this is the most accurate description of what has happened yet and very trueHogs were allowed to roam free to forage for themselves in virtually all communities/towns east of the Mississippi river since prior to the Revolutionary War. Each owner had their own distinctive ear mark/brand, so that when the community banded together to round them up in the fall to slaughter, and sell for profit the individual hogs could be identified.
Some of those hogs inevitably became feral, due to not being initially caught. The reason that feral hogs never became a problem until late in the 20th Century is that most of America was still a mostly rural nation with strong farming/foraging/hunting roots until the 1950's.
By the late 1960's-1970's, the supermarket was well on its way to displacing all of the individual speciality stores such as the butcher, baker, greengrocer, delicatessen, drugstore, pharmacy, etc.
Low wages, hardscrabble independence, occasional famines, a tradition of hunting, and fending for oneself; had any nuisance feral hogs quickly dispatched before they could become a problem.
I.e., people were hungry, and free food was not going to be wasted. Grab a gun, bait it, shoot it, butcher it, eat it.
By the late 1980's, early 1990's the growing United States population, coupled with fanatic anti-gun & anti-hunting rhetoric; in conjunction with the nationalization of the food industry to drive the mom & pop food businesses bankrupt; along with the dumbing down of our education system as far as what children were learning (critical thinking); along with the advent of affordable home computers, and then the invention of, the consequent miniaturization of, and the explosion in feature-rich availability cell phones.......
All of the above, and more convinced the young & old alike to abandon the old ways----- reading books--- cooking from scratch--- canning food--- making sausage---- fermenting foods--- hunting--- fishing---- the old-fashioned way was bad, the new way MUST BE BETTER!!!
Fewer and fewer hunters in a nation increasingly less rural close to the cities and oceans meant that any feral hogs were going to stay feral for a far longer period of time than they had ever done so in the past. This gave the hogs a chance to revert back to their wild ancestral DNA roots. Whatever domesticity these hogs once had was quickly lost. They became wild, clever, smart, wary, and extremely hard to kill.
Fish and Game Departments in States all over the South failed to realize how & why the feral hog problem was escalating. As others here have stated feral hogs have caused hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars worth of crop damage over the past 30 years, perhaps well into a TRILLION DOLLARS by now. A sounder of hogs can bankrupt a small farmer in several nights by the insane volume of damage that they can cause.
They are dangerous animals that have killed more than a few adult humans in the past few years. They are omnivorous, just like humans and bears. They will eat anything, plant or animal. Ask any farmer and they will tell you just how quick a chicken, duck, turkey, baby lamb, baby goat, puppy, kitten, etc. will disappear if a hog gets a chance to snap its jaws on it.
Feral hogs are a menace/pest/potential virus vector. Any way that their numbers can be reduced, other than poisoning I am in favor of.
yes sir the bullet did pass through the sapling, i grabbed the treehawk as its a handy carbine it shoots the 370 gr maxiball well after hitting the sapling the bullet yawed slapping him sideways. after i called down i proceded to track him with no blood i kept hearing him growl at me i seen him get up and have a red spot on his chest. i decided to go back home and go get my TC Big Boar .58 loaded with 100 gr 2F .018 patch and a .570 roundball. after i tracked him through our property i found him on the National forest( so yes the orange had to come out) got close to him and planted a roundball into the heart lung area dropping him as i walked off i had my lyman plains pistol .54 with me and placed a roundball into his skull making sure he was dead. Since my since my treehawk has 1-20 twist i went back and re-sighted it in using 100 grains of 2F and the 600 grain no excuse im not a fan of .50 for big hogs havvent been the last 4 years but if i use a .50 these bullets get it done on big hogs now that i have my 2 big boars in .58 my hawken in .58 and my pedersoli double kodiak .72 and my 4 double black powder shotguns i believe im done using anything but .58 and abovre. my .54s using 425 gr and up conicals have taken a 100 or so hogs with no problem on big hogs a .570 roundball .690 roundball and a .710 roundball does even better. if my .570 rb dont work ive got 600 gr tow maxiballs ready to goHowie, was the sapling from the first shot a pass through?
I've had that happen with deer. Thought my sights were way off, until I found the blood/hair.
You don't realize what you're wishing for.......Wished we had a ferel hog problem here in Idaho..........
I have tried to get a place to shoot one in Texas. Land owners want so much that by the time you make a trip and buy ice for a big chest [and the chest if you don't have one] and pay to have the butcherin' done … well. I'll pass. It's the same here in Oklahoma.Howie1968: After what I've seen lately, I'm not sure I would put man above the pig!!
Toot: Wild pigs are not an indigenous species, but rather an invasive pest that is extremely destructive to the habitat & to agriculture. They are considered a menace wherever they roam. With the ability to have up to three litters a year, their population can explode to unmanageable levels & is extremely difficult to reduce. Most Game Departments encourage their slaughter. No closed season, no limit, practically no restrictions. In Texas you can even shoot them from a helicopter!!
I believe that the original comment was not criticising the people who engage in this activity, but merely commenting on the use of the word ‘hunt’ to describe it. According to a simple dictionary definition, to ‘hunt’ is to ‘pursue and kill’. There is no pursuit if you are attracting an animal with bait and just waiting for it to turn up to be shot. Therefore it is not hunting.
Similarly for bird shooting. You may shoot and kill them as they fly overhead, but that is not hunting.
I need to go hog hunting but I don't think they are very common in WV.
so you set up a tree stand to hunt pheasant or do you walk until you flush them? so I hunted grouse and pheasant the wrong way by flushing them. I have to ambush themWell then I have never "hunted." One cannot pursue any game, the sound of walking scares them off. "Hunting" is actually ambush, every bit of it.
Enter your email address to join: