Texas is Losing the War on Feral Hogs

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Texas losing war on feral hogs

Houston Chronicle
By Shannon Tompkins | July 24, 2013 | Updated: July 24, 2013 9:48pm

Described by some wildlife managers as "four-legged fire ants," Texas' economically and environmentally destructive feral hogs have exploded in population to an estimated 2.6 million and continue expanding despite hunters' annually taking 750,000 of the swine.

More than two decades into Texas' ever escalating war against feral hogs, the wild swine continue gaining ground while Texas and the state's native wildlife, plants and ecosystems lose it.

Despite taking millions of casualties - an estimated 750,000-plus feral hogs have been killed each of the past few years in Texas - the non-native pigs have continued their economically and environmentally destructive march across the state, with an estimated 2.6 million of them spread across at least 240 of Texas' 254 counties.

"It's just getting worse and worse; no matter what we've tried, the hogs just overwhelm us," said Stuart Marcus, manger of the 25,000-acre Trinity River National Wildlife Refuge. "They certainly are having a negative impact on native wildlife and habitat - directly and indirectly."

Texas holds, by some estimates, as many as 10 times the number of feral hogs it did barely three decades ago.

"The first year this agency began removing feral hogs was 1982. They took 86 pigs that year," said Michael Bodenchuk, state director of the Texas offices of Wildlife Services, the U.S. Department of Agriculture branch designated to address human/wildlife conflicts. "In 2011, we removed 24,746. That pretty much tells you how the problem has grown."

And it continues growing.

"The estimates I've seen are that between 2006 and 2010, Texas' feral hog population grew about 21 percent a year," Bodenchuk said. And that's with Texans taking an estimated 29 percent of the pig population each year.

Texas law designates the non-native feral hogs as unprotected, non-game animals and imposes almost no restrictions on when, how or how many of the hogs can be taken. They can be hunted and killed year-round, day or night; shot from aircraft; trapped in pens; attracted by bait; taken in any number. And Texans have responded to the opportunity. Recreational hunters take an estimated 600,000 feral hogs a year, finding the wild swine a challenging hunting quarry and wonderful on the table. Commercial trappers using live-catch pens annually take and sell to wild game processors another 70,000 or so of the pigs. Another 50,000 or more are killed by Texas Wildlife Services and private firms hired by landowners to knock back pig populations damaging crops or property.

Losing a numbers game

Even against this onslaught, wild hogs are more than holding their own.

"There has been some success with reducing feral hog populations in fairly small areas," said Donnie Frels, manager of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department's Kerr Wildlife Management Area, a premier wildlife research site that is involved in feral hog research. "But so far, we haven't come up with any control mechanism that works for a long period of time over a large area."

Feral hogs are perfectly equipped to survive and thrive, even under intense prosecution.

The progeny of domestic hogs that quickly turned feral or hybrids between domestic feral pigs and European wild hogs, feral hogs are omnivores with a nondiscriminatory palate. Mostly traveling in social groups - sounders - holding 10-40 or more adults and their young, feral hogs use their strong snouts and necks to root for food that they consume almost nonstop.

And they will eat almost anything - tubers, acorns, insects, agricultural crops (they annually cause more than $50 million in damage to Texas agriculture) and all manner of plants (even young trees) - and are opportunist predators on reptiles, amphibians, ground-nesting birds and small mammals. Feral hogs have been documented preying on turkey and quail nests and, in some areas, are major predators on turtle nests.

Their prodigious reproductive capability is another key to their success. Sows begin reproducing at eight months and produce three litters every two years, with an average litter of almost six piglets.

"The populations just explode," Bodenchuk said.

The expanding populations inflict considerable damage to Texas native wildlife and ecosystems. Feral hogs compete directly with white-tailed deer for forage, especially acorns and other mast. They also "hog" the tens of thousands of corn- and protein-dispensing feeders placed by hunters as supplemental feed for deer; research shows feeders frequented by feral hogs are avoided by deer and other native wildlife.

Threat to vegetation

Feral hogs also can greatly reduce availability of vegetation crucial to deer, quail, turkey and other native wildlife.

A research project by Rice and Texas A&M universities conducted in the Big Thicket of southeast Texas used fenced and unfenced plots of land to gauge impacts of feral hogs. The plots used by hogs saw plant diversity reduced, fewer forbs, fewer large-seed (mast producing) trees, loss of leaf-litter ground cover resulting in a reduction in the abundance of invertebrates and small vertebrates, and changes in soil chemistry that changed plant communities.

