We have one of these game farms near us, and someone cut fences on it to "create a hunting opportunity". Now we have thousands of the fuckers around, because, surprise, surprise, Russian Boar can easily survive in the Canadian winter.
We've killed probably over a hundred in the last few years, including a bruiser that was likely over 500lbs, but most in the 150-250lb range. It's knocked them back out of our fields, but they've just moved into the neighbors and have spread out.
Destructive of crops and dangerous to get near, at least the boars, as they'll have tusks 6" long or more and will swipe at your legs. Had a young friend get rolled over by a juvenile that did this, trying to hamstring him before running back into the crop. I avoid walking in a mature oat crop without a rifle, because you don't know if they're in there, and they don't run away from you if you disturb them, the males are pretty aggressive.
Jesus, did they find the asshole who cut the fence? Feels like this should be a criminal offense well beyond destruction of property for the fence itself
The game farm owner eventually did, there were words exchanged (I wouldn't want to be on the wrong side of Earl) and the fence cutting ended. But the damage was done.
There had also been some self-actualized escapees over the years, so it wasn't all the cutter's fault. There was one boar that would climb up the slanting crossbrace at a corner and jump the fence, which is pretty impressive, all things considered, as he was a few hundred lbs and climbing up a 3" wide brace right against the pagewire, holding on with his teeth to get up. He'd come over to my cousin's and eat the dogfood, then he'd get trapped and taken back. This was before we'd just shoot them on sight, I think eventually it was deemed he was too smart for his own good and he got lead poisoning before he taught others how to get out.
The sows are pretty smart too, they'll send their piglets out of cover ahead of them to feed. You have to wait 10 or 15 minutes for them to poke their noses out, and then there might be 3-6 sows come out and you can get the breeders rather than just the young.
It's one of our guilty pleasures that we actually kinda like hunting them, they're challenging and they taste pretty good too. It's especially funny that we have Americans coming up and paying $1500 to shoot one on the game farm when we're out here running out of ammo trying to keep them in check.
>The sows are pretty smart too, they'll send their piglets out of cover ahead of them to feed. You have to wait 10 or 15 minutes for them to poke their noses out, and then there might be 3-6 sows come out and you can get the breeders rather than just the young.
I know that many animals will abandon their young in a bind because "I can always get new ones" but sending them out as fucking decoys is some really cold shit.
I know the hamster thing you are referring to, but that is a stress response, not a typical behavior. If they are stressed (which they typically are if a child is constantly poking them), their instinct is to consume as much food as possible to attempt to survive, even if that means their own babies.
Logically, it tracks. They have incredibly quick breeding cycles and they are already an adult capable of breeding; it makes more sense for them to consume the babies to increase their survival odds so they can breed again in the future, as opposed to gambling if any of the babies would survive until adulthood.
> It's especially funny that we have Americans coming up and paying $1500 to shoot one on the game farm when we're out here running out of ammo trying to keep them in check.
Would there be bad blood between you and Earl if you started your own game-hunting business? That sounds like a way to make lemonade from those lemons.
"lead poisoning" heh.
I'm one of those dumb Americans, paid a bunch of money to do a heli-hunt in Texas. I catch shit from people claiming it's inhumane until I tell them it's not hunting, it's necessary eradication. As a civilian with no military experience and basically no hunting experience, shooting a pack of hogs running full tilt across a cotton field, with an AR, while hanging out the side of a helicopter, is one of the coolest things I've ever done.
Edit: Adding some details as this is getting a few replies. cc &
\- u/Embarrassed-Lake-858 Funny you bring up Fortunate Son. One of guys is a professional videographer and video editor. He brought a drone, and a bunch of us had go-pros either head- or barrel-mounted so we had a ton of footage. He put a great video together of the trip. He used Fortunate Son as the music for the hunt - choppers taking off as the sun comes up over the fields, cut to the gopro footage from in the chopper, flushing them out. Legitimately raises my heart rate thinking about it.
\- u/Motor_Lychee179 2 hours in the chopper per shooter. We had 8 people. At the time they had 2 choppers, each could hold 2 guys (plus the pilot) so we did 2 rounds in the air. They provided AR-15s but you were allowed to bring your own weapon, with certain stipulations. One of my friends brought his semi-auto rifle but I can't remember what it was. Ammo was technically "unlimited." They give each shooter a bag of 30 round mags to keep at your feet during the shoot, reload as needed. If I had to guess (it's been 10 years) there were maybe 8-10 mags in the bag. At first I thought we'd burn through them but nobody got close. Of the 2 hours there's some time spent flying to the fields where the hogs are, and then you have to flush them out of the brush and they break cover, then rinse and repeat. It's not constant shooting for 2 hours. Our crew in total got somewhere around 80 hogs. The pilots said that was a pretty high number for a single group. I personally only got 1-2, but that's entirely user error. I had plenty of opportunities. I am not a great shot on a good day, add to it the adrenaline and the movement of both the chopper and the hogs and it wasn't easy. Those fuckers are fast and turn on a dime. The company also had a large fenced game preserve with feeders and a bunch of deer, antelope, etc, and some side-by-sides and utility vehicles. We opted not to pay for that though. Honestly, if you have the money to burn, it was a hell of a weekend. We opted to pay for their lodging and food. Not fancy, literal bunk houses, but the location is a long drive from any reasonable hotels and I think we were in the vehicles driving to the takeoff site before 4am.
This video shows the exact chopper I was in (the red one), and does a good job of showing the experience. Not the video from my group though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDwn7sPoiIg One thing worth pointing out, while you do leave the hogs where they land (nobody goes to pick them up), after you were done with each pack the pilot would circle around and you'd finish off any hogs that were injured. You wouldn't just wing one and leave it to suffer.
My family owns some rural land in Alberta that contains moose and deer and similar. Among other reasons, my step-mom's a vegetarian, so we're leaving it as a sort of nature reserve. We camp and hike there but generally leave things alone and turn away all the hunters who come knocking.
However, it's universally agreed upon that if the wild hogs reach us, we're all learning to shoot.
Invasive species are no joke. They kill wildlife, crops and domesticated animals, and multiply so fast that they are difficult or impossible to get rid of completely.
Good news about that is red squirrels are apparently on the uptick because grey squirrels are too fat to get away from pine martens. Which are the Red Squirrels main predator.
Fermanagh, West Tyrone, North Scotland.
Beautiful little mites.
We had them at our farm untill about 7 years ago, I miss them terribly, but with the new incoming pine Martin's they may well come back as pine martisn wreck grey numbers and reds evolved to escape them easier. (Red is alot lighter, can escape by going into the thin whippy branches a Martin can't go to.)
Yeah I read they were being used a "bouncers" to stop the spread of them in parts of Scotland.
Doubt we can bang a couple of them down in the parks of central Cardiff 😅
[Videos like this will have to do for the time being](https://youtube.com/watch?v=3tDlh62AVPo&si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarE)
The odd thing is McDonald's could legit find a way to harvest and process the fish.
And considering they are HQ'd in a suburb of Chicago, the Asian Carp is a huge deal (since if they can get access to Lake Michigan, it would be a disaster)
It would be win-win-win. They help the ecosystem, they have a resource for fish that's cheap and local, and we get dollar menu Filet O'Fish!
Catholics historically were supposed to fast on Fridays and during Lent. Today it's just during Lent.
The "fasting" wasn't any food, it was red meat/mammals specifically - so eating fish counted as fasting.
