The latest research shows that this exotic non-native mammal causes somewhere around $52 million worth of agricultural damage on an annual basis in Texas. This includes farming and ranching damages. Additionally, it is believed that feral hogs negatively influence water quality in almost every watershed throughout the state.

Due to their large numbers, wide distribution, and behavior, feral hogs can increase levels of sediment, nutrients, and bacteria in streams and lakes. The Texas AgriLife Extension Service is cooperating specifically with the Plum Creek Watershed Partnership to address this growing issue by providing information and assistance to watershed landowners to reduce feral hog activity. But what can be done that has not been done already? After all, once you get feral hogs you always have feral hogs. Hog hunting will not do it alone.

The Watershed Protection Plan demands for the reduction of feral hogs within the basin. Wherever feral hogs are found, they leave good sign of their presence. Identifying the sign can help landowners recognize where hogs are traveling on their lands and apply the appropriate management response to reduce their numbers.

Hog hunting and trapping can be used to reduce and management hog populations. Hog trapping is not effective at totally eliminating feral hog populations, but it can be a means to greatly reducing hog populations and environmental damage to the landscape and the watershed.

Described as being as prolific as cockroaches, destructive as rats, and as surly as badgers, wild (feral) hogs are the bane of ranchers and farmers, but they’re a boon for hunters. Nearly three million of these dirt slingin’ critters roam free in Texas, rooting up pastures, wallowing in creek beds, and gorging themselves on crops and gardens. Trappers and hunters often are called in to help reduce hog numbers when feral swine run amuck.

For nearly a year, a team of commercial swine and show pig producers, slaughter plant operators, veterinarians, hunters, hog trappers and wildlife biologists have wrestled with rule ideas that would prevent captured wild hogs from creating more chaos, while still giving hunters an opportunity to bag a boar trophy worth bragging rites.

In mid-May, draft regulations were presented to commissioners for the Texas Animal Health Commission (TAHC), the state’s livestock and poultry health regulatory agency. Public comment on the proposed rules, to be published in the Texas Register June 6, will be accepted by the TAHC through July 6. TAHC commissioners will consider the rules for adoption at their next meeting on July 29 in Austin.

“The 80th legislature, in the TAHC’s Sunset Bill, provided for the TAHC to regulate feral swine, which are regarded as free-ranging livestock. The TAHC regulations are to be limited to disease control purposes, including holding facilities, sale, exhibition, hunting or movement,” said Dr. Dee Ellis, Texas’ assistant state veterinarian and TAHC advisor to the feral swine working group. “If these proposed rules are adopted, they will supersede TAHC’s current feral swine regulations that aren’t comprehensive. We know we can’t get rid of feral swine, but we can find ways to deal with the animals so that it benefits all sectors of the industry.”

Dr. Ellis said the proposed regulations give trappers greater latitude for holding and moving trapped swine. Approved holding facilities and authorized hunting preserves would be sanctioned and inspected by the TAHC, and operators or owners would be required to keep records on the animals for at least five years. Applications for operating the holding facilities or hunting preserves will be available from the TAHC, if the regulations are adopted.

Because there is some limited interest in changing captured feral swine to “domestic” swine by testing the animals, the proposed regulations would allow for wild hogs to be reclassified as “domesticated” pigs after a series of at least three negative blood tests for swine Brucellosis and pseudorabies during a minimum 150-day quarantine period. (This practice is not recommended, however.)

Additionally, sows and other sexually intact female swine would be required to undergo a fourth negative test for the diseases, at least 30 days after their initial farrowing in quarantine.

The disposition of feral swine that are not “domesticated” through the quarantine and testing process is limited to slaughter only, except for boars and barrows, which may be moved to TAHC-authorized hunting preserves.

The proposed rules also would allow for the wild pigs to be held after trapping in an escape-proof pen or enclosure on a trailer for up to seven days before moving the animals directly to a federally or state-inspected slaughter plant, to a TAHC-authorized hunting preserve, or to an approved holding facility, awaiting final disposition.

The proposed rules would allow only boars and barrows to be moved to TAHC-authorized hunting facilities, which would have to be equipped with swine-proof fencing at least five feet high. Boars and barrows also would have to be individually identified prior to being placed into the preserve.

Hunting preserve operators would need a “Hunting Lease License” and hog hunters would need a hunting license, both from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, but there is no season on these animals so often regarded as a pest and a threat to livestock health.

“It is extremely important that proposed holding facilities and hunting preserves be ‘escape proof.’ Identification on the boars and barrows in hunting preserves would help us identify pigs that ‘get loose,’ ” said Dr. Ellis. Required record-keeping would include the number of swine placed in or removed from the facilities, the animals’ weight, size, color, sex and any identification applied to the animal, and the locations from which they were trapped and to which they were moved.

“Strict requirements are necessary to prevent moving an animal that has a potential livestock disease from one site to another,” said Dr. Ellis. “From tests on feral swine over a four-year period, we know that around 20 percent of wild hogs in Texas carry pseudorabies, a regulatory flu-like swine disease not related to rabies. About 10 percent of the feral pigs have swine Brucellosis, the swine form of “Bangs,” or cattle brucellosis.”

