Hog Wild Helplessness.

[spinr]

Wild Hogs Concern Residents

Wild hogs are damaging a mountain community and some residents want them hunted down.

The hogs are roaming in the Fork Creek area of Polk County. Neighbors say about 30 of the animals dig their snouts into the ground looking for grubs and are tearing everything up. The wild hogs have even torn up part of a nearby cemetery. News 13 has talked with a state wildlife official who says he is aware of the damage and that there may be a fee involved to kill the animals, but says the agency is happy to help if the hogs are a nuisance.

(posted at 10:48pm, 07/30/06)

http://www.wlos.com/news/news.shtml

I wish there was a better story and link for this, but so far the local ABC affiliate is the only agency with this 'story' and their website blows glass & sucks ass.

Anyhoo...

They did a fairly lengthy piece about this on the 11 o'clock news last night; I happened to catch it as I was getting dressed for work.  I was left standing with a lone sock in one hand and my head in the other, completely flabbergasted.  These people were absolutely helpless...

They may as well have been running around like this -->

Now let me mention, Polk County ain't exactly urbane.  It's mostly very rural, just a bunch of good 'ol folks.  I expect more from them.  Had this occured in greater Buncombe Co. (Asheville area) or even the more populated areas of Henderson Co., I wouldn't be posting this now.  Well, maybe.

It's not mentioned nor relayed in the written piece, but the people they talked to on camera were completely taken aback that the .gov wouldn't be fee-free Johnny-on-the-spot to round up their unruly little porkers.

My take on the issue yields the following equation:

[Me + (ammunition/gun)] * crazy piggies = (no more rooting & destruction) + (good eatin').  

Dunno, maybe it's just me... :/

[Guest]

Ah, but you forget.  The mountains of NC are being yuppiefied at a mindboggling rate.  Inlaws live in Montreat, you should see what's changed there in recent years...

"Halfbacks" confounded by wild piggies = not a surprise.  Prolly not legal to shoot 'em there anyway, so HillBilly is out of luck in the smokehouse department.

lpl/nc

[charby]

Let the little porkers tear up the Chem Lawn created yuppie lawns and flower beds and see how long no one cares if anyone shoots them.

Feral pigs can be a bad thing, once you hunt them in the daylight they go noctorunal. Smart critters. Were having issues with feral hogs in SW Iowa and don't think they can up with a solution how to erdicate them. Great breeders too, 8-12 piglets every 6 months per female.

-C

[K Frame]

"Let the little porkers tear up the Chem Lawn created yuppie lawns and flower beds and see how long no one cares if anyone shoots them."

Princeton Township, New Jersey.

About 15 years ago the retards made it into the venison equivilent of that bum-friendly city run by Martin Sheen.

OH! LITTLE AT THE CUTE LITTLE BAMBI! I can't see how anyone but a mindless thug troglodyte troll could ever hurt such a wonderful woodland creature... Savages!

Wait, what the hell is it doing???

SHOO! GET AWAY FROM MY EXPENSIVE LANDSCAPING! YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO FORAGE, BUT NOT IN MY LAWN!

Why am I feeling sick all of a suddent? I have LYME DISEASE? Where did that come from? DEER TICKS?

WON'T SOMEONE PLEASE KILL THESE DAMNED HOOFED PARASITES?


Apparently Princeton Township has a deer-vehicle collision rate that's 150 times higher than the rest of New Jersey, the deer have destroyed millions in landscaping, and Lyme disease is prevalent, so now some of the residents who were all for this are now admitting there's a "small problem."

[Brad Johnson]

Oh, I thought you were talking about this...

http://movies.yahoo.com/shop?d=hv&cf=info&id=1809426511

Brad

[El Tejon]

Cannot "come up" with a solution to eradicate wild pigs?  WTF?

Hmmm, I have a solution--shoot them.  That's probably why there are no wild pigs in Indiana--we would just shoot them.

What does one call a wild pig in Indiana?  Dinner!!!:D

[charby]

Cannot "come up" with a solution to eradicate wild pigs?  WTF?

