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A Plague of Pigs in Texas
Smithsonian Magazine ^ | January 2011 | John Morthland

Posted on 01/01/2011 2:49:31 PM PST by EveningStar

About 50 miles east of Waco, Texas, a 70-acre field is cratered with holes up to five feet wide and three feet deep. The roots below a huge oak tree shading a creek have been dug out and exposed. Grass has been trampled into paths. Where the grass has been stripped, saplings crowd out the pecan trees that provide food for deer, opossums and other wildlife. A farmer wanting to cut his hay could barely run a tractor through here. There’s no mistaking what has happened—this field has gone to the hogs.

(Excerpt) Read more at smithsonianmag.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events; US: Texas
KEYWORDS: texas; wildhogs; wildpigs
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To: muleskinner

“You gotta’ take the guts out first.”

LOL! Stump-whipped Chitlins.


81 posted on 01/01/2011 6:35:02 PM PST by dljordan ("His father's sword he hath girded on, And his wild harp slung behind him")
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To: EveningStar

Since open season is not working they should offer a $10 bounty on them. If that doesn’t work, up it to $20 and allow night hunting.


82 posted on 01/01/2011 6:44:38 PM PST by Mariner (USS Tarawa, VQ3, USS Benjamin Stoddert, NAVCAMS WestPac, 7th Fleet, Navcommsta Puget Sound)
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To: Jedidah; thackney; yefragetuwrabrumuy
Do you believe that part? 1 to 3 million in Texas?

If you can believe the following .............

“Germany’s hunter’s association disclosed earlier this month, that it’s total bag during the 2007- 2008 wild boar shooting season had reached 477,000

......a couple million in Texas sounds possible.

83 posted on 01/01/2011 6:45:47 PM PST by Eaker (In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity. Albert Einstein)
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To: FromLori

I split a gutt on that one too! Nice one!!


84 posted on 01/01/2011 7:00:33 PM PST by SgtHooper
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To: Jedidah

You are exactly right. Hogs are very smart, cunning, and fast as hell. They will eat anything. One taste of blood, and they will eat their own. They destroy eveything. Hunting will not get it done. It needs to be poison-the only way. This is from years of birthing and raising hogs on the farm.


85 posted on 01/01/2011 7:04:54 PM PST by SgtHooper
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To: Jedidah

Stay aggressive with the pen traps and shoot them in the pens. It’s a lot of work to cart them off to your bone yard though.


86 posted on 01/01/2011 7:10:29 PM PST by Deaf Smith (I spent all my money on women & booze, the other rest I just plain blew)
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To: Eaker

See, they don’t exactly line up and let you count them.

Nasty creatures, many of whom are dirty and black, snuffle out in the dead of night to do their damage, but hunker down in daylight. Who knows how many are out there?


87 posted on 01/01/2011 7:13:51 PM PST by Jedidah
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To: 4buttons

The absolute best barbecue I’ve ever had was wild hog. But, but, it was the right kind of pig (younger adult) and the guy doing the cooking knew what he was doing.

That said, I hunt our ranch pretty regularly and these pigs are smart animals. You can walk up on a bunch and they can disappear into the brush quicker than you can get your rifle off your shoulder and bolt a round. We have a lot of oaks and they are after the acorns right now.

Ironically, no one in our part of the world traps them anymore as I’m told the buyers for them have all stopped taking them. The few buyers that still are active are all so distant that the trapper has to make the trip worthwhile which means he has to take quite a number of pigs on each trip. In order to accumulate enough pigs to make the trip profitable he has to trap for a while then pen and feed the small herd until he has enough to take. This also takes a bite out of the profit. And around and around it goes....


88 posted on 01/01/2011 7:22:23 PM PST by JoenTX (Don't Tread on Me)
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To: Jedidah
See, they don’t exactly line up and let you count them.

Really? Really?

My point was that if a half a million were killed in one year in Germany two to four million alive in Texas is not hard to believe.

