A lot of what you said mirrors my experience and what I gathered from a brief search from Australian resources.
It was saying shooting by itself means the population will likely recover to original densities in less than a year–the population tends to double every year. Shooting may “quickly educate pigs making them wary.” So it sounds like going out at night and using suppressors doesn’t just benefit your neighbors.
They did say culling by helicopter is significantly more efficient than being ground-based–at least for large populations. It was interesting to see them talk about different approaches for different circumstances. Proper fencing is not cost effective for large areas, traps work well for small populations.
They did cite poison as one of the most effective methods, but it does sound like they have restrictions over there and proper use is important (like pre-feeding). The few articles I see about Texas show that places have tested it, but have had set backs when they found large numbers of dead birds.
I also don’t mean to assume that Australia has solved their feral pig problem.
The way it tends to work is that If you own agricultural land you have access to a blanket pest permit that allows no limit hunting of non-protected species. Where you can use a gun is regulated based on distance from a populated area or road and its illegal to shoot towards either. Culls on non agricultural or public land are done by federal or state employees. Or professional hunters acting as subcontractors.
It doesn’t seem like a particularly adequate framework for regulation. And I’m not sure you’d really need an exception here. This is a really specific thing that’s only used to deal with feral hogs when they’re massed in herds in certain states. And it doesn’t really have a long term impact. There’s no reason to believe that it’s neccisary or any more effective than other approaches. And I’ve heard from multiple people that bows are a better way to take down more animals in one go. So even if you blanket ban all semi automatics, you’re probably not hampering anyone here. People have been dealing with this hog issue for more than a century, and they pretty much did it without AR-15s and their friends until 20 years ago at the most.
Its just another case of narrowing things down to absurd specifics to generate a false “need” for fire arms. Any attempt to thread a regulation around such things becomes useless. And anything that would be useful, would rely in having a comprehensive, universal license and background check system.
You bring that up and its “well what about feral pigs!”. And you get to go round the circle again. Feral pigs are their own problem (a problem that ain’t limited to feral pigs). The answer to the problem is not assault rifles. And assault rifles aren’t enough of a factor in that problem for it to be a consideration when it comes to gun regulations.
Its just a bad faith arguement. The pigs have also become the key justification for supressors. Cause people weren’t buying hearing damage.
That’s sort of a sensationalistic reading. This problem isn’t new. And mass herds of feral hogs have been a factor in some states since the colonial era.
Feral hogs in the US largely come from released or escaped agricultural hogs. It used to be common to raise pigs by releasing them into the wild then collecting them up later. So there have been large feral populations pretty much since the Spanish landed.
Pigs are pretty epic escape artists, so more hogs went feral as the scale of penned farming increased. The largest populations tend to be in the states with the largest and most commercial pig farms. Domestic pigs are just domesticated Eurasian Wild Boar. So same species. And in a lot of ways pigs aren’t particularly domesticated. They go very feral very fast. And it is very difficult to tell the difference between a feral domestic and a Wild Boar. The pigs coat grows out, its facial structure and teeth change and behaviorally they’re identical. A Eurasian Wild Boar is no more agressive than a pure bred feral hog, and you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference without a ruler.
Eurasian Wild Boar actually have interbred with the feral populations, and those are also escapees from farms (and hunting preserves). But that interbreeding isn’t all that recent and hasn’t made the animals any more damaging or changed the problem at all. The scale of the problem we’re seeing now has more to do with a failure to deal with it (ever) and changes in how hogs are raised since the 70’s. Feed lots, factory farms millions of poorly managed hogs crammed in tight. More hogs clustered up in hog farming states and thus more escapees.
And last I checked Australia’s got exactly the same shit going on. Eurasian Wild Boars and all. Farmers have been pest controlling these things for a couple centuries. And Australia has actually deployed military machine guns in animal culls.
Culling can be an important part of population control or eradication. But it doesn’t and hasn’t worked on its own. Not as individual farmers doing it. And not when Australia deployed its military to do it.