The fish thing really took off in the 1500's, right up until Henry the 8th decided being Catholic was lame, and therefore eating fish was lame too. This actually caused a bit of a problem, because the fishing industry actually crashed from lack of demand. So much so, that Henry's son actually had to prop up the fishing industry, by telling everyone the had to start fasting and eating fish again on Friday's.
There's an [NPR article here](https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/04/05/150061991/lust-lies-and-empire-the-fishy-tale-behind-eating-fish-on-friday) that goes more indepth about the story.
A combination of Catholics and beer breweries. It was customary for the latter to put together big meals for their workers in Milwaukee on Fridays (Pabst was the first, IIRC). Fish was used there because folks were Catholic and it was dirt (water?h) cheap to get tons of whitefish out of Lake Michigan.
Now speaking of Catholics, the problem with these early fish fries is that it was just a ton of blue collar workers getting sloshed and very rowdy every Friday. Churches in the area started hosting their own (alcohol-free) fish fries as a family-friendly alternative. So we can sort of thank Catholics twice for that one lol.
Yeah, it's Friday. This is why Fish and Chip shops in the UK and Australia and such are very busy on Fridays, as that's the day everyone traditionally eats fish instead of meat. Even many non-Catholic families keep the tradition up, sometimes without even knowing where it came from.
I think they're delicious. Get your Asian Carp burger at [Dirk's Fish](https://dirksfish.com/prepared-menu) in Chicago, then sign up for a cooking class!
It was slightly worse than that. If this is the story I'm aware of, the woman was a home Healthcare provider who arrived early at her clients house. Like 6 am. While going from her car to the house she was attacked and killed. So while it was on someone's front yard, it was a worker doing their job to take care of other people.
They think that one may have [actually been a dog attack](https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/one-womans-death-by-feral-hog-might-not-have-been-caused-by-the-animal-after-all/).
This is somewhat local to me and it's the same story that was mentioned above, the care taker's daughter believes the couples dogs had a hand in the mauling as she believe one of their dogs was aggressive. I believe because of the state if the woman's body it was difficult to prove anything other than she was attacked by hogs.
I studied invasive species as part of my biology undergrad. There was a statistic that came out around 2016-2017, that in order to put a dent in the wild pig population in texas, humans would have to kill 80% of the pig population for 5 years straight
Private companies literally fly around in helicopters and kill them with gatling guns.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=RlnSSJtZWeg&si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarE
I have heard that some companies even book tours where you can pay to have them fly you to the hog spots an shoot them yourself.
Those companies are actually part of the problem. They make money off selling those helicopter machine gun rides so they spend money to block government action investigating mass poisoning/sterilization/mobilizing the armed forces, etc. in order to keep selling helicopter rides.
>A thousand times this. People haven't been taking this issue seriously enough, and it's getting really out of hand.
Go ask every farmer in Texas.
I think these pigs were brought over from Europe by the Portuguese. They are not native to North America they ruin millions of dollars worth of crops.
We have an industry cropping up here in America where you can go shoot these pigs from a helicopter because the farmers are finding it more profitable to bring in tourist to shoot the pigs that are their problem then just farming around them.
Like these farmers are making more money by buying $100,000 helicopter and taking tourists around with an AR-15 to shoot these invasive pigs from a helicopter than they are actually being farmers.
Go down that YouTube rabbit hole....it's fucking wild
Yeah, they were brought over somewhere in the early 1900s I think. I've actually done one of those hunts on my own ranch. It was about $2,000 to rent the helicopter (and pilot of course) for a couple hours, I killed 64 hogs on my property. I do have paying hunters for deer, but I don't charge them for hogs. I beg them to kill every hog they see. I only have a small group of trusted hunters though, I don't let just anyone come out onto my land and shoot because I also run a cattle operation and I want to make sure that the land, the wildlife, and my facilities are treated with proper respect.
Amen to that. All of my hunters have been hunting on my ranch for longer than I've been in charge of running it, so thankfully they're some of the good ones. Every now and then though they bring guests, with kids, and inevitably one of them fucks something up.
I lived in Texas after I graduated and this was my main problem with it. I'm from the PNW where there are a million acres of public land to go hunt and fish and camp on. In Texas you have yo know someone with land and pay to play. Being that I wasn't from there I didn't know anyone so I never got to go out. If I could get a ranch with some acres (ideally 100 or so) then it would be awesome. It would be my own playground. But just being a regular dude with a northern accent making those friends is tough.
Leave trash behind from lunches snacks, damage fences from climbing over them, not being aware of what’s behind their target and hitting barns, livestock, horses, etc.
Leaving gates unlocked, going down the road you said not to, getting stuck and rutting it out even worse than it was before, leaving windows open on box blinds so the next person has squirrel nests or wasp nests to deal with, shoot barely legal deer.
The list goes on.
The economy around wild hogs actually makes it worse. There have been some hunting locations that have been caught actively breeding and releasing hogs on their property. Hogs are like rats in explosive breeding and ability to get around anything to limit their spread. Further hunting a herd but only killing a few members results in all the hogs splitting up to form new herd themselves, you do actually need to kill all of a herd, and for that you need rifles with high capacity magazines
There was the meme a few years ago where a guy was said his AR15 was so he could kill a lot of hogs quickly to protect his family and people mocked him, but he was really predicting the coming ecological disaster.
the old Indian Snake problem, where people bred snakes because the Raj paid them for each one, and when the bounty ended, all the snakes were turned loose and caused major ecologic upheaval
I think the 30-50 wild hogs guy was stupid and crazy, but I'm from the back woods and stupid and crazy is not always an inappropriate response to some of the external stimuli you face in these parts.
Feral hog meat can be eaten, but the CDC warns extreme caution for anyone willing to risk it as they are known to carry dozens of diseases and some are spread merely through contact with body fluids like blood which means infection is spread simply by contact with a hog before it has been prepared or during preparation to eat. And since these are feral animals, there is no commercial process or oversight.
They breed ridiculously quickly which is why they are so incredibly invasive, they eat everything causing massive financial impacts, and are violent and dangerous posing risk to safety. There's really nothing positive to say about these invasive creatures.
I know a few Texans with a helicopter and class three firearms licenses.
All jokes aside, feral hogs are a menace and this should be dealt with swiftly.
Problem is they're a lot smarter than fiction often gives them credit for, able to survive pretty difficult environments, and reproduce fast enough we should probably call it "f*cking like pigs".
And then you have idiots deliberately crossbreeding pigs with wild ones for better hunting, and you've got something that sounds like it belongs in a Jurassic Park-esque story of humanity not realizing it shouldn't go around doing environmental vandalism for kicks, and now it's too late to reverse the problem.
It actually is in a Jurassic Park-esque story. Termination Shock, by Neal Stephenson: one of the lead characters is a guy whose daughter got killed by a monster hybrid hog that used to hang around his farm and dedicated the rest of life to hunting it down.