89 posted on 01/01/2011 7:25:54 PM PST by Eaker (In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity. Albert Einstein)
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To: JoenTX
"But, but, it was the right kind of pig"

They need to be processed & iced within a hour. Use a different knife to quarter the meat than what you skinned with. Some even wash off the hanging pig before skinning and again before quartering.

90 posted on 01/01/2011 7:32:36 PM PST by Deaf Smith (I spent all my money on women & booze, the other rest I just plain blew)
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To: SgtHooper

The problem with poisoning them is that there is no real practical method of doing so that will not put other more important game animals or livestock at equal risk.

Our deer feeding stations are “hog proofed”......lots of goat wire and metal wire panels can keep the pigs and cattle out. The opposite doesn’t exist. You can’t deer or cow “proof” a feeder so that it will then only allow pigs entry. If you protect something so much that even deer can’t access it, then nothing can. If leave something open enough that pigs can access it, then everything else can too. So, yeah, you might be able to poison pigs but you’ll have to pull every bit of the livestock from that piece of property and expect to lose a sizable percentage of your deer population in the process of doing the same to the pigs.


91 posted on 01/01/2011 7:33:36 PM PST by JoenTX (Don't Tread on Me)
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To: Eaker

I got your point, and I appreciate it. (Shoulda put a /s/ tag on my comment. Didn’t mean to be snarky, just a frustrated comment on what a challenge these durn pigs are.)

Folks outside of Texas sometimes don’t realize how big this place is, room for lots of critters.


92 posted on 01/01/2011 7:40:44 PM PST by Jedidah
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To: Jedidah

Gotcha.

A good bit of Europe will fit in Texas.


93 posted on 01/01/2011 7:48:09 PM PST by Eaker (In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity. Albert Einstein)
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To: JoenTX

It is illegal to poison hogs and other animals in Texas. There was a big problem in Eastland County last year (2009).
http://texaspredatorposse.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=17146";
http://hankgilbert.com/eastland_docs/TPWD_REPORT.pdf";


94 posted on 01/01/2011 7:56:29 PM PST by Deaf Smith (I spent all my money on women & booze, the other rest I just plain blew)
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To: Deaf Smith

*Exception for targeted rodents and such.


95 posted on 01/01/2011 7:59:06 PM PST by Deaf Smith (I spent all my money on women & booze, the other rest I just plain blew)
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To: Deaf Smith

Yes, exactly because of the reasons I noted above and that were also mentioned in the link you provided. It’s near impossible to target poison the wild hog.

I did not know about the specific incident mentioned in the link, but our place is in Stephens County and I was all over Eastland county attending colleges there. And hearing the part about peanut farming sounds right since that’s a fairly big thing down there. They have the soil for it.


96 posted on 01/01/2011 8:16:27 PM PST by JoenTX (Don't Tread on Me)
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To: FromLori
“Them ain’t hogs. They’s muslim repellent.”

Too late. Those hogs started showing up in the muslim nations like Afghanistan.


97 posted on 01/01/2011 8:43:04 PM PST by cyberbo2004 (people pay taxes, not corporations.)
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To: Ditter
Interesting. I've never hunted wild boar in the USA, so my experience was quite different, but I guess I'm not surprised. Our wild game is probably as poisoned as our Monsanto-fed mega-farm-raised domestic herds.


Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.

98 posted on 01/01/2011 10:41:37 PM PST by The Comedian (Government: Saving people from freedom since time immemorial.)
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To: EveningStar

In South Carolina we would call that “A surplus of barbeque.”


99 posted on 01/01/2011 11:44:49 PM PST by Slings and Arrows (You can't have IngSoc without an Emmanuel Goldstein.)
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To: redpoll
I remember as a kid my dad would sometimes fry up some bacon and end up throwing most out. It not only tasted like boar meat, it smelled like it also...(Back in the 40’s) Being brought up on a farm in Michigan, (born in 1901) he could detect in the taste of the pork if it was a female is estrous /sp of course they raised and butchered their own pigs, steer etc during those times..

What does wild boar taste like? He always said they butchered most pig at 6 months or a little younger...I assumed it was before they came into breeding age..

100 posted on 01/02/2011 12:32:17 AM PST by goat granny
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