Posted on 01/28/2024 11:54:55 AM PST by nickcarraway
Texas Agriculture suffers millions of dollars in damages from the invasion of feral hogs. So, Texas wants to know, what’s causing this feral hog invasion, and how do we deal with it?
Texas has the biggest feral hog population in the United States. It started as another grazing mouth on our landscape, but now it’s overpopulated and causing a problem for agricultural life.
“Pigs compete with native wildlife for forage,” Mike Bodenchuk, former state director of the Texas Wildlife Services Program, said. “They alter habitats, they foul the water sources. They predate on a lot of wildlife as well. Reptiles, ground-nesting birds, even fawns from deer can fall victim to feral hogs.”
And it’s not just agriculture and the ecosystem that the wild pigs impact. It’s causing issues for our farmers as well.
“I travel around the state to district meetings, county meetings… to discuss the issues that our members are facing,” President of the Texas Farmers Bureau, Russell Boening, said. “And there is one topic that is pretty much universal when you talk about issues facing farmers and ranchers and that's feral hogs.”
How has Texas tried to solve this dilemma? Governmental programs are trying to control the population. There are also business owners like Edward Dickey who own services to capture the feral hogs.
“The way the traps work is that they’re larger,” said Dickey. “They're made up of 12, eight-foot wide metal panels. But at the bottom of them, the holes are smaller so that the piglets can slip through.”
I hunt hogs with an AR-10, .308, 165 grain.
Anything 200# or so and less is food eating.
Big boars are left in place.
I hunt hogs with an AR-10, .308, 165 grain. 50 mm objective Nikon, with a green Predator light.
Anything 200# or so and less is food eating.
Big boars are left in place.
Before the Left's long war against hunting, this wasn't anywhere near the problem it is todey.
If the hogs would identify as puppies, problem over.
Wild boar are a big problem in the Smokeys too. I don’t know if they are still there, but we used to have HUGE wild Russian boar population.
“How does feral hog taste compared to domestic hog?”
I have heard it is pretty bad in comparison. I have alswo heard they capture them and feed them domestic feed for awhile and it cleans out some of the game taste.
You want to capture / kill the piglets unless you want a breeding population. Since they do not I do not understand why they are trapping the old and letting the young slip through to freedom. That is exactly what you do not want to do if you are looking to eliminate them.
Democrat cities have a feral animal problem, too.
Put a bounty on them, say, $100.
In the first episode of the second season of Swamp Mysteries, featuring Troy Landry of History's Swamp People, one of his friends asked him to help him with a wild hog problem tearing his farming property apart. Troy and two of his friends featured on Swamp People went out at night and shot a whole crapload of them. Australia has a wild hog problem too. I've seen videos of them in Australia hunting them from helicopters too.
There are lots of videos on YouTube of guys shooting at night from 4WD trucks.
They seem to be using AR-15 or some other semi auto weapons.
Maybe even machine guns.
These are professional hunters
oh. nevermind.
Re how does it taste:
Like FREE meat…
I lived in Oklahoma a few years ago and I suspect the ‘pig per unit area’ is as bad there...have a friend southwest of Muskogee and he just shoots them from his backyard.
They blow them up in explosions too.
Almost impossible to reduce the population.
Friend always wanted to go on a hunt where you shoot them from a helicopter.
Are they tasty?
Like FREE meat
…
So is bear.
.but yuck!
Texas should put a bounty on them and resupply any ammo expended. I’d start shooting them if that happened. As it is I only kill them if I’m out hunting deer.
I’ve had it many times. Coworkers would bring in smoked sausage they would make from it. Never did develop a taste for wild boar, tho. To me, it did have a gamey flavor like others mentioned. But the standout thing was it seemed to have dirt in the meat. Just the flavor, not grit. Even when feeding them out for several months never helped with the sense of the meat being dirty...yuck.
I have always wanted to go out in the bayou of LA on a Gator hunt.
Except I would want to be in one of those swamp boats with the big propeller on the back.
So I could be at least 5’ off the water.
CHOOTE CHOOTE
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