Hmmm, I have a solution--shoot them.  That's probably why there are no wild pigs in Indiana--we would just shoot them.

What does one call a wild pig in Indiana?  Dinner!!!:D

They have been shooting them, but pigs are smart. You kill one in the herd/pack/group or whatever a group of pigs are then they learn to stay far far away from people. If you hunt them during the day they become nocturnal, as I said before. Hard to trap for than a couple at a time and you have to reinvent a new trap after a while as they get smart to it.

I have heard stories about the feral pigs of Eastern Illinois and Western Indiana. I think you have more feral pigs than you think you do in Indiana. Feral pigs are a DNR's worst nightmare, do more damage to the environment than any critter. Yeah deer browse off bushes, but pigs are nature's bulldozers.

-C

[El Tejon]

charby, hmmm, that would be out of character for around here.  However, I will make inquiries as I am curious for confirmation.  (Confirmation being phots and not just the usual hunting/gun shoppe bearthread stories that the gun culture is soggy with).

I cannot foresee a wild pig population here.  Any pigs so stupid would be hanging upside down in someone's backyard in hours.  It's not like people around here sit around rubbing their hands weeping over the poor, little creatures.

[El Tejon]

O.K., I posted this Hoosier Hog question on several different boards geared toward hunting that are frequented by IDNR guys, so I hope to have an answer soon.

[charby]

I think Iowa has like 50-100 feral pigs in SW IA, least that the numbers from DNR I heard last on an estimate count. But I think the feral pigs were noticed just a couple years ago.

Pigs can adapt pretty fast to changes ion environment, go from the cute pink, to hairy and big tusks. When I was in High School a neighbor shot one in their back yard. I didn't see the actual kill but got to see the pictures afterwards. Looked like a over grown, over hairy tusked Duroc. I figured it was someones feed critter that got loose and spent some time living off the land, of course everyone else said it was a confused razorback that came up from the Ozarks. The stories people come up with.

We grew up not far from the edge of town and within blocks of the timbered bluffs of the Mississippi River. So seeing deer close to our house wasn't uncommon even before the population exploded. When I was in kindergarten a large Angus bull decided to visit the neighborhood. Some odd reason my mom wasn't going to let me out of the house to pet the cow in our front yard. I guess it took the police about an hour to get the critter rounded up. I just wish I was old enough to remember all the ruckus it caused.

-C

This is from the Indiana Nature Conservancy (I know they are left wingers but...)

http://www.nature.org/wherewework/northamerica/states/indiana/preserves/art18202.html

Feral Pigs in Indiana
Feral pigs have been noted in Indiana in the Lawrence County area, but recent news of their spread or of more introductions leads us to our warning.  The potential impact of feral pigs on natural areas is immense due to their destructive behavior such as wallowing and rooting.  Just imagine a domestic pig lot in a natural setting!  Feral pigs utilize corn and pasture crops, but also enjoy the tubers and rhizomes of spring wildflowers along with acorns, beech, and hickory nuts in the fall of the year.  They tend to expand along drainages since they never like to be too far from water for wallowing.  

Legally, it is a Class D felony to bring any swine across state lines without a veterinarian permit.  Currently, there is nothing that prevents in-state transplants, though, other than regulations pertaining to confinement of domestic livestock.  Our natural resource concerns are pale compared to the potential domestic disease implications and the loss of federal and international "disease free status" for domestic hog markets in Indiana.
   
Once feral pigs become established, you have them forever.  If they begin breeding and dispersing it's too late for eradication since they reproduce prolifically.  If hunted to any extent they quickly become nocturnal.  These hogs are considered vermin, thus no Indiana DNR regulations or licenses apply because they are not wildlife. Law enforcement and the agricultural extension agent should immediately be made aware of their presence if you see a feral pig.  Their presence in southern Indiana should be taken very seriously and every effort should be made to eradicate these unwelcome pests.

[El Tejon]

Right or left wing, people make stuff up about animals all the time (see e.g. a blue bazillion bearthreads on THR).

