Hogs that we at one time tame and got out of their pens. I am not lying or making a joke.
I can buy that, but why would their population only be booming now? I’d guess hogs have been escaping their pens since waaay back in the day, so what would have been keeping a lid on the escapee population until fairly recently?
Not just escaped - people in the mountains of Southern Appalachia at least, used to let them run til it was time to harvest them. Some would mark them for identification as belonging to a specific family. Of course, they bred...
I am surprised they are not as much of a problem here as in the more western states. Rather run into a black bear any day, and never go out in the woods without the means to take one down.