The research also indicated plots disturbed by feral hogs grew twice as many Chinese tallow trees as the hog-free areas. Tallow trees are one of the most problematic non-native, invasive plants threatening Texas, as the tallows grow in dense monocultures, shade out native trees and grasses, are of almost no value to wildlife, and are almost impossible to control.

Stuart Marcus witnesses this on the Trinity River refuge.

"I call feral hogs 'walking tallow trees,' " he said. "They are just as bad as tallow trees, and wherever they root up the ground, tallow trees seem to sprout by the hundreds."

Feral hogs' rooting behavior causes severe damage to environmentally sensitive and hugely important areas along waterways, particularly in central, south and western Texas where such waterways are limited.

"They definitely impact plant communities and really do serious damage to riparian areas, especially the western half of the state," Frels said.

These impacts on native wildlife and the habitat on which they depend is behind the state wildlife agency's involvement in research aimed at reducing feral hog populations.

"We're not in the animal control business," Frels said. "But we do have a keen interest in our native wildlife and the things affecting them. That's what got us into feral hog research."

Sodium nitrite

A big part of that research is a cooperative effort with other government agencies in developing a potentially significant new method of reducing feral hog populations: poison, an option currently not available because of federal prohibitions.

For the past three years, research at the Kerr wildlife area has focused on sodium nitrite, a toxicant that has been used to great effect against feral hogs in Australia.

Sodium nitrite kills by disrupting blood's ability to carry oxygen to the brain. Pigs are highly susceptible to sodium nitrite because, unlike humans and other mammals, they lack the ability to produce an enzyme that reverses the effects. A feral hog ingesting a lethal dose of sodium nitrite quickly becomes lethargic, then unconscious. Death occurs within 90 minutes.

Research indicates the poisoned pigs pose little or no threat to scavengers or predators.

Developing bait/sodium nitrite mixtures that feral hogs will eat and that deliver a lethal dose of the substance and a "delivery system" - a feeder - that feral hogs can access but can't be used by deer, raccoons and other non-target wildlife are the focus of research at the Kerr.

"It's showing some promise," Frels said of sodium nitrite's potential as another tool to use against feral hogs. "But there's still a long way to go before it could become an option."

If it does, it could help turn the tide in the battle against feral hogs. In Australia, use of sodium nitrite has reduced feral hog populations in large areas by as much as 89 percent.

Just to stabilize Texas' feral hog population would require removing about 70 percent of the population over a single year and continuing that level of population reduction for multiple years, Bodenchuk said.

"Right now," he said, "we're not even taking half that number."

http://www.chron.com/sports/outdoors/article/Texas-losing-war-on-feral-hogs-4685490.php

 
we kill & trap 600-700 hogs on our ranch year and never have gotten control of the numbers,the more you kill&trap the more there are.rio7
 
Originally Posted By: REID2168is there a business oppportunity here?

Actually many people have thought the same thing about hog hunting. Sounds good at the start, but when you actually start having to deal with the amount of hunters it takes to make reasonable money, it's not worth the hassle. Trapping and selling live hogs is easier because not having to deal with hunters. Many hunters say they are great at taking care of land and leaving it better than they found it, but the reality is just the opposite.

Just my opinion based on first hand experience.
 
Lived in south Tejas for six years. Conversations go like this:

"These GD hogs are just destroying everything."

"I'd be happy to come out and kill and trap all of them for you."

"Well, the hunters that lease this place like having them around."

"Ok."


Travis
 
This is how conversations go in the rest of the country.

"Woodchucks/coyotes/gophers/prairie dogs/badgers are a real pain in my azz."

"I'll kill them."

"Have at it. Don't miss"



Travis
 
People scream about hogs, but they don't want anyone to hunt them on their land. And they bait them in because they want to shoot one.
And they don't want to pay for removal, either. Guess they want the neighbors to control them except for one or two a year for a cookout.
 
Last edited:
Originally Posted By: canuroperPeople scream about hogs, but they don't want anyone to hunt them on their land. And they bait them because they want to shoot one.
And they don't want to pay for removal, either. Guess they want the neighbors to control them except for one or two a year for a cookout.

Bingo.



Travis
 
Originally Posted By: deflaveLived in south Tejas for six years. Conversations go like this:
"These GD hogs are just destroying everything."
"I'd be happy to come out and kill and trap all of them for you."
"Well, the hunters that lease this place like having them around."
"Ok."
Travis

Sounds like the farmers in WI. Complain constantly about deer damage. Farmers get govt checks for deer damage. Farmers get kill permits for deer. Farmers don't let anyone in to shoot the deer. Land is leased to hunting and the leasees wont shoot nothing but big rack bucks. No small bucks, no does, no fawns. I know this from first hand experience as my wife's family is part of the problem in Buffalo Co.
 