I always demand to place my boot on a little piggy body, otherwise it is hogwash!:D

Funny, we had a bull escape onto our property as a kid too!  It escaped out of a trailer on I-465 which bordered our property on the westside of Indy.  It ran up the hill, jumped the fence and gored a neighbor mowing his grass.  My brother and I were gone swimming.

[charby]

Well in my opinion I think 10-20 years from now that ferals hogs are going to be a real problem in the hog producing states. Unlike bovines, hog revert back to there undomesticated selves pretty fast. I have worked around some hogs and I'd have a hard time calling them domesticated in the first place. Only critter I know to fight back with a pissed off Charby holding a pitchfork in my hand. And it was just a guilt that escaped. Not a momma sow, barrow or a boar.

I'll now more about the porcine in the future when I am raising a few for consumption.

-C

[El Tejon]

Why in 10-20 years?  Why are they not a problem now???

Why just "hog producing" states?  They are running rampant in desolate places like Tejas right now.

We've been raising pigs for a long time in the Midwest; seems that they would already be here.

[charby]

Why in 10-20 years?  Why are they not a problem now???

Give them some time to get established, Darwinism to produce hogs that are resistant to Porcine Brucellious. Less hunters than in the past that would have shot feral hogs while chasing other game. Really only predator is man.

Why just "hog producing" states?  They are running rampant in desolate places like Tejas right now.

Don't know much about Tejas, except maybe pigs are getting too smart for the hunters, probably left over livestock from western expansion in the 19th century and wasn't enough folks living there to make a dent in the pig herd.

I figured that because of the abundant amount food that is being raised on the farms in the midwest and carolinas. Once reason the deer population is out of control.

We've been raising pigs for a long time in the Midwest; seems that they would already be here.

Higher concentrations of hogs in confinements, in the past still was a lot of small scale pork raising, escape pig might just join a group down the road. Less farmers to farm, farms are bigger, most distance between livestock producers. Disease culls them right now? IMHO

[garrettwc]

Expect to see this on late night Asheville TV anytime soon.

Shot of guy standing in front of smoking BBQ pit.

Same guy speaking with southern drawl. "Come on down to Spin's BBQ shack. The freshest pork BBQ in North Carolina!"

[sound of gunshot]

"There's another takeout order coming in now!"

[crt360]

They'll probably be up there soon, along with the killer bees and fire ants.  The hogs have always been very nocturnal down here.  They will sometimes appear late afternoon or evening, but mostly at night.  In recent years my brother has had a lot of fun sitting and waiting for them in the late night/early morning hours utilizing nightvision, scent block, and a .30-06 w/varmint light.  This is probably the most common method of hunting them around here.  If the hogs aren't showing up, there always seem to be a few skunks to shoot at.  I have never seen hogs out in the middle of the day (unless they was kilt the night before).  They are a real nuisance, especially to the farmers.  The pigs will come along early in the season and just eat up whole rows of small corn plants.  Some of the farmers trap them, shoot them, and just toss 'em to the side of the field.  Coyotes and buzzards will pick them down to bone pretty quickly.

[Sylvilagus Aquaticus]

http://feralhogs.tamu.edu/index.cfm

Regards,
Rabbit.

[jefnvk]

Had some pigs get loose from a neighbors pen about a year or so ago.  Last I heard, there is now a very steadily increasing pig herd in the area, with no signs of it slowing down.  Some of them have been found 30-40 miles away.

The good part, is that since hogs are not a game animal in Michigan, the DNR pretty much put out a notice in the paper that it was open season on them.

The bad part is I'm not home to shoot them

[El Tejon]

charby, looks like I'm a monkey's (or pig's) uncle!

The feedback I'm getting reports that wild pigs can be encountered but only in 1s or 2s, no great herds of wild swine.  Apparently Southern Indiana has some wild piggy activity (escapees from exotic game ranches), but no feral pig herds running about like down Souf.

And that's the Hoosier Swing Report, we now return you to APS.

[charby]

I'm going to write that down today...

Charby won an debate with an attorney!

-C

[El Tejon]

Well, that depends.