dakotasin has a great point. People/farmers whine about an invasive and destructive species yet don't want FREE help eradicating the problem. I feel for them, but just a little. Kinda like having a broke down in a car and having someone kindly offer to fix it free and the owner sez you need to pay me for the privilege of fixing my problem. OOp's there goes my sympathy for the landowners....
Exactly, +1. Obviously, it ain't *that* big of a problem for farmers & other landowners, and costing them too terribly much, or hunting them would be cheap. As it stands now, it costs an arm and a leg. I can understand charging a *small* fee to weed out the riff-raff and cover your very slight liability exposure, but hogs is big business, so if these "poor ol farmers" don't like having their fields dug two feet deep, then they'd let in more hunters for free or cheap (for hogs only, anyway). I have NO sympathy for them. As for caring about food production, bah, Thomas Malthus was pretty sure doomsday was coming, too. Food prices won't change due to hogs. Just make rich landowners a little less rich. Reminds me of the South Park episode when the boys were chastised for downloading free music on the internet, by showing them that Britney Spears had to downgrade from a Learjet 4 to a Learjet 3 with no remote control for the surround sound, due to the money she lost from people downloading her music on the internet - this was supposed to guilt them into stop downloading.
Feral Hogs become a plague wherever they establish regarding Farmers and Ranchers
Plague regarding farmers and ranchers? See above - boo hoo.
and Deer Hunters and Native Wildlife.
Well, I not so sure that it's a plague to deer and other native wildlife. If they are, then that's a very valid concern I'd be interested in learning more about. Are there any scientific studies that prove that any species (deer or otherwise) are adversely impacted in a material way by hogs? I'd like to see it. Seems to me, anecdotally, that in the hog areas around here, deer thrive just as well as in the non-hog areas.
Eating fawns as they fall from their mother's wombs, is a vicious, predatory event that Feral Hogs thrive upon,
Well, maybe this is something - I'd like to know how common this is - seems like the deer could run in 30 seconds way farther than the slower hogs could catch up and find her when she is about to give birth - any scientific studies or proof that show that this happens and how often in reality?
in addition to eating almost anything a deer would eat.
Where I hunt, that is in NO WAY a problem. Every year, there are literally tons and tons of uneaten acorn mast left on the forest floor to rot, for starters. Plenty of food for all.
Rooting up to two feet deep in Farmers' fields removes a great deal of farming profits.
Well, that's why they get subsidies from Washington. See above / boo hoo. Maybe they should sell some of that land to others who want to move to the sticks, so they'd be mere millionaires instead of multi-millionaires, from all they land they inherited. Maybe some of them might even have to (gasp!) change careers like so many others among us do, which is a natural part of the free-market economy (career changes). And I'm all broke up about Archer Daniels Midland's profits, as far as the big corporate farmers are concerned.
Wallowing fouls the waters of streams and creeks, yet this a favored hobby of Hogs.
That'd be a problem, but I'd like to see scientific studies that show that the waters would then adversely affect other species. Sounds to me like it's only a problem when you let your number run away and don't control them. Sounds to me that because they don't let enough hunters on their land, because they're so greedy, they charge too high of a price to get enough numbers of hunters to effectively control their numbers. I can't imagine a properly-controlled number of hogs materially affecting the water supply, but I'm open to proof to the contrary.
That Wild Pigs supplant Whitetails is a recognized fact,
I'd like to see that "fact" recognized by a scientific study. Maybe they do, so I'd appreciate any links to impartial data showing that.
Nomex ON - Go!
Patty, we have GOT to try to help you figure out where you live. For starters, lets look on your mailbox - tell me, is there a zip code listed?