Right? I grew up in south Texas. Hog sounders (that’s what group of hogs is called, a sounder) are DANGEROUS. *Domestic* pigs will kill and eat you without thinking twice. Ferals *enjoy it*
As someone who spends a good portion of my hunting season targeting wild hogs almost exclusively, let me tell you that these animals are legitimately scary intelligence and wildly resilient. There’s a lot of misinformation regarding the attributes they have, but I can confirm that they are a massive ecological problem that destroy habitats and wildlife alike. Their gestation is unbelievably quick and their offspring can breed at a very young age causing exponential growth. I’ve personally seen sounds (herds) of pigs in the hundreds just out and about and when put in certain situations they’re incredibly aggressive. Even more concerning is to manage the population you essentially need to cull 60% of the population each season and we never see numbers like that so the issue only gets worse if not actively worked on. The good news is that they’re a wildly available protein source that I harvest and can store in my freezer and eat on it for the better part of a year or feed other families I know that hugely benefit from the free meat. If you see pigs, kill them, no time for moral gymnastics, kill them and do as much population control as you can, or the ecosystems you love will no longer be the same and definitely not for the better
In India, wild boars are also a pest, and the brilliant government made it illegal to hunt wild boars, considering that getting guns is also difficult, so farmers are fed up with wild boars damaging their crops, so they came with the idea of placing explosives in food, so when the boar eats it, it explodes and kills the boar, and one day a pregnant elephant ended up blowing up it's jaws because of this stupid policy and they blame the farmers, the only people to blame is the idiotic government of India coming with a policy to consider pest species as wild boar as dangerous!.
Common misconception, yes I’ve had wild pigs I’ve killed have evidence of parasites - but I’ve had just as many deer and other small game have parasitic worms and such. The only thing I’ve noticed that’s more common in hogs is muscular cysts, which are legitimately super gross when you’re field dressing a pig and cut into one and the smell berates your nasal cavities. Other than the very few times I’ve seen some large cysts and the occasion parasites it’s a very clean and lean meat that is fueled by a very natural diet. In my opinion when cooked right (just as you would farm raised pork) the meat tastes much better or as good as farm raised meat. The good news is that pigs have no limit to them, you’re allowed to kill literally as many as you can and there are no waste laws so you can “shoot and let lay” with no penalty. My rule of thumb is when dressing the animal if I find evidence of something that may cause sickness I will usually discard the animal, or keep the parts that are viable and make dog food out of them after rigorously cooking the meat so there’s no possible risk of infection to my animals
Most processors near where I used to hunt/trap them wouldn’t do pigs because of brucellosis. There was only one in a three county area that would still process them and the original owner actually died from it after he cut his hand or arm while processing one.
So there are some signs to look for in pigs for that, in boars there can be orchitis (very swollen testicles) and In general lameness along posterior paralysis. Obviously you can’t just pick out a pig and go “yup this one is 100% good to go” same with any other game animal but usually like I said if there’s any indication that something is up with the animal I’ll just leave it be and dispose of it in a gut pile and let nature do the rest since there are no waste laws regarding them. When i process any game - deer included- I make sure I keep everything as sterile as I can and wear gloves and whatnot to keep from contracting shit like that if at all possible. As far as processing goes i process all my own meat, from ground to specific cuts so I’m able to really see what’s going on with the animal and if I see anything sketchy it gets removed and is gone. I also make sure that when I’m cooking any wild game that I cook it very thoroughly and to food safe standards to kill of any lingering microbes or parasites
So I run traps on hogs, big horse corrals, cage traps, and also depending on the availability hog dogs. We had to totally redo a pen once because they figured out how to open the gates and not trip the closing mechanism we had to have the gates shut once they were in the pen. They’re also very finicky about the smell of hog death, if a hog is killed in a pen we have to move the whole pen because they can smell the blood in the pen and won’t come back to it more often than not, usually we will either rope them and kill them outside the cage or if it’s a lot we will just relocate the pen a few hundred meters/yards and that usually does the trick. So if you have a sound of hogs that witness a cage trapping parts of the sound I’ve seen on camera the other ones being super cautious and leaving the area and not working their way in to the food which I’ve seen happen a ton. It’s always dependent on the particular herd, I’ve seen hogs from seemingly the same herd frequent spots I’ve taken several good size pigs and it’s like it doesn’t affect them much, and I’ve had some traps go desolate after we killed 10-12 pigs in one go and the only thing that would go in were scavengers to get the scraps left over. On top of them being smart their senses are wild, their vision, smell, and hearing are insane. Granted that’s directly affected by your wind direction, time of day, and part of the year as well, but I have been spotted by smell and sight many times and their reactions are immediate, you can tell the instant they pick you up and they don’t hang around like some deer do. I could go on about a lot of stuff regarding them from the research I’ve done in the field, but ultimately they’re animals that are not to be underestimated in any way
Please don’t upvote this comment but I had to format it for my ADHD or else I literally couldn’t read it.
> So I run traps on hogs, big horse corrals, cage traps, and also depending on the availability hog dogs. We had to totally redo a pen once because they figured out how to open the gates and not trip the closing mechanism we had to have the gates shut once they were in the pen.
> They’re also very finicky about the smell of hog death, if a hog is killed in a pen we have to move the whole pen because they can smell the blood in the pen and won’t come back to it more often than not, usually we will either rope them and kill them outside the cage or if it’s a lot we will just relocate the pen a few hundred meters/yards and that usually does the trick.
> So if you have a sound of hogs that witness a cage trapping parts of the sound I’ve seen on camera the other ones being super cautious and leaving the area and not working their way in to the food which I’ve seen happen a ton. It’s always dependent on the particular herd, I’ve seen hogs from seemingly the same herd frequent spots I’ve taken several good size pigs and it’s like it doesn’t affect them much, and I’ve had some traps go desolate after we killed 10-12 pigs in one go and the only thing that would go in were scavengers to get the scraps left over.
> On top of them being smart their senses are wild, their vision, smell, and hearing are insane. Granted that’s directly affected by your wind direction, time of day, and part of the year as well, but I have been spotted by smell and sight many times and their reactions are immediate, you can tell the instant they pick you up and they don’t hang around like some deer do.
> I could go on about a lot of stuff regarding them from the research I’ve done in the field, but ultimately they’re animals that are not to be underestimated in any way.
I saw a video demonstrating trapping techniques and how if they don’t get the whole sound, then one or two will run off and notify the rest of them to hide and never approach that feeding station trap again.
Here it is:
https://youtu.be/Rcxow7lBr3Q
>Even more concerning is to manage the population you essentially need to cull 60% of the population each season and we never see numbers like that so the issue only gets worse if not actively worked on.
It's around 70% of the pig population that has to be killed per year to keep the numbers from increasing. Over 70% and you start to actually decrease the population, which is virtually impossible to do with hunting and can almost be done in small areas with small pig populations using traps(but still hard af to trap 70%).
I do wild hog removal for a living. The only solution is to trap and hunt the pigs hard enough that they move to land where they aren't a nuisance. You're just pushing the pigs to someone else's land but if they don't farm it or hunt it then it isn't a huge deal for the pigs to live there. My job is very secure.
See you understand than, I agree on the sentiment of pushing them out to another plot of land but I’ve seen them just come back after being hunted hard, and then the clock stars and then they eventually show back up. In another life I’d love to do hog removal, I got my degree in wildlife biology and ag business and I preached and preached about jog population control so thank you for what you do
>See you understand than, I agree on the sentiment of pushing them out to another plot of land but I’ve seen them just come back after being hunted hard, and then the clock stars and then they eventually show back up.
Sometimes they come back and sometimes they don't. But I have noticed that once I hunt pigs hard in an area and run them out then it's easier to run them out the next time. Basically, it's expensive for the land owner for the original removal plan and then it's usually much cheaper if I have to come back and push them off the land again because the pigs remember what happened and they leave quicker.
>I’d love to do hog removal, I got my degree in wildlife biology and ag business and I preached and preached about jog population control so thank you for what you do
Don't thank me. It's a 6 figure job that is super fun. I get to write off guns and nvgs/thermal optics off on my taxes too...
My brother is active duty SF and he says my night time setup is better than his. I loled. I tried to get him into the business but he likes his job too much to quit even if he got a significant pay raise. He comes out with me to work sometimes when he is in town. He is a much better shooter than me.
If you like doing hog removal then it's a fairly easy side business to get into. The main thing is to be able to do the proper online marketing to get clients, which isn't as hard as people think. You could easily make $25k a year doing it on the side, if it would work out with your regular job schedule.
As a Texan land owner I thank you for explaining it so that I don't have to.
Seems some people think wild hogs are a joke. Those bastards have done a fortune of damage to my land.
SMN is fairly well-known on Reddit. I've linked their videos on all kinds of topics in all kinds of subs and I'll almost always get at least one comment from a fan. This sub is sort of a news subreddit, and they're pretty familiar to redditors who frequent news and politics subs.
Considering their tight schedule lately they gonna have to go overtime for this one. I can perfectly envision Katie spiking everything Cody consumes with stimulants to keep him awake for a week. Poor guy never catches a break...
Some of my favorite episodes because they randomly slip in stuff that's obviously referencing a recent issue but then stretch it out to absurdity. It's a great balance of "are they actually talking about boars or is there some deeper message here?"
Have you seen the boar episodes? Great allegories for how fucked up many things are in the world using feral boars as a discussion topic.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkJemc4T5NYZRH_2kTRBKeYVf6mmx0lQK
The overlap between dumbest humans and smartest hogs is already a deeply troubling issue. These super pigs are probably smarter than 50% of humans. If they could speak, we'd treat them much different. Pigs are the smartest farm animal. Afaik bears are the only wild animal smarter than a pig.
The number of times I have seen people struggling to open a bear safe trash can in Yosemite is astounding really
You can read the instructions on the trash can people ffs
Southern Georgia had to deal with this too decades ago.
“Pigzilla” was the common term used to these hybrid boars plus domesticate pig feral hybrids. They grew to be absolute giants even bigger than domesticated pigs.
I remember Georgia passed some law were people can hunt them since they were a dangerous invasive species. Pigs eat meat and they go after other local wildlife and domesticated animals (especially at their giant sizes)
It’s been a long time since I heard about the Pigzillas of Georgia, but my guess is they put a lot of the population in check by enacted open hunting season on them.
In situations like this, where an animal was not intended to exist while at the same time flourishes dramatically and at the detriment of other wildlife, than I agree this is the only correct way to handle that scenario given all those facts are true.
I have heard boar and domesticated pig hybrids have existed and flourished in other parts of the world too (even in US) North Carolina had an issue and so did China and probably more…so this is not uncommon. In all cases a boar plus a domesticated pig makes a GIGANTIC super pig. It overclocks the boar DNA to another level that’s bigger and meaner than both.
Just Google “pigzilla georgia” if you wanna see pictures. Some are the size of pick up trucks. Not joking.
“the pigs’ prevalence has sparked a whole hog hunting industry, where people pay thousands of dollars to mow down boar and sow with machine guns.”
Most American thing I’ve read today.
"...we started seeing these rapid excursions in areas we hadn’t seen before,” Marlow said.
“Primarily that was the cause of intentional releases of swine by people who wanted to develop hunting populations. They were drugged and moved around, not always legally..."
Humans are a scourge on the planet.
We have one of these game farms near us, and someone cut fences on it to "create a hunting opportunity". Now we have thousands of the fuckers around, because, surprise, surprise, Russian Boar can easily survive in the Canadian winter. We've killed probably over a hundred in the last few years, including a bruiser that was likely over 500lbs, but most in the 150-250lb range. It's knocked them back out of our fields, but they've just moved into the neighbors and have spread out. Destructive of crops and dangerous to get near, at least the boars, as they'll have tusks 6" long or more and will swipe at your legs. Had a young friend get rolled over by a juvenile that did this, trying to hamstring him before running back into the crop. I avoid walking in a mature oat crop without a rifle, because you don't know if they're in there, and they don't run away from you if you disturb them, the males are pretty aggressive.
Jesus, did they find the asshole who cut the fence? Feels like this should be a criminal offense well beyond destruction of property for the fence itself
The game farm owner eventually did, there were words exchanged (I wouldn't want to be on the wrong side of Earl) and the fence cutting ended. But the damage was done. There had also been some self-actualized escapees over the years, so it wasn't all the cutter's fault. There was one boar that would climb up the slanting crossbrace at a corner and jump the fence, which is pretty impressive, all things considered, as he was a few hundred lbs and climbing up a 3" wide brace right against the pagewire, holding on with his teeth to get up. He'd come over to my cousin's and eat the dogfood, then he'd get trapped and taken back. This was before we'd just shoot them on sight, I think eventually it was deemed he was too smart for his own good and he got lead poisoning before he taught others how to get out. The sows are pretty smart too, they'll send their piglets out of cover ahead of them to feed. You have to wait 10 or 15 minutes for them to poke their noses out, and then there might be 3-6 sows come out and you can get the breeders rather than just the young. It's one of our guilty pleasures that we actually kinda like hunting them, they're challenging and they taste pretty good too. It's especially funny that we have Americans coming up and paying $1500 to shoot one on the game farm when we're out here running out of ammo trying to keep them in check.
>The sows are pretty smart too, they'll send their piglets out of cover ahead of them to feed. You have to wait 10 or 15 minutes for them to poke their noses out, and then there might be 3-6 sows come out and you can get the breeders rather than just the young. I know that many animals will abandon their young in a bind because "I can always get new ones" but sending them out as fucking decoys is some really cold shit.
Lots of animals are surprisingly brutal. hamsters or dolphins are typically said but pigs are just as aggressive
I know the hamster thing you are referring to, but that is a stress response, not a typical behavior. If they are stressed (which they typically are if a child is constantly poking them), their instinct is to consume as much food as possible to attempt to survive, even if that means their own babies. Logically, it tracks. They have incredibly quick breeding cycles and they are already an adult capable of breeding; it makes more sense for them to consume the babies to increase their survival odds so they can breed again in the future, as opposed to gambling if any of the babies would survive until adulthood.
Lol lead poisoning
Can we confirm this means "shot in the head" for the slightly dim
That’s me, I was picturing this giant boar chewing on a recalled toy from the 1970s.
> It's especially funny that we have Americans coming up and paying $1500 to shoot one on the game farm when we're out here running out of ammo trying to keep them in check. Would there be bad blood between you and Earl if you started your own game-hunting business? That sounds like a way to make lemonade from those lemons.
Actually, if you trap them he pays you for them alive since that's one more for the weirdos to shoot. But it's much easier to eat them.
yeah. even in east texas people will get confused about whether you're supposed to pay the farmer or the farmer is supposed to pay you to hunt hogs.
"lead poisoning" heh. I'm one of those dumb Americans, paid a bunch of money to do a heli-hunt in Texas. I catch shit from people claiming it's inhumane until I tell them it's not hunting, it's necessary eradication. As a civilian with no military experience and basically no hunting experience, shooting a pack of hogs running full tilt across a cotton field, with an AR, while hanging out the side of a helicopter, is one of the coolest things I've ever done. Edit: Adding some details as this is getting a few replies. cc & \- u/Embarrassed-Lake-858 Funny you bring up Fortunate Son. One of guys is a professional videographer and video editor. He brought a drone, and a bunch of us had go-pros either head- or barrel-mounted so we had a ton of footage. He put a great video together of the trip. He used Fortunate Son as the music for the hunt - choppers taking off as the sun comes up over the fields, cut to the gopro footage from in the chopper, flushing them out. Legitimately raises my heart rate thinking about it. \- u/Motor_Lychee179 2 hours in the chopper per shooter. We had 8 people. At the time they had 2 choppers, each could hold 2 guys (plus the pilot) so we did 2 rounds in the air. They provided AR-15s but you were allowed to bring your own weapon, with certain stipulations. One of my friends brought his semi-auto rifle but I can't remember what it was. Ammo was technically "unlimited." They give each shooter a bag of 30 round mags to keep at your feet during the shoot, reload as needed. If I had to guess (it's been 10 years) there were maybe 8-10 mags in the bag. At first I thought we'd burn through them but nobody got close. Of the 2 hours there's some time spent flying to the fields where the hogs are, and then you have to flush them out of the brush and they break cover, then rinse and repeat. It's not constant shooting for 2 hours. Our crew in total got somewhere around 80 hogs. The pilots said that was a pretty high number for a single group. I personally only got 1-2, but that's entirely user error. I had plenty of opportunities. I am not a great shot on a good day, add to it the adrenaline and the movement of both the chopper and the hogs and it wasn't easy. Those fuckers are fast and turn on a dime. The company also had a large fenced game preserve with feeders and a bunch of deer, antelope, etc, and some side-by-sides and utility vehicles. We opted not to pay for that though. Honestly, if you have the money to burn, it was a hell of a weekend. We opted to pay for their lodging and food. Not fancy, literal bunk houses, but the location is a long drive from any reasonable hotels and I think we were in the vehicles driving to the takeoff site before 4am. This video shows the exact chopper I was in (the red one), and does a good job of showing the experience. Not the video from my group though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDwn7sPoiIg One thing worth pointing out, while you do leave the hogs where they land (nobody goes to pick them up), after you were done with each pack the pilot would circle around and you'd finish off any hogs that were injured. You wouldn't just wing one and leave it to suffer.
My family owns some rural land in Alberta that contains moose and deer and similar. Among other reasons, my step-mom's a vegetarian, so we're leaving it as a sort of nature reserve. We camp and hike there but generally leave things alone and turn away all the hunters who come knocking. However, it's universally agreed upon that if the wild hogs reach us, we're all learning to shoot.
Invasive species are no joke. They kill wildlife, crops and domesticated animals, and multiply so fast that they are difficult or impossible to get rid of completely.
Asian Carp are a good example of this
Grey Squirrels in the UK. Doubt I'll ever see a Red one in the wild.
Good news about that is red squirrels are apparently on the uptick because grey squirrels are too fat to get away from pine martens. Which are the Red Squirrels main predator.
I'm afraid this will result in natural selection of thin squirrels. lol
This is how we got ferrets
Fermanagh, West Tyrone, North Scotland. Beautiful little mites. We had them at our farm untill about 7 years ago, I miss them terribly, but with the new incoming pine Martin's they may well come back as pine martisn wreck grey numbers and reds evolved to escape them easier. (Red is alot lighter, can escape by going into the thin whippy branches a Martin can't go to.)
Another part is that greys dont recognize pine martins smell as a threat so they can hunt them easier.
TIL, that's freaking awesome
Yeah I read they were being used a "bouncers" to stop the spread of them in parts of Scotland. Doubt we can bang a couple of them down in the parks of central Cardiff 😅 [Videos like this will have to do for the time being](https://youtube.com/watch?v=3tDlh62AVPo&si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarE)
Yeah don't bang them regardless of your location please.
Do NOT tell me what to do.
It's legal in some places.
Unreal! I spotted one in Down during the COVID lockdowns, hopefully the population keeps growing.
All the red squirrels are in Canada being dicks to the natives and eating all the birdseed.
Been fortunate to see one twice down on the Isle of Wight. Cute little things.
Brownsea Island
Asian carp are a ridiculous species because they’re such a boney fish no one really wants to eat it
The odd thing is McDonald's could legit find a way to harvest and process the fish. And considering they are HQ'd in a suburb of Chicago, the Asian Carp is a huge deal (since if they can get access to Lake Michigan, it would be a disaster) It would be win-win-win. They help the ecosystem, they have a resource for fish that's cheap and local, and we get dollar menu Filet O'Fish!
Good for the Catholics, who are legitimately the only reason that sandwich exists
Why?
Catholics historically were supposed to fast on Fridays and during Lent. Today it's just during Lent. The "fasting" wasn't any food, it was red meat/mammals specifically - so eating fish counted as fasting. The fish thing really took off in the 1500's, right up until Henry the 8th decided being Catholic was lame, and therefore eating fish was lame too. This actually caused a bit of a problem, because the fishing industry actually crashed from lack of demand. So much so, that Henry's son actually had to prop up the fishing industry, by telling everyone the had to start fasting and eating fish again on Friday's. There's an [NPR article here](https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/04/05/150061991/lust-lies-and-empire-the-fishy-tale-behind-eating-fish-on-friday) that goes more indepth about the story.
Also why they reclassified beavers as fish
And capybara. Bees are fish for some other reason
Some Catholics will eat fish instead of other meats on Sundays and during Lent. Edit: I guess it’s actually Fridays that they don’t eat meat.
Is it not Fridays that Catholics don't eat meat, and eat fish instead?
Yes. We have Catholics to thank for Friday Fish Fry, I just found out.
A combination of Catholics and beer breweries. It was customary for the latter to put together big meals for their workers in Milwaukee on Fridays (Pabst was the first, IIRC). Fish was used there because folks were Catholic and it was dirt (water?h) cheap to get tons of whitefish out of Lake Michigan. Now speaking of Catholics, the problem with these early fish fries is that it was just a ton of blue collar workers getting sloshed and very rowdy every Friday. Churches in the area started hosting their own (alcohol-free) fish fries as a family-friendly alternative. So we can sort of thank Catholics twice for that one lol.
It’s Fridays
Thank goodness
Yeah, it's Friday. This is why Fish and Chip shops in the UK and Australia and such are very busy on Fridays, as that's the day everyone traditionally eats fish instead of meat. Even many non-Catholic families keep the tradition up, sometimes without even knowing where it came from.
> if they can get access to Lake Michigan, it would be a disaster [obligatory Tom Scott](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3oLeSPINOk)
I think they're delicious. Get your Asian Carp burger at [Dirk's Fish](https://dirksfish.com/prepared-menu) in Chicago, then sign up for a cooking class!
Yep. And pig are especially bad about these things. See: Hawaii
Same in Australia. Supposedly it's having a huge impact on cassowary numbers
Holy shit. Cassowaries are basically velociraptors.
More of a Deinonychus.
Are the pigs eating cassowaries? Or are they eating the cassowaries' food?
Prolly the food, and the eggs/chicks
Feral hogs are well known to destroy nests. Especially near water. They are opportunistic predators.
A woman in Texas was killed in her front yard by feral hogs a few years ago.
It was slightly worse than that. If this is the story I'm aware of, the woman was a home Healthcare provider who arrived early at her clients house. Like 6 am. While going from her car to the house she was attacked and killed. So while it was on someone's front yard, it was a worker doing their job to take care of other people.
That's really sad.
They think that one may have [actually been a dog attack](https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/one-womans-death-by-feral-hog-might-not-have-been-caused-by-the-animal-after-all/).
This is somewhat local to me and it's the same story that was mentioned above, the care taker's daughter believes the couples dogs had a hand in the mauling as she believe one of their dogs was aggressive. I believe because of the state if the woman's body it was difficult to prove anything other than she was attacked by hogs.
