They actually use a sort of poison launching “trap” that’s basically a land mine. Baits the pigs in with food and launches a cloud of cyanide (I think it was cyanide). Poisoning can be more effective and cheaper than hunting for culls. Because you don’t have to pay for a bunch of people to do it, and it can take a lot more animals.
But its controversial because its a lot less targeted and it tends to leave a lot of decaying carcasses hanging around. Which even if they don’t spread the poison to scavengers tends to cause damaging spikes in populations of things like rats and Coyotes which themselves can be pests or spread disease. So you can end up killing a lot of non-target animals and paradoxically make the situation worse.
Very unlikely. But then they wouldn’t attack it in the first place - wolves do take hogs but usually only young and/or sick animals (e.g. they separate a piglet from its mom in order to kill it).
I seriously doubt a pack of wolves would dare to approach 30-50 hogs close together, that’s a recipe for getting torn to shreds. A wild boar or a feral pig (especially a male or a sow defending its young) will hold its ground even against a bear, much less a wolf - and they are ferocious. Lots of hunters and hunting dogs got badly mauled by them.
There’s an old saying, attributed to veteran Texas wildlife biologist David Whitehouse, that the average litter for a wild sow is five to six pigs—and eight survive. That isn’t far from the truth.
Feral hogs are in my neighborhood and wow do they know how to damage a creek in a single night, especially when rooting for invertebrates like grubs.
These invasive exotics / aggressive colonizers all are generally destructive bad news for wildlands and farmland.
In the US, the problems caused by feral pigs are exacerbated by the small number of species which prey on them. Predators such as bobcats and coyotes may occasionally take feral piglets or weakened animals, but are not large enough to challenge a full-grown boar that can grow to three times their weight. In Florida, feral pigs made up a significant portion of the Florida panther’s diet.[25] Other potential predators include the gray wolf, cougar, jaguar, red wolf, alligator, black bear, and grizzly bear. Unfortunately, each keystone predator presents problems: the jaguar is extirpated from California and the Southwest. The grizzly, while native to most of the American West, is gone from the states that have large feral pig populations, namely Texas, Arizona, California, and New Mexico; and the species has a very slow reproductive rate. Wolf numbers are small and expected to remain so as they slowly repopulate their range; only a few individuals thus far have been recorded as inhabiting California, in spite of thousands of square miles of good habitat. The cougar is present in most of the West, but is gone from the East, with no known populations east of Minnesota in the north, and very thin numbers east of Houston in the South. The black bear is both predator and competitor, but in most areas probably may not impact feral pig populations enough to control them. Programs do exist to protect the weakened numbers of large predators in the US, but it is expected to take a very long time for these animals to naturally repopulate former habitat.[26]
Effective short-term, yes. Much needed!
Long-term would ideally have native North American apex [non-human] predators as a constant downward pressure on feral hog populations.
IDNR and USDA Wildlife Services are working in collaboration with landowners throughout the state to eliminate feral swine from their properties.
Program consists of education, outreach, disease monitoring, and direct management activities.
Assistance is provided to identify if feral swine are present on properties, provide training, and implement effective methods of removal - all free of charge.
Trapping (corral traps) is the most efficient and effective way to remove entire family groups of feral swine.
Shooting is effective only at removing individuals, not at eliminating large groups/populations.
Seriously! I keep thinking somone is missing marketing this as free range artisanal wild bacon. I don’t even know if you can eat then, but I just keep envisioning slabs of multiplying every year.
There are about a dozen or so companies that already do this, most of them in Texas. Still hasn’t put a dent in the population. Maybe if Costco got in on the business?
That’s right. A coordinated eradication program involving practically the entire population, bringing every weapon available to bear for years, worked really well compared with a few hundred guys picking off pigs one by one.
There’s also increasing evidence that they were pushed over the edge by invasive starlings. Starlings sit in the same ecological niche, have very similar behaviors and diets. But breed a lot faster and are more adaptable. So basically at the same time as we were pressuring passenger pigeons with hunting and habitat destruction. The starlings were out there out competing them.
Which is why you don’t release animals in Central Park just cause Billy Shakespeare said they were pretty.
When the Passenger Pigeon died out, the Starling still only had stable populations in a small fraction of the pigeon’s range.
They moved in to replace them in ecologies a decade later, and definitely invaded and reduced populations of other species then, but they were way late for the pigeon.
Humans were far and away the main driver of their extinction.
The OP’s “Legit” question that precipitated the original thread was obviously situational, and answering a question the OP already knew the answer to. Nobody is advocating people going out and buying AR-15/AR-10/AK-47 semi-auto rifles “just in case” one had feral hogs suddenly show up at their property, unless, of course, they WANTED to, since they are still legal weapons at this point. Rather, I think the real point that the OP was trying (and failing) to make was that AR- and AK-platform semi-auto rifles are just TOOLS that can (and do) have legitimate uses for certain tasks. Yes, like any other tools that have legit uses, they can be misused by those with evil intent. (Hey, anyone recall 9/11 when the terrorists used airliners as cruise missiles?) Just as we don’t blame the vehicle (another inanimate object) when someone drives while impaired, society needs to resist the simplistic temptation to blame the instrument that was inappropriately utilized.
But back to feral hogs, and kudos to the OP for bring up a subject that many people are unaware of. As a country dweller who both traps and hunts them (for eradication purposes), there is no one single solution. It’s said that 65%-70% of their numbers have to be killed each year just to keep their overall population numbers stable, given their young sexual maturation ages and litter sizes and frequency thereof. Accordingly, when it comes to shooting those that are trap-wary, one desires, nay, requires the ability for multiple rapid follow-up shots. One may drop a hog with their first shot, but once the group scatters they get much harder to hit. It’s no time to be fumbling with a slow bolt-action rifle with only a 4- round magazine, especially if a wounded and thereby pissed-off 200+ pound boar is charging directly at you. Unless one personally has been in this situation, or has been involved in hog trapping/hunting, their opinions on the subject are still opinions, but uninformed opinions. People need to learn to appreciate the difference, and stick to what they know from first-hand experience.
Anyone recall the amount of regulation and, oh, the creation of an entire unit dedicated to airport security as a result of that?
I believe you’re making the point of the OP - Tools that are at risk of being misused to do evil things should likely be restricted/regulated so that only those with legitimate use cases can obtain them, and that those individuals do not themselves pose a risk to others (the same way we screen airport and airline employees today).
Bc would likely be even more expensive than sterilization. You only have to sterilize an animal once. You have to administer oral birth control the entire fertile lifespan of the animal to make it worth doing.
I think it involved large packs of hounds (some of which you expected to lose) and large groups of surplus younger sons of nobility with boar-spears (some of whom you also expected to lose).
multiplying every year.