Poison can be very effective at depopulation. But it has the same problem as any other culling method. If the population tends to double every year, to shrink the population you have to kill more than 50% of the population in any given year. Before they reproduce.
That is poisoning on a massive scale. And poison has issues that shooting doesn’t. Non-target species also get poisoned, and unless you clean up the carcasses other animals or even the environment can get poisoned like so many degrees of Kevin Bacon. If you use something where that’s not an issue thousands or more dead animals in unexpected and inaccessible (or unknown) places are an issue. Rotting animals have ended up in water sources, which is *bad. Lots of dead animals leads to spikes in other animals that feed on said animals. Flies, rats, coyotes. Which then lack a food source, and do the thing that animals that lack a food source do.
From what we’re dealing with here with massively, dangerously over populated white tail deer. The best and most cost effective solution we’ve found seems to be mass sterilization. Then the population can be forced down faster/short term with targeted culling. Hunting and limited poisoning via baits in targeted areas (which is also how you do the sterilizing).
The feral pigs we have in Australia are large ones. I once hit a pregnant sow in a hire car it made it into a drivable wreck. Bent the radiator but I kept it on the road. It was between Nyngan and Bourke. We drove that car back to Sydney against advice the wheel alignment was crooked. We even had to steer on the straights.
Australia has enough of a population who enjoy killing pigs that we have a bit of a culture dedicated to it. Bacon Busters the hunting magazine is a more tasteful example of this. You can judge our pigs for size yourself via that google search. Of course there are plenty of videos etc out there that you can find yourself.
Also pig hunting with dogs and a knife (pig sticking) is surprisingly popular in parts of Australia. https://kb.rspca.org.au/knowledge-base/what-happens-when-dogs-are-used-to-hunt-feral-pigs/ Of course RSPCA is an animal welfare organisation so you can judge their bias but the description of the practice is mostly accurate. I personally think the dogs are generally well trained and well cared for but maybe that’s my bias.
Of course we also bait pigs and have professional animal control shooters. These are still the most effective ways of controlling the feral pig population.
Its done in the US, though not always with a knife. Seems common to finish them off with a smaller caliber gun or even a bow. And you do that sort of thing to protect the dogs, since they’re actively holding down the hog while you dispatch it. We tend to use Pit Bull and baiting breeds here, and the concept is called a “catch dog”. American bulldogs and mixed breeds seem most popular but there’s a Mexican pig hunting specific breed I can’t recall the name of atm. Basically the dogs chase down the big, muckle onto its face and legs and drag it down. Then hold it there until the hunter kills the pig.
Its not a hunting/sporting approach here, and I’ve never really heard of anyone doing it for pleasure. Its a popular method of culling for pest and population control in certain areas. Usually used where the hogs aren’t massed up in herds, and seems especially common in wooded or brush covered areas. Basically allows you to go into a place with a breeding hog population and target smaller animals before they’ve reproduced. Its not particularly humane, but its effective (more effective than than the AR15 thing we’re supposed to wedge ourselves around). And given the damage invasive pigs cause justifiable.
But its still a spot treatment that won’t impact overall population or population growth. This level of culling is used to shift the population around more than anything.
The real question is whether you can ban them at all. A lot has changed re gun law over the past decade. The SC has made it perfectly explicit that individuals have the constitutional right to own and use guns. And they have also spoken on the criteria used to shape the process of banning specific guns. Two of the most important criteria are the guns popularity among the public, and the usefulness of the gun for various situations.
The AR type is extremely popular, with something like 30+ million in circulation. They are also deemed to be extremely useful for a whole slew of uses, because they can exchange parts, change configurations, change calibers, barrels, sights, etc. They are compact, reliable, and powerful which makes them very good for home defense. They also can be compact, reliable, and variably powerful - they can be converted to .22 caliber, for example.
They also have caused relatively few problems. That statement is going to piss people off, but the argument which might be presented to the SC is that the vast vast majority of AR weapons and AR owners have never been involved in gun violence. Indeed, the percentage involved would easily be a rounding error to zero compared to the number owned.
I would bet that, especially with today’s SC, banning AR weapons is a pipe dream.