Since January 2006, the swine form of Brucellosis has been detected in 26 cattle in 19 herds. Although the swine infection in cattle does not affect Texas’ hard-won ‘free’ status for cattle Brucellosis, it does cause positive test results when cattle are tested prior to sale. The bacteria must be “grown out” in the laboratory to differentiate between swine Brucellosis and cattle Brucellosis infection. In the meantime, cattle in the consignment or herd must be held up, and additional tests may be needed to ensure there is no cattle Brucellosis infection in the herd.

Feral swine also can have a health impact on noncommercial swine, which may be housed in facilities that are more likely to have feral swine contact than commercial swine facilities. Of the 41 noncommercial swine herds quarantined for swine Brucellosis infection since January 2003, 29 either had definite or possible contact with wild hogs.

” ‘Contact with feral swine’ can be as simple as a wild sow or boar either being allowed in, breaking into swine pens, or making contact through a fence,” noted Dr. Ellis. “Related contacts” can include an activity such as purchasing piglets from a producer who allows feral swine into his or her pens. In this case, a buyer could be purchasing piglets that have been exposed to disease carried by feral swine.

Dr. Ellis advised domestic swine owners to keep feral swine out of their pens. When purchasing replacement swine by private treaty, ask if the pigs have been exposed to feral swine. If possible, keep the animals isolated until tested for swine Brucellosis and pseudorabies. At livestock markets selling sexually intact swine six months of age or older, these tests are required, and blood samples are collected from the animals by TAHC personnel.

“Commercial swine herds are operated with great attention to biosecurity, and in Texas, these herds currently are swine Brucellosis and pseudorabies-free,” said Dr. Ellis. But each time we detect infection in a noncommercial herd, it puts a hardship on producers, because we must trace animal movement, test herds in a widespread area, and handle infected herds appropriately.

Swine brucellosis also poses a significant public health threat to those handling or inadvertently producing infected animals. By adopting regulations that make it easier for trappers to remove feral swine from an area, and place boars and barrows only in a hunting facility, we encourage legal regulated movements of the animals and have less chance of disease transmission from these wild hogs. These proposed regulations can benefit swine producers, cattlemen, trappers and hunters, too.”

On June 6, a link to the text of the proposed regulations will appear on the TAHC website. The proposed regulations also are available by calling the TAHC at 800-550-8242, ext 710. Comments on the proposed rules may be emailed to: comments@tahc.state.tx.us, faxed to 512-719-0719, or mailed to TAHC Comments, Box 12966, Austin, TX 78711-2966. Comments are due no later than July 6.

I was locking a pipe-rail gate behind R.L. Loving’s pickup truck, when the woman walked through her patio door, into her backyard, shielded her eyes with a hand and stared intently across the bayou at us. “This could go either way,” R.L. said.

In the back of his truck squatted a large cage made of heavy-gauge wire. Inside the cage were three live feral hogs — a big sow and a couple of shoats. We were on the edge of a large tract of as-yet-undeveloped property barely outside Houston’s city limits and hard against a patch of suburbia filled with half-million-dollar homes.

R.L., an accountant and financial adviser by profession but an outdoorsperson at heart, had permission — the blessing, really — of the folks who control the tract to live-trap and remove feral hogs there. He is good at it.

We were on the way out of the tract with the morning’s catch when the lady “caught” us with our load.

Some suburban dwellers get upset — downright indignant or abusive or even call the police — when they see R.L. with the feral hogs he traps. They seem to see him as some kind of poacher or plunderer of wildlife. And they can get quite vocal with their opinions that he should just leave the poor little wild pigs alone.

We braced for the possibility that the woman so keenly eyeing us might unleash a torrent of venom.

She did. Just not at us.

‘Kill them all!’
She stood there for a few seconds, arms crossed, and I could see her look at us, then look at the ground just outside her metal fencing.

That ground looked like it had been plowed by some drunken tractor operator, gouged and ripped and veined with muddy, calf-deep, serpentine ruts.

The unfenced yards of a couple of her neighbors looked much, much worse. They were mudholes instead of nice, green sheets of San Augustine. And the feral hogs in the back of R.L.’s truck were almost certainly among the porcine vandal horde responsible for the property damage.

The woman looked at the hogs in the back of the truck, glanced at the trashed ground, then back at us.

She unfurled her arms, lifted both hands in a “thumbs-up” signal and yelled across the bayou, “Kill them all!”

Most people who have seen, been a victim of, or understand the impact of feral hogs on people, land, wildlife and property share the woman’s opinion of the wild pigs. That’s getting to be a lot of people.

Feral hogs, once restricted to pockets of riverbottom habitat in East and South Texas, now live in all but a half-dozen or so of Texas’ 254 counties. Their Texas population, highest in the nation, has been estimated as high as 2 million, or about half as many hogs as there are white-tailed deer in the state.

