Wild Hogs in my front yard.

texasjohn · Jun 27, 2006

ROX... you need to define "problem pig"

My definition of problem is damage (current or future) that is more than you are willing to take compared to the cost of removing the damaging entity.

You have already indicated that you are having to repair damage. This will continue unless the damaging entity (the hog or hogs) are removed. I predict that you will reach your tolerance level rather soon if it has not already been reached... be aware that Eddie is unique in being able to sight and remove numerous animals in a rather short period of time. Typically it takes more effort to "get your hog"

I bow to Eddie and Steph... they are HUNTERS and I wish I were doing as well with my coyote problem as they are with their hogs

I have learned from you that the wild hog population in France is at least as significant as it is here in Texas... who would have thought that France and Texas would have had anything in common since the French abandoned Texas around 1684.

Eddie is right... there is no reason to not eat wild hog...just make sure it is well cooked... the raw meat can on occasion have parasites living in it... a well known phenomena and fully solved by cooking properly...

If you trap the hogs, you can make sure of a very clean kill since you will be close to the animal and can call your shots. Any animal shot thru the gut with all the insides strewn around will smell... even when fresh... that's just the way life is. Alternatively, a head shot and carefully cleaned animal results in no lost meat and only wholesum smells of blood and meat. My sons and I shoot deer ONLY in the head... we each learned the hard way in our youth that any other kind of shot causes varying problems. If we can't hit the head with certainty, we don't shoot. This makes the cleaning chore much more pleasant. Makes following the blood trail a lot shorter, too

Keep us up to date on the progress of your olives and hogs! Maybe we should try olives here.... we have droughts here too

EddieWalker · Jun 28, 2006

National Geographic Channel has a show about Hogzilla. It's a very, very large hog that was shot in Norht Carolina. The claim was that it weighed over a thousand pounds and the picture of it and the guy who shot it was all over the net for awhile.

They sent some scientist out to dig it up and do some tests on it. They aslo did allot of background information on wild hogs and what they are.

A few things I learned were that a domestic pig can escape the farm and start turning wild in just a few months!!!! I always thought it took a few generations, but that was just an assumption I made. The scientist on the show said they will start to grow hair, their tails will straiten and the DNA will change!!! That last part really shocked me. How does your DNA change???

They can test a pigs DNA and tell how far along the change is, and even if one of its parents was domestic or wild. It's just amazing to me that this happens.

North America has no native pig species. The Javalina is pig like, but from what I've read, it's really a unique species. Even if we consider the Javilia a pig, which I do, it wont breed with other pigs and has nothing to do with the wild pig populations we have across the country.

You can almost tell who settled where in the ealy years of our country by the types of pigs we have running around. West coast has russian hogs. Southern states have French and Spanish and the East coast has a northern european strain. Of course, these have all mixed with other versions of domestic hogs and it gets real confusing.

Rox has truly wild hogs on her land since she lives where they come from. The real deal!!!!

One thing they do in France, along with other European counties, is have estate hunts, or driven hunts. A line of people will beat the woods and drive the animals to the shooting positions. As the animals pass the shooters, they are shot. It's not uncommon on a big hunt to shoot several hundred hogs this way. This is how they did it a thousand years ago, and it's still done today on the big estates to keep the populations down.

Eddie

greatrandini · Jun 28, 2006

Very interesting about the French hogs. I read about Hogzilla and the DNA changes before. It is amazing how fast you can get an entire area populated with "wild pigs" from just a few escapes. I think it was about 10 years back maybe more or less when the market fell out from under the pork industry. Pig farmers were killing off large numbers of stock. Some decided to just let them go. Some people feel this is why we have so many feral pigs in TX, AR, Ok, etc....

stevenf · Jun 29, 2006

I have used a reference book made by a biologist for TPWD that has some interesting info that I thought I'd share the document is in a pdf book form and prints out nicely http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/publications/pwdpubs/media/pwd_bk_w7000_0195.pdf

Anyway the book is aging and the numbers in Texas are significantly increased but the info is worth a read and they have plans in the back of the book for numerous styles of hog traps. Its a good read for anyone considering trying to eradicate them but a calculator will tell you the a mature female capable of having two litters of up to 12 per year with an even mix of sows and boars should give you an idea of how completely impossible the task might be especially without everyone within numerous square miles doing their part. Just imagine best case scenario for reproduction 2=26=312=3744=44928 now these numbers don't take into consideration that some will perish, the baby sows don't reproduce for a year or so etc but you can see by the numbers that even if their half right that means in two years from two hogs you have 22464 wild hogs pretty scarry HUH! Thats a lot of 223 shells even in my book now do a little more math the book was written in 2003 I think they claimed 1.5 million hogs then OH baby thats a lot of hogs reproduced in just the last 3 years course they only have a eight year expected life cycle but WOW!
Steve