WisBorn
Contributing Member
With the ongoing population growth of feral pigs/hogs should we all work hard on eliminating them or is there trophy value in the species/animal?
Then why hunt you don't it.
That's one thing i just don't do.
What’s the biggest factor driving the importation and spread of current populations?
Hunting:
Pigs are being released for hunting interests.
Current populations are being hunted with little success and may spread to new areas due to hunting pressure.
I doubt you eat rats either, but if you catch one in your house, I bet it doesn’t survive.Then why hunt you don't it.
That's one thing i just don't do.
Then why hunt you don't it.
That's one thing i just don't do.
Hahaha great idea, I just don't like to hunt and not eat it, I guess it something i picked up from my father.
I look at the number of coyotes differently than the feral pigs. Coyotes are native animals, where pigs are not and are more destructive to habitat. Both need to be controlled.Many here sympathize with this. You really have to witness the uselessness and destructiveness of feral hogs for the “eat what you kill” ethic to be broken down. I butcher a few hogs a year to fill in the gaps between my other wild game but if I run into a “stinker”, I let it lie.
Coyotes will get it……which leads us to another pest problem.
They breed as fast as rabbits.
Not exactly. Cottontails breed more and produce more offspring per year than hogs...if they survive. Cottontails can start breeding at about 3 months and produce litters of 3-5 every 30-40 days during warm weather. Cottontails are food for many many animals. As noted above, hogs can reproduce at about 5 months of age and have a 114 day gestation, but they tend to only produce about 3-4 litters every 2 years in the wild of 4-8 offspring. The difference is survivorship. Whereas 80-90% of cottonttails are dead by the end of their first year by natural predators, probably 80-90% of hogs will survive into adulthood here in the US if not for control efforts. We have killed off the vast majority of predators that would otherwise have kept the hog population in check.
So your saying we should release Siberian Tigers in Texas?
If you let them get big, you just make the problem worse.
An almost useless thing I see hunters doing that are "helping control the hog population" is hunting "trophy boars." Shooting boars does very little to reduce the population. Case and point with a little rancher math...If you have 10 boars and one sow, you will have only one litter with the next generation. If you have 10 sows and 1 boar, chances are you will have 10 litters for the next generation. If you come across a lone boar, sure, kill it. If you come across a sounder, try to kill the sows (or any females).
Then don't call it hunting. Call it dynamic target practice.
I like where this is going! Feral hogs ARE much less of a problem in areas where either Siberian or Bengal Tigers are common. Correlation? Causation? I don't have the means to test the relationship.