As Texas’ feral hog population has exploded over the past 20 years, so has the damage the invasive species wreck on the environment, agriculture, property and other wildlife.

Texas officials estimate feral hogs are annually inflicting $52 million or more in damage to the state’s agriculture industry. Texans are spending more than $7 million a year repairing that damage or trying (unsuccessfully) to control feral hog populations.

Disease transmission potential from the atavistic swine is a major concern of the state’s huge and economically crucial livestock industry.

And the damage feral hogs do to wildlife is just as considerable, if not as easily quantifiable. That damage includes competing with native species for resources and space, predation on ground-dwelling wildlife (mostly reptiles and amphibians, but also ground-nesting birds) and impacts on the type, quality and quantity of vegetation and other native forage.

Texas rural landowners and folks who hunt, fish, hike, bird or otherwise enjoy the state’s natural resources have for years seen the damage feral hogs are doing. And most were long ago convinced that the wild swine are a plague that needs serious attention. But what can traping do? It’s time consuming and takes lots of man-hours!

But all this has escaped most of the state’s urban and suburban residents, people who have little if any connection to the land, its wildlife and other natural resources. That’s changing. Feral hogs are moving into the ‘burbs. Or the suburbs are moving into hog country.

Homeowners at the edges of almost every city in Texas are seeing the impacts of the feral hog infestation. They see it in their rooted-and-destroyed lawns. They see it when their minivan collides with a 150-pound pig. And they see it when that nice little local park gets turned into a muddy, rutted mess.

Feral hogs are negatively impacting their bank accounts and their peace of mind. They want them gone. Join the crowd.

——————-

Reprinted from Houston Chronicle by Shannon Thompkins

Feral hogs should be controlled by shooting and live trapping whenever possible. The greatest success usually occurs during the winter when feral hogs are forced to travel more to find food. In addition to rooting up pastures, feral hogs compete directly with white-tailed deer, turkey and most other wildlife species that rely heavily on acorns and other hard and soft mast for winter food.

Along with competing with deer and other wildlife for food resources, feral hogs utilize native wildlife as food resources. Feral hog diets may include eggs of ground nesting birds, small mammals, reptiles and in rare instances, deer fawns.

If you have wild hogs on your property, get used to them. Although control methods will help keep numbers down, you will never completely be rid of feral hogs. The best you can hope to do is keep their numbers down, and shooting and trapping are about the only options currently. 

Remember the 1,100-pound “wild” hog the 11-year old Alabama boy bagged with his trusty pistol? Well, this story needed a little more rooting around to get to the truth. In reality, every once in a while somebody kills a really big hog, enters it into a contest and its registers roughly 300 to 400 pounds, but most truly wild hogs will struggle to reach 150 pounds. Their lives are too hard, and even scrounging around corn feeders and protein silos they just can’t often reach those gargantuan sizes we imagine them to be. We just like a good horror movie, and huge hogs willing to kill make such a great villain.

So that brings us back to Hogzilla II (H2), the giant hog killed by an 11-year-old Alabama kid with a pistol while his father and a couple of guides stood backup with rifles. The hog was reported to have weighed more than 1,000 pounds, topping a 2004 hog that weighed about 800 pounds.

Within 3-4 days after the bagging of H2, the whole thing really started to go wrong as Alabama wildlife officials announced they were beginning an investigation into how the hog made its way into the fenced enclosure where it was killed. It’s against the law in Alabama to transport wild hogs and release them. So the folks at Lost Creek had to claim they grew the hog on the spot or that they bought a domestic hog and released it just for the kid to kill. He shot it with a pistol, a .50 caliber pistol, so anybody who’s ever hunted knows that he would have had to be close by when he fired.

If you will recall, by the time the news hit the wires, the kid already had a Web site, conveniently sponsored in part by Lost Creek Plantation, the 2,400-acre hunting area where he killed the pig. The site proclaimed that he had killed the largest hog ever for an 11-year-old and that a video was coming. I don’t think they even bothered after more info leaked out. Keep reading.

To get that big, though, the hog had to have been fed out in some way, not grown wild to a thousand pounds. In not even a week’s time since the hog had been “bagged”, an Alabama pig farmer came forward to say that the pig was his originally, and that it had been bought and placed in the enclosure ONLY four days before the hunt. The boy’s dad added a long disclaimer to the Web site, stating they never claimed it was a record pig, that killing the hog was still a great accomplishment and that nobody did anything wrong.

People have done worse for no money, of course, but this was wrong. They claimed it was a feral hog. It wasn’t (feral, by the way, is the term used to describe any domesticated animal gone wild, as in a breeding feral cat population). They planned to sell videos, and the plantation planned to sell hunts for pigs that belonged in someone’s barnyard. It’s too orchestrated, whether it’s illegal or not.

The truth, or what passes for it, continues to trickle out, and it just gets uglier. That’s what happens when people start trying to make money off something like this or get onto television to crow about something like a world-record deer or an other-worldly largemouth bass. This was a bad deal for the pig. It’s a bad deal for the kid, too. But the real blame falls on his father.