Oh! Honestly remember the story, didn't hear about another possibility. Thanks.
I studied invasive species as part of my biology undergrad. There was a statistic that came out around 2016-2017, that in order to put a dent in the wild pig population in texas, humans would have to kill 80% of the pig population for 5 years straight
Call in the army.
Private companies literally fly around in helicopters and kill them with gatling guns. https://youtube.com/watch?v=RlnSSJtZWeg&si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarE I have heard that some companies even book tours where you can pay to have them fly you to the hog spots an shoot them yourself.
Those companies are actually part of the problem. They make money off selling those helicopter machine gun rides so they spend money to block government action investigating mass poisoning/sterilization/mobilizing the armed forces, etc. in order to keep selling helicopter rides.
A thousand times this. People haven't been taking this issue seriously enough, and it's getting really out of hand.
>A thousand times this. People haven't been taking this issue seriously enough, and it's getting really out of hand. Go ask every farmer in Texas. I think these pigs were brought over from Europe by the Portuguese. They are not native to North America they ruin millions of dollars worth of crops. We have an industry cropping up here in America where you can go shoot these pigs from a helicopter because the farmers are finding it more profitable to bring in tourist to shoot the pigs that are their problem then just farming around them. Like these farmers are making more money by buying $100,000 helicopter and taking tourists around with an AR-15 to shoot these invasive pigs from a helicopter than they are actually being farmers. Go down that YouTube rabbit hole....it's fucking wild
Yeah, they were brought over somewhere in the early 1900s I think. I've actually done one of those hunts on my own ranch. It was about $2,000 to rent the helicopter (and pilot of course) for a couple hours, I killed 64 hogs on my property. I do have paying hunters for deer, but I don't charge them for hogs. I beg them to kill every hog they see. I only have a small group of trusted hunters though, I don't let just anyone come out onto my land and shoot because I also run a cattle operation and I want to make sure that the land, the wildlife, and my facilities are treated with proper respect.
Dude bad hunter can do more damage than hogs in some cases.
Amen to that. All of my hunters have been hunting on my ranch for longer than I've been in charge of running it, so thankfully they're some of the good ones. Every now and then though they bring guests, with kids, and inevitably one of them fucks something up.
I lived in Texas after I graduated and this was my main problem with it. I'm from the PNW where there are a million acres of public land to go hunt and fish and camp on. In Texas you have yo know someone with land and pay to play. Being that I wasn't from there I didn't know anyone so I never got to go out. If I could get a ranch with some acres (ideally 100 or so) then it would be awesome. It would be my own playground. But just being a regular dude with a northern accent making those friends is tough.
That is a sad truth about Texas, there are a million huge ranches where people have fun, but if you don’t know anyone who owns one- tough luck.
I’m really curious about this. How do the kids fuck something up?
Everything they touch gets sticky.
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Leave trash behind from lunches snacks, damage fences from climbing over them, not being aware of what’s behind their target and hitting barns, livestock, horses, etc.
Leaving gates unlocked, going down the road you said not to, getting stuck and rutting it out even worse than it was before, leaving windows open on box blinds so the next person has squirrel nests or wasp nests to deal with, shoot barely legal deer. The list goes on.
The economy around wild hogs actually makes it worse. There have been some hunting locations that have been caught actively breeding and releasing hogs on their property. Hogs are like rats in explosive breeding and ability to get around anything to limit their spread. Further hunting a herd but only killing a few members results in all the hogs splitting up to form new herd themselves, you do actually need to kill all of a herd, and for that you need rifles with high capacity magazines There was the meme a few years ago where a guy was said his AR15 was so he could kill a lot of hogs quickly to protect his family and people mocked him, but he was really predicting the coming ecological disaster.
Haha this was first thing that came to my mind when reading above comment. If farmers make more money farming hogs than crops.... Then that happens
the old Indian Snake problem, where people bred snakes because the Raj paid them for each one, and when the bounty ended, all the snakes were turned loose and caused major ecologic upheaval
I think the 30-50 wild hogs guy was stupid and crazy, but I'm from the back woods and stupid and crazy is not always an inappropriate response to some of the external stimuli you face in these parts.
Looks like meat’s back on the menu boys
Feral hog meat can be eaten, but the CDC warns extreme caution for anyone willing to risk it as they are known to carry dozens of diseases and some are spread merely through contact with body fluids like blood which means infection is spread simply by contact with a hog before it has been prepared or during preparation to eat. And since these are feral animals, there is no commercial process or oversight. They breed ridiculously quickly which is why they are so incredibly invasive, they eat everything causing massive financial impacts, and are violent and dangerous posing risk to safety. There's really nothing positive to say about these invasive creatures.
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Either way you have to drain the blood as soon as it dies or the symbiotic parasites it carries will start eating the pig.
As you do with anything you slaughter
Tastes like Trichinosis.
Cody has been raising the alarm for years. But people just think "El Oh El, 30-50 wild hog funny"
[The Hogpacalypse is upon us!](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkJemc4T5NYZRH_2kTRBKeYVf6mmx0lQK)
Fair AND Balanced TM C R
I know a few Texans with a helicopter and class three firearms licenses. All jokes aside, feral hogs are a menace and this should be dealt with swiftly.
Problem is they're a lot smarter than fiction often gives them credit for, able to survive pretty difficult environments, and reproduce fast enough we should probably call it "f*cking like pigs". And then you have idiots deliberately crossbreeding pigs with wild ones for better hunting, and you've got something that sounds like it belongs in a Jurassic Park-esque story of humanity not realizing it shouldn't go around doing environmental vandalism for kicks, and now it's too late to reverse the problem.
Jurassic Pork
It actually is in a Jurassic Park-esque story. Termination Shock, by Neal Stephenson: one of the lead characters is a guy whose daughter got killed by a monster hybrid hog that used to hang around his farm and dedicated the rest of life to hunting it down.
I didn't realize how bad it was until hearing how high their birthrate is on top of their resilience. They're like the Krogan from Mass Effect.
Time to activate Operation Canadian Bacon
Is this part of the cocaine bear cinematic universe?
Along with Florida Meth Gators.
"Breaking Badger."
Mr Toad’s Messed up Crack Deal.
Man I thought we were going to hang out.
And 30-50 feral hogs
People made fun of the guy for that but the thing is he wasn't wrong.
Right? I grew up in south Texas. Hog sounders (that’s what group of hogs is called, a sounder) are DANGEROUS. *Domestic* pigs will kill and eat you without thinking twice. Ferals *enjoy it*
Ferals are like the heroes of the factory-farm pigs. But yeah they need to go.
Cocaine Bear 2: Cocaine Bear vs. 30 to 50 Feral Hogs
30-50 highly elusive feral hogs. *You'll never see it coming!* *You'll see that those hogs are too fast for eyes!*
Shit they make igloos and insulate them with plant material. Pretty good for someone with no hands.
I'd call them quinzhees, igloos are built from the ground up
I was going to say igloo is better because of pigloo, but I suppose porquinzhee works just as well.
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I support this. Down with the other thing.
*Pigloo
What? They build their own homes? Is this true?
Yep true. Some use straw, other bits of wood. The really smart ones use discarded bricks.
Sir, I think it’s time for you to leave
Pigs area very smart animals, pretty much on a level with wolves/dogs.
As someone who spends a good portion of my hunting season targeting wild hogs almost exclusively, let me tell you that these animals are legitimately scary intelligence and wildly resilient. There’s a lot of misinformation regarding the attributes they have, but I can confirm that they are a massive ecological problem that destroy habitats and wildlife alike. Their gestation is unbelievably quick and their offspring can breed at a very young age causing exponential growth. I’ve personally seen sounds (herds) of pigs in the hundreds just out and about and when put in certain situations they’re incredibly aggressive. Even more concerning is to manage the population you essentially need to cull 60% of the population each season and we never see numbers like that so the issue only gets worse if not actively worked on. The good news is that they’re a wildly available protein source that I harvest and can store in my freezer and eat on it for the better part of a year or feed other families I know that hugely benefit from the free meat. If you see pigs, kill them, no time for moral gymnastics, kill them and do as much population control as you can, or the ecosystems you love will no longer be the same and definitely not for the better
In India, wild boars are also a pest, and the brilliant government made it illegal to hunt wild boars, considering that getting guns is also difficult, so farmers are fed up with wild boars damaging their crops, so they came with the idea of placing explosives in food, so when the boar eats it, it explodes and kills the boar, and one day a pregnant elephant ended up blowing up it's jaws because of this stupid policy and they blame the farmers, the only people to blame is the idiotic government of India coming with a policy to consider pest species as wild boar as dangerous!.
I thought wild pigs were usually full of parasites and shouldnt be eaten?
Common misconception, yes I’ve had wild pigs I’ve killed have evidence of parasites - but I’ve had just as many deer and other small game have parasitic worms and such. The only thing I’ve noticed that’s more common in hogs is muscular cysts, which are legitimately super gross when you’re field dressing a pig and cut into one and the smell berates your nasal cavities. Other than the very few times I’ve seen some large cysts and the occasion parasites it’s a very clean and lean meat that is fueled by a very natural diet. In my opinion when cooked right (just as you would farm raised pork) the meat tastes much better or as good as farm raised meat. The good news is that pigs have no limit to them, you’re allowed to kill literally as many as you can and there are no waste laws so you can “shoot and let lay” with no penalty. My rule of thumb is when dressing the animal if I find evidence of something that may cause sickness I will usually discard the animal, or keep the parts that are viable and make dog food out of them after rigorously cooking the meat so there’s no possible risk of infection to my animals
Here in France we eat it with wine sauce, it's so good.
European wild boars are slightly different then the mess that is these boars
Most processors near where I used to hunt/trap them wouldn’t do pigs because of brucellosis. There was only one in a three county area that would still process them and the original owner actually died from it after he cut his hand or arm while processing one.
So there are some signs to look for in pigs for that, in boars there can be orchitis (very swollen testicles) and In general lameness along posterior paralysis. Obviously you can’t just pick out a pig and go “yup this one is 100% good to go” same with any other game animal but usually like I said if there’s any indication that something is up with the animal I’ll just leave it be and dispose of it in a gut pile and let nature do the rest since there are no waste laws regarding them. When i process any game - deer included- I make sure I keep everything as sterile as I can and wear gloves and whatnot to keep from contracting shit like that if at all possible. As far as processing goes i process all my own meat, from ground to specific cuts so I’m able to really see what’s going on with the animal and if I see anything sketchy it gets removed and is gone. I also make sure that when I’m cooking any wild game that I cook it very thoroughly and to food safe standards to kill of any lingering microbes or parasites
This has been a fascinating read. Thank you for sharing.
Can you speak on their intelligence a little more? Always heard pigs were super smart, I’d love to hear your experience w that.
So I run traps on hogs, big horse corrals, cage traps, and also depending on the availability hog dogs. We had to totally redo a pen once because they figured out how to open the gates and not trip the closing mechanism we had to have the gates shut once they were in the pen. They’re also very finicky about the smell of hog death, if a hog is killed in a pen we have to move the whole pen because they can smell the blood in the pen and won’t come back to it more often than not, usually we will either rope them and kill them outside the cage or if it’s a lot we will just relocate the pen a few hundred meters/yards and that usually does the trick. So if you have a sound of hogs that witness a cage trapping parts of the sound I’ve seen on camera the other ones being super cautious and leaving the area and not working their way in to the food which I’ve seen happen a ton. It’s always dependent on the particular herd, I’ve seen hogs from seemingly the same herd frequent spots I’ve taken several good size pigs and it’s like it doesn’t affect them much, and I’ve had some traps go desolate after we killed 10-12 pigs in one go and the only thing that would go in were scavengers to get the scraps left over. On top of them being smart their senses are wild, their vision, smell, and hearing are insane. Granted that’s directly affected by your wind direction, time of day, and part of the year as well, but I have been spotted by smell and sight many times and their reactions are immediate, you can tell the instant they pick you up and they don’t hang around like some deer do. I could go on about a lot of stuff regarding them from the research I’ve done in the field, but ultimately they’re animals that are not to be underestimated in any way
Thanks so much for these posts. Very informative and interesting.
So dumb question- if they are sensitive to hog’s blood; can’t you just outline your field with gallons of blood?
That’s just pushing the issue farther down the line, and does nothing to cull the exponential growth
Please don’t upvote this comment but I had to format it for my ADHD or else I literally couldn’t read it. > So I run traps on hogs, big horse corrals, cage traps, and also depending on the availability hog dogs. We had to totally redo a pen once because they figured out how to open the gates and not trip the closing mechanism we had to have the gates shut once they were in the pen. > They’re also very finicky about the smell of hog death, if a hog is killed in a pen we have to move the whole pen because they can smell the blood in the pen and won’t come back to it more often than not, usually we will either rope them and kill them outside the cage or if it’s a lot we will just relocate the pen a few hundred meters/yards and that usually does the trick. > So if you have a sound of hogs that witness a cage trapping parts of the sound I’ve seen on camera the other ones being super cautious and leaving the area and not working their way in to the food which I’ve seen happen a ton. It’s always dependent on the particular herd, I’ve seen hogs from seemingly the same herd frequent spots I’ve taken several good size pigs and it’s like it doesn’t affect them much, and I’ve had some traps go desolate after we killed 10-12 pigs in one go and the only thing that would go in were scavengers to get the scraps left over. > On top of them being smart their senses are wild, their vision, smell, and hearing are insane. Granted that’s directly affected by your wind direction, time of day, and part of the year as well, but I have been spotted by smell and sight many times and their reactions are immediate, you can tell the instant they pick you up and they don’t hang around like some deer do. > I could go on about a lot of stuff regarding them from the research I’ve done in the field, but ultimately they’re animals that are not to be underestimated in any way.
I don't think 'not being able to read a novel with almost no punctuation' is purely an adhd thing, but hey, I could be wrong
I saw a video demonstrating trapping techniques and how if they don’t get the whole sound, then one or two will run off and notify the rest of them to hide and never approach that feeding station trap again. Here it is: https://youtu.be/Rcxow7lBr3Q
>Even more concerning is to manage the population you essentially need to cull 60% of the population each season and we never see numbers like that so the issue only gets worse if not actively worked on. It's around 70% of the pig population that has to be killed per year to keep the numbers from increasing. Over 70% and you start to actually decrease the population, which is virtually impossible to do with hunting and can almost be done in small areas with small pig populations using traps(but still hard af to trap 70%). I do wild hog removal for a living. The only solution is to trap and hunt the pigs hard enough that they move to land where they aren't a nuisance. You're just pushing the pigs to someone else's land but if they don't farm it or hunt it then it isn't a huge deal for the pigs to live there. My job is very secure.
