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

[alsaqr]

No discussion of this proposed use of Warfarin is complete until we take a good look at Sid Miller himself. To put it mildly Sid Miller is "erratic".

After two members of a hunting Texas hunting party were shot close to the Mexican border; Sid Miller blamed "illegal aliens" for the deed. Turns out one of the guides panicked and shot a client. The guide was then shot by another member of the party.

http://kxan.com/2017/01/17/sheriff-criticizes-sid-millers-account-of-illegal-aliens-attack/

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...they-blamed-undocumented-immigrants/98201532/

 

[MCgunner]

Well, I need to get down to the store and buy one of those mega-millions tickets. If I win, I can get ME some thermal imaging equipment.

 

[Art Eatman]

alsaqr, most of us who live in that area of the border would have been right in agreement with Miller about the shooting incident. It has happened in the past, above Lajitas, in Big Bend National Park and a couple of other places in the general area. So, you hear the first version of a story and folks nod and just say, "Yeah, it figures." (I lived in Terlingua for 30 years after visiting the area regularly for 11 years.)

So don't fault Miller about that incident.

 

[alsaqr]

"So don't fault Miller about that incident."

OK!!! But what about all the other Miller stuff:

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/12/03/texas-ag-chiefs-facebook-account-fake-news-flows/

 

[DeepSouth]

This is one of times I don't really like the idea, but I don't have a better one so I remain silent.

I know that's not very common, but that's me, uncommon.

 

[Jason_W]

I endured a year in pest control and we no longer used warfarin for rodents due to the fact that rats especially are increasingly resistant to it. That's likely not an issue with pigs, though, just a factoid I found interesting at the time.

I'm always a bit hesitant about any poison due to their indiscriminate nature. There are unintended consequences to any measure, but toxins tend to have an inordinately high number of unknowns in the long term.

An important thing that I did learn while suffering through my sentence as a pest control tech was that exclusion was always the most effective control measure. I have little familiarity with large scale agriculture, but in at least some instances is fencing in crops a possibility? Maybe use funds from selling hog tags to subsidize fencing projects?

Alternatively, how about a bounty on hogs? A lot of parts of the country no longer no longer have apex predators in part due to bounties on them. Though, admittedly, it's way easier to eliminate carnivores with low reproduction rates than it would be to get rid of any animal that breeds like a rodent.

 

[Double Naught Spy]

I have little familiarity with large scale agriculture, but in at least some instances is fencing in crops a possibility? Maybe use funds from selling hog tags to subsidize fencing projects?

Hogwire fencing is going to cost many thousands of dollars per linear mile to install. That is a lot of hogs sold per mile.

 

[barnbwt]

Jason, imagine if the neighbors wanted to maintain a "healthy, viable" free range rat population next door for their amusement & good eatin', or insisted you leave a few in the customer's house for the same

TCB

 

[barnbwt]

dupe

 

[barnbwt]

Hogwire fencing is going to cost many thousands of dollars per linear mile to install. That is a lot of hogs sold per mile.

Maybe Big Fence is lobbying for expensive, impractical solutions after all...

 

[Jason_W]

Jason, imagine if the neighbors wanted to maintain a "healthy, viable" free range rat population next door for their amusement & good eatin', or insisted you leave a few in the customer's house for the same

TCB

There might be some confusion. I'm all for feral hog eradication to whatever degree possible. It's part of why I'll never buy a California hog tag. Not only does it create a market for a damaging pest, it's effectively me paying the state to engage in pest control activities. It would be like me paying my neighbor $20 to club rats in his basement.

My concern is method. If poison bait was being disbursed in my neck of the woods, I'd want more questions answered in terms of by-kill.

 

[barnbwt]

It would be like me paying my neighbor $20 to club rats in his basement.

You wish; going rate's 600$ in my neck of the woods (not counting hitting one on the highway)

 

[WildBill63]

I endured a year in pest control and we no longer used warfarin for rodents due to the fact that rats especially are increasingly resistant to it. That's likely not an issue with pigs, though, just a factoid I found interesting at the time.



Since warfarin is a blood thinner (rats hemorrhage internally), how can they develop an immunity to it?
It is also used by heart patients in lower dosage to prevent clotting.

 

[Jason_W]

It's just evolution. A few rats in the population had a genetic mutation making them unaffected by the anti coagulant, those rats survived to breed, etc.

http://blogs.britannica.com/2009/04/the-tale-of-warfarin-and-the-mutant-rodents/

The same thing happened with roaches. We had to regularly rotate the pesticide we used in our worst apartment complexes to keep ahead of adaptation.

I doubt pigs breed quite fast enough for warfarin resistance to pop up any time soon in that population.

 

[barnbwt]

And even then, as you say, there are other pesticides that can be used, and would likely become more accepted/widespread once one poison --warfarin or otherwise-- becomes available. Warfarin is just another tool, but right now land owners are limited to using only the worst tool; manual predation with firearms.

