Warfarin approved to help control wild hogs.....your thoughts?

"I love the smell of bacon in the morning; smells like...breakfast."

i would not have a problem with poisoning wild hogs if the poison would not cause prolonged suffering. Warfarin does cause prolonged suffering and i'm adamantly opposed to the stuff.

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So, asphyxiation is better than hemorrhage? Once again, I think this mindset stems from confusing the act of hunting (or possibly warfare against *humans*) with pest control of mindless beasts; it's not about sportsmanship or fairness or feelings, it's about solving a problem efficiently. Once the problem is suitably under control, less drastic measures can be employed that do take luxuries like the animal's experience or outward appearance upon death into consideration.

If Nitrite actually does ultimately prove to work better, then more power to them; who wouldn't rather have purple hogs instead of bloody hogs littering their property? The fact it kills faster may or may not be a good thing from where I see it; if one sounder can learn from the folly of another, 2 hours may not be enough time to zap all the hogs in an area before they learn to avoid the baits. From what I understand the stuff is not yet tested, unlike the extensive track record of warfarin as a mammalian pesticide.

So why would the suggestion be to deploy an untested substance --that we don't really know the follow-on effects for-- over one that has been well understood going on decades in similar/identical usage? Because the animal supposedly experiences less 'suffering' by having its hemoglobin shut down as opposed to a brain hemorrhage? The animal will exhibit protracted stress & mental deterioration in either case before its brain function is sufficiently compromised, so I'm not really seeing the difference in how the animal 'feels' before its end --assuming animals even have feelings in the way we perceive them, or that we should give them moral weight because they somewhat resemble our own at times.

This is becoming less a scientific/pragmatic discussion and more of a moralistic one; no different than a discussion with people who see recreational hunting or responsible wildlife management as needless evils of man upon poor helpless animals.

TCB

Not to mention, I'll never forget the morning a friend had invited me to hunt his place 3500 acres or so and the morning someone spent an hour of so flying back and forth on one (tree top center of photo) and I never saw a thing except him.

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Oh, man, I hadn't even thought of that angle. Jeez that had to have been frustrating & annoying; I was buzzed every fifteen minutes for five hours a day for four days while hiking the otherwise-idyllic Kalalau coastline trail, by tour birds. Let's just say that while I don't agree with angry natives who throw spears at National Geographic choppers, I understand. (I did get closure later by taking said aerial tour myself, lol)

Maybe send thousands of those silent black helicopters like the one they crashed into Bin Laden's house, then

TCB

"So why would the suggestion be to deploy an untested substance --that we don't really know the follow-on effects for-- over one that has been well understood going on decades in similar/identical usage?"

Sodium nitrite is hardly "untested". The Aussies have been using the stuff for years. Remember the part where the Australians banned the use of Warfarin because they considered it "inhumane".

So you just go ahead and shill for the use of Warfarin.

BTW: The Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge recently shot hogs from the air:

http://www.texomashomepage.com/news...fuge-ends-successful-feral-hog-hunt/659525714

In 2015 the Fort Sill game warden shot 74 wild hogs in a couple hours from a helicopter.

Wow, 74?! Problem solved.

Here's an alternative method that is (apparently) acceptable for predator control;
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...amily-dog-killed-government-cyanide-bomb.html
As with all things, the exercise of intelligence in deployment matters a whole lot more than the means. No different for any other kind of pest control method. Sadly there's no gauranteeing that

I'd prefer the use of Sodium Nitrate by a large margin, for all of the negative reason already stated.

LD

barnbwt said:

Here's an alternative method that is (apparently) acceptable for predator control;
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...amily-dog-killed-government-cyanide-bomb.html
As with all things, the exercise of intelligence in deployment matters a whole lot more than the means. No different for any other kind of pest control method. Sadly there's no gauranteeing that

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Yeah, i know a guy who emplaces the things. They, are usually emplaced way out in the sticks. Whoever put the M-44 near that boys home failed to post signs: That's a big deal.

That boy is lucky to be alive.

www.aphis.usda.gov/.../content/printable_version/fs_m44_device.pdf

No joke; I wasn't surprised by the method (bite snare) so much as the use of such a terribly nasty chemical as cyanide. Were anyone but the .gov emplacing them it'd be open war and each sight a superfund. Sounds like the dog actually triggered the coyote trap (go figure) and the boy was "merely" hit by overspray & from contacting the dying pooch. Lucky indeed (oddly, it seems sodium nitrite is a component of the antidote for cyanide poisoning, per wikipedia, so the kid likely recieved 'hog poison')

Apparently the boy thought the M-44 was a sprinkler head and reached down to pick it up.

BTW: The best reporting of US incidents often comes from that British site.

If somebody had asked me, I'd have said that the cyanide traps were outlawed forty years ago. Objections came not only from the bunny huggers. Incidents like the boy's had occurred, and non-targeted animals were killed, as well.

There was a public hearing in IIRC Denver. A little old lady suggested trapping and neutering the coyotes, apparently believing that only males were a problem. That led to Slim Pickens' famous response: "Lady, they're not raping the sheep. They're killing them."

Once again, I think this mindset stems from confusing the act of hunting (or possibly warfare against *humans*) with pest control of mindless beasts;

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Actually, pigs are supposed to be pretty smart. Not like they can work an integral calculus problem or anything, but do you remember Arnold Zyphel? I remember him working an adding machine.

