Strain of Feral Super Hogs

[Art Eatman]

Somewhere in the vicinity of 100 or 150 years back, wealthy sportsmen released Russian boars in the Smoky Mountains. Some crossbreeding with feral hogs resulted. Hunt clubs and guides have long advertised hunts in that area. The sizes, though, are not nearly as exciting as the Discovery Channel's nonsense. The Russian hogs were noted more for hostility than for great size.

Large feral hogs? Sure, occasionally. 500 to 700 pounds sometimes happens. Those are uncommon. The majority of feral hogs top out mostly around 300 pounds. "Majority: and "mostly" are the key words.

 

[desidog]

Russian boar are generally skittish, like most other game...in their natural environment - until you shoot them in the wrong place! Then, instead of running away, they will try their utmost to destroy you.

Like any piggy, they have limited range of motion in their neck, but if those tusks come your way, you can be shredded in a flash - the femoral artery in your thigh is right at head height for them.

I've seen some videos on youtube of some caged hunt place where the piggies are just super aggressive and attack anyone they see (especially wearing hunter-orange); but i imagine that's from firsthand experience of their buddies' getting taken out on a regular basis. Pigs are the smartest animal out there, besides humans...although sometimes i wonder between the two.

But 70mph? 1500lbs? forget about it. They don't rival cheetas for speed, and the amount of food it takes to sustain 1500lbs means that they'd burn more calories than they could find in a day. Physically improbable....without a feed trough.

 

[Double Naught Spy]

without a feed trough

and a truck, preferably a 3/4 ton with a V8.

 

[Dr. Tad Hussein Winslow]

Lookit, Russian Boar strains that were introduced years ago have interbred with domestic swine for a long long long time, and that's what all of our feral hog populations are, except with vastly varying degrees of Russian boar blood, depending upon where you are in the country and within a particular state even - some places will have 95%+ domestic swine blood, say in TX/OK, whereas some may be closer to 50%/50%, say in Ark, Tenn, Alab, Miss, Georg, etc. So it's really nothing new.

Obviously the domestics are bigger and the Russian blood strains are meaner. So the real question becomes, which genes are dominant and which are recessive? Do the offspring take the size of the Russians and the disposition of the domestic? Or do they take (in the program's worst-case scenario there) the disposition of the Russians and the size of the domestics? Or best case for exciting hunting (depends on how you look at it). Or is it a blending of size and disposition - with no trait dominant? Or is it a combo, where say, size is dominant or recessive, and disposition blends, or disposition is either dominant or recessive, and size blends/averages?

I really don't know the answer is, but most likely the answer is, it depends upon the particular domestic strain and the particular Russian/Euro strain - some may have a dominant gene with respect to size or dispostion, and some may have a recessive gene with respect to either trait.

So I think it ends up being a Gump-like proposition - you just never know what you're gonna get!

 

[redneckhunter]

hmmmmmm..
maybe there is a new harley ,lol
SCREWTAIL HARLEY DAVIDSON perhaps hehehehe

 

[Ty7940]

I watched it, wish we had some hogs around here to hunt.

Dude ME TOO! LOL We both live in VA and I mean cmon...it's the mountains...why no boar!?!?

 

[Water-Man]

Had some Russian boars in the mountains of western North Carolina back in the late 70's that went 400 lbs..

 

[TooTaxed]

A hog the size of a cow was killed here in SW Georgia two or three years ago...do an Internet search for "Hogzilla" for pictures. It was buried as inedible, and later dug up by National Geographic for investigation.

In the past a pig farm went out of business south of Fort Benning due to a lousy market...and about a thousand little pigs were simply turned loose. Pig hunting has been great ever since...last year a $50 bounty was placed on pigs on Fort Benning to try to control the population. One soldier I know shot 64. The bounty is now down to $25.