A big part of pesticides is the easy/cheap ability to be mass produced --which is the case with warfarin (this may not be the case with fancy trademarked bait products, but rat poison itself has always been pretty cheap stuff to make in quantity)

TCB

 

[Flintknapper]

And even then, as you say, there are other pesticides that can be used, and would likely become more accepted/widespread once one poison --warfarin or otherwise-- becomes available. Warfarin is just another tool, but right now land owners are limited to using only the worst tool; manual predation with firearms.

A big part of pesticides is the easy/cheap ability to be mass produced --which is the case with warfarin (this may not be the case with fancy trademarked bait products, but rat poison itself has always been pretty cheap stuff to make in quantity)

TCB

Well....no.

We also trap them, snare them, run them with dogs. Almost any reasonable method you can think of is legal and available to us, so I wouldn't say we are 'limited'.

Put a 'bounty' on hogs and you will quickly see numbers on the decline.

 

[alsaqr]

"Warfarin is just another tool, but right now land owners are limited to using only the worst tool; manual predation with firearms."

Not so. Landowners may:

1. Trap hogs
2. Snare hogs
3. Shoot hogs
4. Catch hogs using dogs
5. Shoot hogs from the air

Helicopter shooting of wild hogs is very effective.

i have a hog reduction plan for those OK and TX counties that border the Red River. Next time the river goes on a rampage get all the hog doggers, prison inmates, beaters and hog hunters mobilized and chase the hogs into the river.

 

[Jason_W]

Well....no.

We also trap them, snare them, run them with dogs. Almost any reasonable method you can think of is legal and available to us, so I wouldn't say we are 'limited'.

Put a 'bounty' on hogs and you will quickly see numbers on the decline.

Historically, any time people can get paid to kill something bigger than a rodent, numbers decline rapidly. A cost comparison between a bounty system and a controlled poising program could be in order.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

May be just me, but I'd rather shoot wild hogs than put out a poison. Besides once the hogs learn the antidote for Warfarin is Vitamin K1 ...

 

[jmorris]

May be just me, but I'd rather shoot wild hogs than put out a poison.

I'd rather them stay out of the fields and not have to kill them. Kind of the opposite of rats or mice, if they stay out in the fields I don't actively try and end their life. They could never even come in contact with the poison if they didn't go where I didn't want them.

 

[Art Eatman]

jmorris, that's pretty much, "Wish in one hand, poop in the other and see which fills up first."

The reality is that hogs go wherever they think they'll find food and water, regardless of what people want.

 

[jmorris]

The reality is that hogs go wherever they think they'll find food and water, regardless of what people want.

Just like rats and that leads people who don't want the pests around to....

 

[barnbwt]

No fair; you can use that turn of phrase just because you're the administrator! I got barked at last time I did, and it's one of my favorite colloquialisms, too...

"Warfarin is just another tool, but right now land owners are limited to using only the worst tool; manual predation with firearms."

Not so. Landowners may:

1. Trap hogs
2. Snare hogs
3. Shoot hogs
4. Catch hogs using dogs
5. Shoot hogs from the air

Helicopter shooting of wild hogs is very effective.

i have a hog reduction plan for those OK and TX counties that border the Red River. Next time the river goes on a rampage get all the hog doggers, prison inmates, beaters and hog hunters mobilized and chase the hogs into the river.

And send thousands upon thousands of helicopters, too.

Yup; trapping is the next most effective means beyond manual hunting. Why? Because the trap works 24/7, right? This game is all about magnifying the effort/expense of the individual as much as possible, which is why automated methods like traps, bait & blind, game cameras, and dog-running are preferred to Elmer Fudd stomping through the woods to be treed or gored by an angry, feral Porky Pig. Targeted poison is the next step above that. Why?

Poison works 24/7, and doesn't have a 'bag limit' when the trap springs, either. A slow-acting poison like this also 'ensnares' entire groups before taking effect. It's also far, far, far, faaaaar more practical than setting up dozens of traps (or a couple really big traps). It's also not like traps don't carry plenty of by-kill risks depending how they're implemented, but we're just going to ignore that as acceptable collateral damage...right?

Wolves and all the other big predator-threats weren't driven nearly to extinction by hunting & deforestation alone, but also by a lot of poison. Contrary to popular myth, people are really good about finding the best way to kill stuff when it's a priority. That "priority" bit is what is lacking or misplaced here; are hogs *really* a serious problem in Texas, or are all those landowners exaggerating? If it is a problem, why not deal with it?

TCB

 

[jmorris]

And send thousands upon thousands of helicopters, too.

That's the first thing that piped into my mind when reading about the effectiveness of helicopters hunting.

Well, the Government should just send me one with a pilot and crew to maintain it, then I realized I wasn't a liberal or I would be trying to protect them from being killed...

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.

 

[alsaqr]

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

The H.A.M (Hog Annihilation Machine) system uses sodium nitrite. Sodium nitrite kills hogs in about two hours.

http://www.wildlife-m-s.com/