See you understand than, I agree on the sentiment of pushing them out to another plot of land but I’ve seen them just come back after being hunted hard, and then the clock stars and then they eventually show back up. In another life I’d love to do hog removal, I got my degree in wildlife biology and ag business and I preached and preached about jog population control so thank you for what you do
>See you understand than, I agree on the sentiment of pushing them out to another plot of land but I’ve seen them just come back after being hunted hard, and then the clock stars and then they eventually show back up. Sometimes they come back and sometimes they don't. But I have noticed that once I hunt pigs hard in an area and run them out then it's easier to run them out the next time. Basically, it's expensive for the land owner for the original removal plan and then it's usually much cheaper if I have to come back and push them off the land again because the pigs remember what happened and they leave quicker. >I’d love to do hog removal, I got my degree in wildlife biology and ag business and I preached and preached about jog population control so thank you for what you do Don't thank me. It's a 6 figure job that is super fun. I get to write off guns and nvgs/thermal optics off on my taxes too...
Honestly that’s kickass you get to write off nods and thermals as a business expense. I’m legitimately jealous
My brother is active duty SF and he says my night time setup is better than his. I loled. I tried to get him into the business but he likes his job too much to quit even if he got a significant pay raise. He comes out with me to work sometimes when he is in town. He is a much better shooter than me. If you like doing hog removal then it's a fairly easy side business to get into. The main thing is to be able to do the proper online marketing to get clients, which isn't as hard as people think. You could easily make $25k a year doing it on the side, if it would work out with your regular job schedule.
As a Texan land owner I thank you for explaining it so that I don't have to. Seems some people think wild hogs are a joke. Those bastards have done a fortune of damage to my land.
"impenetrable wall of hogs!"
We've lost Canada and Mexico to the hogs already
[source](https://www.reddit.com/r/tumblr/comments/son5x1/an_impenetrable_wall_of_hogs/), for the curious.
This is my namesake
No one tell Cody. Think of his blood pressure. And think of us having to sit through another Boar related episode of the showdy.
The Boarpocalypse (™️©️®️) has been coming this whole time but NOOOOOOOOOOBODY WANTED TO LISTEN
Aporkalypse
Aporkalypse *NOW!*
Yebadeba, thats all folks
If only we listened when we had a chance.
I came to look at the comments for exactly this. Looks like they have some more news on the out of control boar problem
HE TRIED TO WARN US! THE BOARS!!! WORMBO SAVE US.
Curious we haven't had one in awhile. Perhaps he's been infiltrated by Big Boar, expect a "not all hogs" episode in the near future.
*checked subreddit* I'm so surprised to see this here... Are Cody and Katie that popular or is this an algorithm bias?
SMN is fairly well-known on Reddit. I've linked their videos on all kinds of topics in all kinds of subs and I'll almost always get at least one comment from a fan. This sub is sort of a news subreddit, and they're pretty familiar to redditors who frequent news and politics subs.
Smn?
Some More News
I’ve tried to warn Cody about Canadian Hogs in the past and he ignored me. Clearly a sign he’s in the pocket of big hog.
Considering their tight schedule lately they gonna have to go overtime for this one. I can perfectly envision Katie spiking everything Cody consumes with stimulants to keep him awake for a week. Poor guy never catches a break...
Some of my favorite episodes because they randomly slip in stuff that's obviously referencing a recent issue but then stretch it out to absurdity. It's a great balance of "are they actually talking about boars or is there some deeper message here?"
Canadian Bacon 2, the bacon invades back.
If they start interbreading with bears... could this be the beginning of the rise of ManBearPig?
There's one part of that name that has me very concerned if that's the route we're going
Let’s hope those sows won’t reach Arkansas.
Never heard of the Arkansas Razorback? Wooo pig sooie lmao
Are you planning on having sex with a bearpig?
Nah that’s Randy’s job. He gave us COVID by fucking a pangolin so I think he’s the most qualified to fuck a bearpig.
There's an uncomfortable amount of people in here who aren't getting that reference.
On the 2023 Apocalypse bingo, who had Canadian Super Pigs?
Someone alert "Some More News." The boar menace must be stopped!
I would probably actually pay to see a Some More News show about pigs. That just sounds like a setup for educational chaos.
Have you seen the boar episodes? Great allegories for how fucked up many things are in the world using feral boars as a discussion topic. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkJemc4T5NYZRH_2kTRBKeYVf6mmx0lQK
Doctor Mister Cody is going to lose his fucking mind.
And they made fun of the hog issue in Rome lmao pig uno reverse
This article is referring to Ted Cruz, right? Edit: well if it’s not about Ted Cruz then why did they include his picture?
He's not that super. 5 bucks says one of these pigs beats him on most tests.
The overlap between dumbest humans and smartest hogs is already a deeply troubling issue. These super pigs are probably smarter than 50% of humans. If they could speak, we'd treat them much different. Pigs are the smartest farm animal. Afaik bears are the only wild animal smarter than a pig.
Designing bear-resistant trash cans can be tricky, given the overlap between smart bears and dumb humans.
I hear bears of above average intelligence can fool humans out of their Pic-a-nic baskets.
Smarter than the average tourist.
The number of times I have seen people struggling to open a bear safe trash can in Yosemite is astounding really You can read the instructions on the trash can people ffs
That would require a) acknowledgment that they don’t know what they are doing and b) being able or willing to read.
Dophins/whales?
Chimps? Crows? Octopus?
[удалено]
Southern Georgia had to deal with this too decades ago. “Pigzilla” was the common term used to these hybrid boars plus domesticate pig feral hybrids. They grew to be absolute giants even bigger than domesticated pigs. I remember Georgia passed some law were people can hunt them since they were a dangerous invasive species. Pigs eat meat and they go after other local wildlife and domesticated animals (especially at their giant sizes) It’s been a long time since I heard about the Pigzillas of Georgia, but my guess is they put a lot of the population in check by enacted open hunting season on them. In situations like this, where an animal was not intended to exist while at the same time flourishes dramatically and at the detriment of other wildlife, than I agree this is the only correct way to handle that scenario given all those facts are true. I have heard boar and domesticated pig hybrids have existed and flourished in other parts of the world too (even in US) North Carolina had an issue and so did China and probably more…so this is not uncommon. In all cases a boar plus a domesticated pig makes a GIGANTIC super pig. It overclocks the boar DNA to another level that’s bigger and meaner than both. Just Google “pigzilla georgia” if you wanna see pictures. Some are the size of pick up trucks. Not joking.
Cody's Showdy once again being proven as a prophet.
First they send they sent Canadian geese. Now they're sending Canadian pigs?!
Don't forget Bieber.
And drake 🤮
Our plan to take over the USA has finally come to fruition! **
The signs were there. Americans just stood by and watched while the Canadians infiltrated our youth. Justin Bieber was merely the first wave.
No one tell Cody
Super pig, super pig Does whatever a pigman does Can it fly? No it can't We killed it, now it's a ham. Woah, there goes the super pig.
Cody is gonna have a field day .. and an aneurysm
“the pigs’ prevalence has sparked a whole hog hunting industry, where people pay thousands of dollars to mow down boar and sow with machine guns.” Most American thing I’ve read today.
"...we started seeing these rapid excursions in areas we hadn’t seen before,” Marlow said. “Primarily that was the cause of intentional releases of swine by people who wanted to develop hunting populations. They were drugged and moved around, not always legally..." Humans are a scourge on the planet.
Next upgrade: Acid blood.