(Sounds great huh? Well that all depends on who's ox is being gored or who's hog is being shot as it were.)
Starting today, Texans are taking their ceaseless fight against feral pigs to the skies, thanks to the Texas “Pork Chopper” bill, signed by Gov. Rick Perry. Once limited to killing invasive swine on the ground, licensed hunters can now shoot them from helicopters — for a price.
“I’m ready to book a hunt today!” said David Fason, 48, who drove nine hours and paid $350 on a recent weekend to attend a class in Houston — the first of its kind — on how to safely shoot assault rifles at pigs from the air.
Of the 5 million or so feral hogs currently running wild and wreaking havoc in America, about half them are at large in the Lone Star State. Invasive pigs crowd out native species, feast on crops, tear up fields and raise all manner of horticultural [beeep]. Statewide, hog damage to agriculture alone totals $52 million per year.
Texans have tried just about everything to stop the swine — trapping, snaring, and a free-fire hunting season that allows feral hog extermination day or night, 365 days per year, with any weapon a person can legally buy. None of it has worked.
Until now, aerial pig-eradication has been legal only for specially permitted companies that charge landowners hundreds of dollars per hour for the service and leave the dead animals where they lie. Under the new rules, hunters can now pay to fly. It’s unlikely many more of the pigs will be eaten, but helicopter hog-control could become virtually free for some landowners. And hunters say they’re eager to pick up the check.
“There’s no other place in the world I know of that you can do this without being in the military,” Fason said. “It’s an adrenaline rush I haven’t felt before.”
That rush involves skimming 50 feet above the ground in a chopper, leaning out the open door into the wind and rotor blast, and then leveling a gas-powered (sic) semi-automatic AR-15 at a 200-pound animal galloping across the open range. It hasn’t been a tough sell.
[So when do they bring in the machine guns?]
— with objections coming from what may be a surprising group of critics. In addition to being an evangelical preacher, Phillip Swallows is in the business of wholesale feral hog-elimination. The East Texas-based entrepreneur buys live wild pigs from trappers and, in high season, sells 30,000 pounds of pork weekly to Texas slaughterhouses. They sell the meat as “wild boar” to upscale buyers in the United States, Europe and Japan.
Swallows advocates trapping the hogs, and says the aerial hunting will cause new problems.
Texas is one of the only states with buying stations that inspect live-caught feral hogs and market them for human consumption. The network of buying stations currently processes about 80,000 hogs per year, according to state figures. ...
Texas wildlife officials said trapping and helicopter shooting are both essential tools for controlling the pig population. In the state’s heavily wooded northeast, tree cover obscures aerial views and trapping works best. But in the wide-open rice fields down south or on the open rangeland out west, helicopters have proven invaluable.
“They’re able in some cases to remove 25 to 30 hogs per hour of flight time,” said Billy Higginbotham, a wildlife biologist with Texas AgriLife Extension Service. “Why not use as many of the tools as you’ve got available to you?”
As a species, the hogs make a formidable adversary. By some accounts, wild hogs are smart as border collies, omnivorous as bears and just about as hard to kill. They have few known predators and deliver piglets half a dozen at a time. Females average three litters every two years and can become pregnant just one year after being born themselves. Higginbotham said Texas must cull its pig population 60 to 70 percent each year just to keep that population constant. He called hogs “the most reproductively active large mammal on the face of the Earth.”
First introduced in North America by Spanish explorers, pigs have been running loose in America for more than 450 years. Feral hogs are a mix of escaped domestic swine and hairy, tusked Eurasian wild boars. Prized game animals, the boars have been stocked for decades on private hunting preserves whose fences have repeatedly proven to be less than hog-proof. Feral hogs were once largely confined to the American South, but established populations have steadily spread to at least 37 states, including Michigan, California and, perhaps most recently, upstate New York.
http://www.thedaily.com/page/2011/09/01/090111-news-helicopter-hogs-1-10/
Starting today, Texans are taking their ceaseless fight against feral pigs to the skies, thanks to the Texas “Pork Chopper” bill, signed by Gov. Rick Perry. Once limited to killing invasive swine on the ground, licensed hunters can now shoot them from helicopters — for a price.
“I’m ready to book a hunt today!” said David Fason, 48, who drove nine hours and paid $350 on a recent weekend to attend a class in Houston — the first of its kind — on how to safely shoot assault rifles at pigs from the air.
Of the 5 million or so feral hogs currently running wild and wreaking havoc in America, about half them are at large in the Lone Star State. Invasive pigs crowd out native species, feast on crops, tear up fields and raise all manner of horticultural [beeep]. Statewide, hog damage to agriculture alone totals $52 million per year.
Texans have tried just about everything to stop the swine — trapping, snaring, and a free-fire hunting season that allows feral hog extermination day or night, 365 days per year, with any weapon a person can legally buy. None of it has worked.
Until now, aerial pig-eradication has been legal only for specially permitted companies that charge landowners hundreds of dollars per hour for the service and leave the dead animals where they lie. Under the new rules, hunters can now pay to fly. It’s unlikely many more of the pigs will be eaten, but helicopter hog-control could become virtually free for some landowners. And hunters say they’re eager to pick up the check.
“There’s no other place in the world I know of that you can do this without being in the military,” Fason said. “It’s an adrenaline rush I haven’t felt before.”
That rush involves skimming 50 feet above the ground in a chopper, leaning out the open door into the wind and rotor blast, and then leveling a gas-powered (sic) semi-automatic AR-15 at a 200-pound animal galloping across the open range. It hasn’t been a tough sell.
[So when do they bring in the machine guns?]
— with objections coming from what may be a surprising group of critics. In addition to being an evangelical preacher, Phillip Swallows is in the business of wholesale feral hog-elimination. The East Texas-based entrepreneur buys live wild pigs from trappers and, in high season, sells 30,000 pounds of pork weekly to Texas slaughterhouses. They sell the meat as “wild boar” to upscale buyers in the United States, Europe and Japan.
Swallows advocates trapping the hogs, and says the aerial hunting will cause new problems.
Texas is one of the only states with buying stations that inspect live-caught feral hogs and market them for human consumption. The network of buying stations currently processes about 80,000 hogs per year, according to state figures. ...
Texas wildlife officials said trapping and helicopter shooting are both essential tools for controlling the pig population. In the state’s heavily wooded northeast, tree cover obscures aerial views and trapping works best. But in the wide-open rice fields down south or on the open rangeland out west, helicopters have proven invaluable.
“They’re able in some cases to remove 25 to 30 hogs per hour of flight time,” said Billy Higginbotham, a wildlife biologist with Texas AgriLife Extension Service. “Why not use as many of the tools as you’ve got available to you?”
As a species, the hogs make a formidable adversary. By some accounts, wild hogs are smart as border collies, omnivorous as bears and just about as hard to kill. They have few known predators and deliver piglets half a dozen at a time. Females average three litters every two years and can become pregnant just one year after being born themselves. Higginbotham said Texas must cull its pig population 60 to 70 percent each year just to keep that population constant. He called hogs “the most reproductively active large mammal on the face of the Earth.”
First introduced in North America by Spanish explorers, pigs have been running loose in America for more than 450 years. Feral hogs are a mix of escaped domestic swine and hairy, tusked Eurasian wild boars. Prized game animals, the boars have been stocked for decades on private hunting preserves whose fences have repeatedly proven to be less than hog-proof. Feral hogs were once largely confined to the American South, but established populations have steadily spread to at least 37 states, including Michigan, California and, perhaps most recently, upstate New York.
http://www.thedaily.com/page/2011/09/01/090111-news-helicopter-hogs-1-10/
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