Actually, to be serous, or sort of, for a moment, I know people that are dumber than pigs.

Art Eatman said:

If somebody had asked me, I'd have said that the cyanide traps were outlawed forty years ago. Objections came not only from the bunny huggers. Incidents like the boy's had occurred, and non-targeted animals were killed, as well.

There was a public hearing in IIRC Denver. A little old lady suggested trapping and neutering the coyotes, apparently believing that only males were a problem. That led to Slim Pickens' famous response: "Lady, they're not raping the sheep. They're killing them."

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I remember mama telling me to stay away from anything that looked like a cyanide trap when I was out on the prairie near home pass shooting geese. Ranchers used 'em against the Red Wolves that were present back then in Matagorda/Brazoria counties.

The red wolf no longer exists in Texas, but it wasn't poison that killed 'em. The Coyote, which we didn't have back then, spread to the east and bred them out of existence. There was one in the Victoria zoo, but it died. I got to see one of the last of those wolves, might have had some coyote breeding, but looked pure to me, one morning in the headlights of my truck as I drove to the boat ramp at San Bernard Wildlife Refuge. That was in 1979 or 80 and it wasn't long after that that the population was declared extinct in Texas. There are a few isolated populations in eastern coastal states, but not Texas.

Cyanide is some serious stuff. i'm very surprised that the USDA still uses the M-44s.

Poison gas is an area where i have experience and expertise. The US military called hydrocyanic acid a "blood gas" (acronym AC) . barnbwt is right, the antidote is amyl nitrite. Hydrogen cyanide was formerly used to kill rodents in grain storage silos. Nearly every grain storage silo had huge containers of hydrocyanic acid. The use of the stuff for that purpose went illegal sometime in the 1960s-1970s.

Whatever they are using in grain silos today to kill rodents is very dangerous. Few years ago a blunder killed two workers in the silos at the Lawton, OK Co-Op.

barnbwt said:

This thread is an excellent demonstration of how hunters have no interest in solving this problem.

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CONTRA:

MCgunner said:

... I know ranchers and farmers hate the things, but if they hate 'em THAT bad, they can give ME and other responsible hunters permission to thin 'em out. I might even buy/build a few more traps if I had more acres to put 'em on and I'd run 'em and bait 'em for free.

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I am reminded of one of instapundit's pithy responses to the limousine liberal / progressive private jet crowd when they harp on about globular warmination:
"I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people who tell me it’s a crisis act like it’s a crisis."

I hear talk. I see photos & video. But I don;t see any "crisis mode" action. So I remain an unbeliever.

Spoiler alert; the landowners making bank on hunting lease fees or mowing them down for diversion aren't the ones complaining about the hogs (numerous examples in this thread, even)

"I hear talk. I see photos & video. But I don;t see any "crisis mode" action. So I remain an unbeliever."
Uh, "action" in this case would be illegal, thus it would be discreet. Machinegunning baited pigs from helicopters or blowing them up with tannerite doesn't count? I mean, it's not a *serious* way to tackle the problem, but it is about as *severe* as the law allows.

Was at a pig hunt in TX last weekend and the camp owner said a judge stopped the Warfarin plan.

That injunction ran out at the end of March.

Flintknapper said:

Kaput, has withdrawn its request for registration in Texas. Citing several reasons. Doesn't seem to be sitting too well with Mr. Miller.

https://www.texastribune.org/2017/04/25/feral-hog-poison-hold-now/

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Good deal...for now.

Nice to see someone speaking the truth and telling it like it is.

When it comes to eliminating pests --which, let's all remember, is what this is all about, and not sport hunting/recreation-- poisons are always more effective than hunting/trapping because they work 24/7 and there's always more available for the job. The only complaints I'm hearing are from sportsmen concerned that the move isn't taking hunting sensibilities into account with this decision.

While it won't be popular to say it on a hunting forum; who cares about their worries. The hogs are doing tons of damage on private property, it behooves those liable to take the most efficient manner available to deal with the threat. Warfarin supposedly kills the pigs with minimal impact to other species in the ecosystem, it will be used almost exclusively on private land (since it's basically the only kind here), the liberal hunting policies in place currently for hogs are explicitly due to their status as an extremely destructive pest deserving elimination by as aggressive of methods as possible.

Heck, recreational hog hunting has been repeatedly shown to spread boar infestation (because people import them or sustain/grow populations through feeding) through the profit motive.

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Sorta foolish to use a poison on a pest which also kills desirable, non-target species. We've numerous examples with pesticides for insects and herbicides for plants. Tens of millions of dollars have been needed for the R&D for target-specific poisons.

As far as importation to a game ranch for hog hunting? Let the legislature proclaim, "Thou shalt not release no hog nowhere, outside of a controlled pen."

From the UK article...

• The spring-mounted cyanide made Casey to die in agony while the boy watched

• Casey must now be checked daily to monitor his toxicity levels

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I hope they don't expect Casey's condition to change...

http://fishgame.com/2017/03/texas-javelina-massacre/


This is in this month's "Texas Fish and Game". Now, I know that land owners don't care, but Javelina are native species. I have great respect for the animal and it's quite the legendary animal in south and west Texas. Numbers are declining, not good. The article points out that, while not hogs, the Javelina eats the same things hogs do in addition to their staple, prickly pear, I suppose. The javelina is a GAME animal, after all. It seems to get no respect, but it belongs here. The feral pig isn't native, the Javelina is.