and pollute streams and rivers with their feces.

Total U.S. damages are estimated at a minimum $2.5 billion a year.

Adam McLendon, whose family farms about 8,000 acres (3,200 hectares) of peanuts, corn and cotton in several counties in southwestern Georgia, estimates feral pigs have cost them more than $100,000 a year for the past 15 years.

That’s about what one of Mississippi’s two levee boards pays each year to trap and kill feral hogs and to repair damage from their rooting, commissioner Hank Burdine estimated. “That is nominal compared to what we would have if we didn’t take care of it and had a flood,” he added.

Near the Red River in north Texas, hogs are so hard on corn that Layne Chapman and his neighbors no longer even try to grow it.

“I can remember the first day someone called me and said, ‘You’ve got a pig in your wheat field,’ and I said, ‘No we don’t have pigs.’ That was in 2006,” Chapman said. He stopped planting corn in 2016.

The animals root out rows of freshly planted peanuts and corn, leaving huge ruts that must be smoothed before the field can be replanted -- weeks after the best planting time. Hogs return to cornfields when the crop is ripening, trampling stalks, taking bites out of ears and wallowing to cool their sweatless bodies.

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The story continues in the link, if y'all are interested. A lengthy and expensive war.

I have a special place. It’s verifiable hogs have been there since the 1600’s with the spanish. They have a free pass with me except the 35-50 pounders for eats.

They have sustained the Comanche and the settlers during good and bad times. They taste better than any deer.

I’m at war with anyone that declares war on hogs.

Too many people promote hogs, otherwise they'd be gone. It's like the damn mustangs.

So you don't shoot feral hogs because you are sentimental towards them?

Not heard that before.

That could change after you run your vehicle through a sounder of them in the highway at night...

I’m damn familiar with any sounder you can come up with hoss. Thats why I don’t drive at night.

Most things especially in Texas like feeders and such are documented to increase the population of feral hogs. I have no hate for them after understanding them.

My brand new Tacoma is in for a deer hit right now and that was daylight.

It is what it is and just stupid to think you can eradicate hogs by shooting them. Luckily my hogs are so remote from civilization and well fed on acorns and such they are good eats.

Yo mo-fo’s keep growing the crops and I’ll keep eating 40lb fat pigs for free.

You familiar with the sounders at my ranch?

Thats your problem, shoot’em up !

I did. Killed 'em all here.

No sounder for 2 years now. Just a stray boar now and then.

Wow, the pig damage around me, gulf coast, is terrible.. Rooting up pastures to the point you won't drive across them.. And I've seen farmers in the same boat as those described in the article, just quit farming grain..

I was down in Lake Charles La. last year, at the little airport. At some expense they built a chain link fence around the airport. The hogs burrow under the fence and root up the airport. The guys will go out at night with ARs and shoot 15 hogs. The guy had a $2,000 night scope.

I get called by a few farmers when they plant and plow. Kill the hell out of them.

You ought to be on a tractor shredding pastures where the hog damage is bad... I carry an AR on the tractor to kill them when I see them. Coyotes too.

Its a win-win for me, I ain’t a farmer and couldn’t give a rat’s ass.

I harvest most of my grub naturally. Yes, I eat dandelion.

Bet you care what groceries cost.

The main loser with feral hogs is the agriculture industry.

Lotsa tax dollars going to that problem too. You like higher taxes?

I’ve been trapping them on the place I hunt for 11 years. I’m not seeing near as many, but it wouldn’t take long for them to make a comeback if I quit.

The "problems" people deal with today....

I HAD deer, rabbits, and squirrels that tried to destroy my garden and the several hundred saplings I've planted.

"There's so much pork around here that I can't grow food!"

Seems to me like Nature is simply trying to redirect your efforts.

'Nuther couple years of Biden, we may be thankful for feral hogs.

Hogs will eat corn soaked in Diesel fuel- - - -deer won't. A little strychnine in the oily corn works better than bullets.

There's lots of poisons that kill hogs. The problem is the collateral damage and the highly illegal status of using them.

They made an example of one guy down here.

If you have a hog carcass loaded with strychnine, then every raccoon, or possum or pet dog that fed on it would be killed.

Kill them all, aoudads too