I'm sure there are compounds that are highly toxic to pigs that are harmless to people.  I know cats, dogs and mice can be poisoned by foods and meds that have almost no adverse impact on humans.

I stated earlier in the the thread that sodium nitrite is used in Australia to effectively poison hogs, but it has little effect on other species.

IIRC sodium nitrite hinders the uptake of oxygen by the hemoglobin and the hogs just pass out and die. It does the same thing to humans we just have to eat a ton more of it. The hogs are just more susceptible to the effects.

I wonder if you can put sufficient dosage into a tranq dart?

A less than lethal hit with a bow or rifle can be a lethal hit with a dosed tranq.

Also, if there's a herd, they may not react as much, if the target jumps, and otherwise doesn't react.

Ah - patented: https://www.aphis.usda.gov/wildlife_damage/nwrc/publications/12pubs/fagerstone121.pdf

Could the real problem be one of hunter access?

About the time after 9/11 all of the hunting lease land and 4X4 areas locked up in Texas. I don't know why this is, but I remember when it happened.

The odds of this are exceedingly small. Sport hunting is rarely a good method for population control on r-pop species. Industrial hunting can be, but sport hunting just never removes the numbers needed fast enough.

It is best to think of controlling r-pop species as a war. You need to kill them faster and more efficiently than one fellow shooting on foot at a time.

How about license out the harvest (by firearm or trap) by permit to dog food companies at a low flat rate cost?  Think of it like timber sales, but at a tiny more-or-less token free?
I'm sure not having to buy meat would offset the cost of harvest enough to still increase profit for the pet food manufacturer.


Come to think of it, that might not be a bad concept to apply to other similar problems such as the infestation of Asian carp working their way through US rivers and threatening the Great Lakes.    Simply offer the opportunity to harvest the meat essentially at no cost to a producer of animal food products (or other industrial use that doesn't enter the human food supply)
with requirements that they not harm native species and with reasonable oversight  to ensure they take precautions to prevent killing other species.

It is best to think of controlling r-pop species as a war. You need to kill them faster and more efficiently than one fellow shooting on foot at a time.

Field artillery? 

I honestly don't see how that would work.  Animal food is already made mostly from the garbage/scraps off the butchers' cutting table.  The parts people don't want to eat anyway, and it is sold to them very cheaply.

If dog food companies are already at liberty to use hog meat (I assume), as much as they can hunt and for free, but they do not choose to, how are we going to convince them to do it for a 'nominal fee?'

By nominal fee I mean a relatively insubstantial to cover the processing of paperwork, something on the order of $100 or so, which would give them exclusive rights to commercial harvest on a given size parcel of public land (let's say 10k acres?).

At present I believe that they can not do so now because in most cases commercial use of game animals is not permitted.
You don't see much venison for sale at the local market, and the little that is sold commercially is farm raised not wild.   While these are not considered game animals per se, I don't think their meat falls under the same rules as farm raised meat in regards to the Dept of Ag or the FDA.
I suspect the issue is legal or regulatory rather than cost effectiveness.

If a pet food company operated a series of pen type traps and was getting the pork for the cost of the pens, transport and slaughter of the hogs, plus $100 I imagine it might be profitable.  Might need to be a "premium, all meat" dog food. 

Heck, it could be used to make high protein chicken feed AFAIK.   

I don't remember if it was Plebian, or one of the PDF's I read yesterday, but it stated that you have to remove something like 70% of the population *every year* if you're trying to keep the population down.

A tall order, if you're looking at a space the size of Texas, with it's open spaces.

So to give some idea to the numbers:

One female hog can pop out 1-12 piglets per gestation period, and they average two litters a year. So each year two hogs(male and female) could pop out roughly 10-20 piglets(figuring losses hovering around 50% which is far too high to be realistic). A sow can in theory be reproducing within 3-4 months, but it is more realistic to use a 9-12 month span from birth to first litter.

I will use worst case scenario of 1 year for secondary litters and survival rates at 50%. I will use the very simplified population growth model of half(pairs) x litter size integrated over time. We will ignore inhibition factors of movement/environmental depletion.   

1st year breeding per is loose. 12 total hogs
2nd year - 60 total hogs
3rd year - 300 hogs
4th year - 1500 hogs
5th year - 7500 hogs

You can see how the r-pop species gets to absurd numbers, and how it is best to think outside of established control methods. You really need to view it in war like terms cause the zombies hogs are coming. (Hogs are way more scary cause they have a growth rate at 12/1 instead of 1/1.)