Originally Posted By: IrrigatorMany hunters say they are great at taking care of land and leaving it better than they found it, but the reality is just the opposite. Just my opinion based on first hand experience.
Irrigator, I’m sorry that has happened to you and others you know of but I don’t call those people hunters. I call them idiots w/guns. Hunters are conservationists that respect the land and the people that let them hunt the land in this beautiful country of ours. They are safe, responsible and accountable for their actions.

You nailed it Travis.

My stance: If landowners charge a hunter to hunt coyotes or hogs or they don't let hunters hunt them (notice I said hunters...not idiots w/guns) as far as I'm concerned I hope those two animals wreak havoc on the property of whoever it is that wants $$$$ for them or says "no" to hunting them. I’m a firm believer in Karma!!!
 
Originally Posted By: HucksterOriginally Posted By: deflaveLived in south Tejas for six years. Conversations go like this:
"These GD hogs are just destroying everything."
"I'd be happy to come out and kill and trap all of them for you."
"Well, the hunters that lease this place like having them around."
"Ok."
Travis

Sounds like the farmers in WI. Complain constantly about deer damage. Farmers get govt checks for deer damage. Farmers get kill permits for deer. Farmers don't let anyone in to shoot the deer. Land is leased to hunting and the leasees wont shoot nothing but big rack bucks. No small bucks, no does, no fawns. I know this from first hand experience as my wife's family is part of the problem in Buffalo Co.

Leasing sucks. Tell your friends.



Travis
 
deflave, leaseing does suck, but owning the land does not suck, letting the public (people you dont know well) hunt on your land sucks, for to many reasons to list here. shooting pigs is a very poor way to control the numbers, trapping is much more effective. rio7
 
Originally Posted By: rio7...letting the public (people you dont know well) hunt on your land sucks, for to many reasons to list here. rio7

Man, this getting more depressing as time goes on. Is it really that bad? If so, time to drop the hammer and make a website or something that lists these individuals (just one idea...there's a ton more). Nobody's going to get permission if idiots w/guns keep ruining it.
 
Originally Posted By: rio7deflave, leaseing does suck, but owning the land does not suck, letting the public (people you dont know well) hunt on your land sucks, for to many reasons to list here. shooting pigs is a very poor way to control the numbers, trapping is much more effective. rio7

Laughin'...

That's funny because in all the other states, they just tell you "yay, or nay." But leave it to Texas to make things complicated.

Had a lease down there and enjoyed. But JFC, those people sure are good at being dramatic when it comes to hunting.


Travis
 
Originally Posted By: Carcass Collectors
Irrigator said:
Many hunters say they are great at taking care of land and leaving it better than they found it, but the reality is just the opposite. Just my opinion based on first hand experience.
Irrigator, I’m sorry that has happened to you and others you know of but I don’t call those people hunters. I call them idiots w/guns. Hunters are conservationists that respect the land and the people that let them hunt the land in this beautiful country of ours. They are safe, responsible and accountable for their actions.

I agree with you completely. Unfortunately there are more what I call "village idiots" who watch to many hunting shows and think they are hunters. I was raised old school and still have to much of the old school mentality in me. I do have many friends that I have hunted with from different parts of the US that still have that in them. Frustrating that more don't get what hunting is than do.

If you ever get to Texas let me know. I'll take you hunting.
 
Originally Posted By: Carcass CollectorsOriginally Posted By: rio7...letting the public (people you dont know well) hunt on your land sucks, for to many reasons to list here. rio7

Man, this getting more depressing as time goes on. Is it really that bad? If so, time to drop the hammer and make a website or something that lists these individuals (just one idea...there's a ton more). Nobody's going to get permission if idiots w/guns keep ruining it.

I've read on the internet that some guys even brag about calling coyotes in July.


Travis
 
Originally Posted By: deflaveI've read on the internet that some guys even brag about calling coyotes in July. Travis

So, this can mean two things: 1) you don't hunt until fur is prime and are not in favor of those who do or 2) it's pretty freakin' easy to call in coyotes in July or 3) both 1 and 2
 
Yes CC. I am mocking people that brag about calling in summer dogs. It makes me laugh, but I have no ethical dilemma with it.


Travis
 
coyotes, we dont call in the summer its just to hot down here,but if we get a shot at a coyote in the summer we shoot them,same with pigs,coyote pelts never get in prime here like they do up north and we rarley see a really nice coyote pelt.coyotes,bobcats,pigs are predators on our other wildlife, we predator hunt a lot in the winter but not for sport, but it does get pretty sporty sometimes.calling is just one of the ways we control predators, we also trap as many as we can. rio7
 
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