While I understand that the hogs are a massive problem, in my opinion poisoning them is a bad idea. I seriously doubt only the pigs would be poisoned.

Say goodbye to the coyote and vulture populations.

.........is that a bad thing?   Lol, I know...I'm bad.

  Eh....they're as bad as our gophers are here.  Just shooting them isn't an option.....there's just too damn many and they breed to fast.   Poisen is already heavily regulated in widespread usage, this decision wasn't taken lightly.

  As big of a pest as they are.......my normal humane one-shot-one-kill beliefs kinda go out the window.  Not when they can destroy acres of someones livelihood in a single evening.,

 

.........is that a bad thing?   Lol, I know...I'm bad.

Yes, it is always bad when you f___ with the natural balance. 

Poison can be an option on the table, but it has to be a poison that is not going to harm other wildlife - or humans who hunt and eat the hogs.  Rat poison does not pass that test.

Hell, mix some sugar into the Sodium Nitrate, and any hogs that don't die from poison, but are subsequently hunted, will be 'pre-cured.' 

I was being sarcastic  

Yes, I know, but it needed to be said.

...but in both populations if they're anything similar to here, are already far, FAR over their natural balance. 

How do coyote and vulture populations get out of balance?  How do they have enough resources to sustain a larger than normal population?  If they do have enough resources to expand to a certain point, wouldn't that point be the new 'natural balance?'  Then they stay that way until things dry up, and the population shrinks to the new, sustainable level.  Maybe I'm missing something.

Yeah, this has "Law of Unintended Consequences" written allll over it...

I have mixed emotions about this.

In the last 20 years, I've seen hogs go from novelty to nuisance to menace, and there doesn't seem to be an end in sight.  To the point that our target priorities are "hogs, coyotes, deer" in that order, even during deer season.  And they will run deer off feeding areas, because they are (a) less selective about what qualifies as edible, and (b) more aggressive about protecting their turf. As much as they sort of scare me (they're smarter than most of the game animals in this area, by a pretty big margin, and can figure out what hurt them, and try to figure out how to hurt back) and as much as I admire them (they are as adaptable as humans and coyotes, and just a little below rats and cockroaches) I don't think that poisons are the answer, both because of the side effects, and because it just won't work on the population as a whole.

That said, I'm not sure what the answer is, to tell the truth.  They've got them in South Dakota, and in New Hampshire, both of which are too far north for hogs to propagate.  (Don't tell the hogs that, because they are doing just fine in both locales.)  A state biologist told me, a couple of years ago, that unless you harvest 2/3s of the population, every year, they will continue to increase.

They are fun to hunt, in a variety of ways, (I've mentioned here how my #1 Senior Minion and I hunt them with varmint calls) and the meat is great!  But unless we can figure out a way to get them under control (check the success of ANY government program, EVER) in another 30 years every state in the union will be having a hog problem.

Gonna take smarter people than me to figure this out, and I wish them all the luck in the world!

Put a bounty on them, remove any restrictions on hunting, trapping and killing them.  Anytime, anywhere, anyway.

Maybe stick a bounty on them then?
Seems like the bounty on wolves back in the day really reduced their numbers.

I don't know how to compete with their numbers, but it's interesting to see what methods people use around here.

You have started to see more silenced rifles. Some use good old fashioned live traps, which are amazingly effective (which makes sense as to why they've been used for so long), and some even place large amounts of tannerite right next to their bait. I'm not really sure how lethal tannerite would be to hogs  .

Any pig who runs is VC! Any pig who doesn't run is well disciplined VC!



Farmers need to crowd fund for a helicopter.

“Two-thirds of the feral hog population has to be killed just to maintain their numbers. They are fervent breeders and we’ve found, for the money, aerial control is the most effective for feral hog management. We are reaching out to Texans asking them not to be too conservative with their harvests. We are encouraging them to [cooperate] with their neighbors, share costs and join forces. Working together is the only way we can gain the upper hand on this exploding nuisance and dangerous problem.” ~ TX F&G Director of Wildlife