re: Hog control / Eradication Ideas

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I completely forgot hogs only eat what you consider “high quality food” dumped from a bag. Let’s just stop dumping “high quality food” and the hogs will just die from starvation.
Priceless information here

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Man, I hate agreeing with an ole miss-er, especially this week.

Someone should tell the hogs they just need to eat "high quality foods" dumped from a bag so they will stop rooting everything!

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It's the guys that dump literally tons of corn out there and then complain that pigs are coming in, eating it, and reproducing like crazy that crack me up. You're part of the problem. If you don't want to stop feeding them then stop complaining.

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I don't disagree. I don't feed corn. It's a shite way of hunting deer, messes up their patterns, and attracts wildlife to ambush points for predators, as well as being a point source vector for spreading disease. We spend thousands upon thousands of dollars every year, all year, to manage habitat and food plots. We don't need corn, and we don't want it. We tried for a couple years and it was counterproductive.

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Then there's the ignorant folks who say you can't eat them over x, weight.

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Meh, you can't extrapolate your habitat and beloved hog population's diet to every one else's. Dumb, subjective point: I've killed hundreds of hogs, our camp thousands, and we regularly toss them in the summer and even the winter too if we feel they're subpar. If you're so hard up for hog meat to where you're keeping 275 pound boars, then trust me when I tell you: You don't have a hog problem, yet.

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The in-comprehendible mindset of lowlifes who suggest you shoot them in the gut and let him run off to die.

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If I'm going to expend a round into an animal, I'm going to try my level best to make it an ethical kill shot. Anyone gut shooting an animal for kicks probably has a human body in their deep freezer. That said, I've shot a many a hog and hauled them off to the gut pile whole, as do many in my camp, and sometimes we leave em' laying. We shoot every single one we see, and if it's a running shot with bad placement on a thermal, then so be it - hopefully the fawn and turkey nest eating son of a bitch dies wherever he lays down.

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BUT in the end, they aren't the end of the world

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Again, dumb comment with little to no context, and one not rooted in reality. They may not be the end of the world in whatever shite habitat you have to hunt in, but in our part of the world, we still had good quail and fantastic turkey hunting. Now that the hogs have been firmly planted on our 6000 acres for 30 years, we have maybe 20% of what we used to based on our spring turkey surveys we have to fill out on every hunt, as well as our covey counts we bird hunters do every fall (habitat/private timber management strategies have stayed the same on ours and the surrounding 100,000+ acres), and it gets worse every year. The carrying capacity for deer continues to dwindle as well. Just like a body of water, there's only so many mouths a piece of land can feed.

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Of course there are negative effects of hogs.

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A feral pig is the definition of negative effects. To try and make any case otherwise quite literally defies the fact of the matter. You said the hill you would die on was that the only reason people hate hogs is because they're told they're supposed to. I can tell you unequivocally that there's hundreds in both ours and our surrounding camps' paying members who absolutely hate hogs, and it's not because we're told to: We see the effects with our eyes, as well as the numbers in the data. If we could trade "opportunities" on hogs for more rising coveys over our pointers, bigger harems of gobblers, and the whitetail carrying capacity we had 15 years ago, we would, and it ain't because someone told us so.

They are a scourge on native wildlife and their habitat in a world where native flora and fauna are under constant attack trying to hang on. I pity the outdoorsman who sees a hog on his prime hunting ground for the first time. He might think it's more opportunity for a little while, but if he's interested in prime deer hunting, wild quail and gobblers strutting on every avaliable lek, and big, full food plots of corn and beans, all I have to say to him is, "give it time," because he just traded a stinking arse pig for, at the very least, the very best of what his land could provide.

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They may catch 1-2 a time out there but the fact you are chasing the pigs out of the area was pretty effective on our place.

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just chase them to the neighbors land

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CaptJJ

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See my reply. We have extensive, 3 decade plus experience with what feral pigs eventually do to native wildlife, and we hate them. We don't hate them because, in your absolutely absurd and ridiculous opinion,

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I think people are programed to hate them as was said above.

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There ain't no thinking too it: We hate them. I don't know what type of devoid habitat you folks are hunting on, but on ground as good as ours that's been under the same club management for over 60 years, we've had our upland bird populations decimated since the first pig was seen 30 years ago.

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Whitetail are responsible for more financial agriculture loses a year than hogs across the country.

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This is as bad as you and the other hog lover "thinking" people only hate pigs because they're told to.

WRONG. Feral pigs cause more ag losses to the tune of billions of dollars more. And so what if deer did? They're native. Hogs, just like those mean old white Europeans are not. If they want to eat the mean old white man's ag crops, then at least they have a claim to it.

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While antenatal though, I've seen turkeys make a healthy comeback around me while covered up in hogs.

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I don't know what antenatal has to do with it, but the science is clear: their arrival with intent to stick around is a death knell for wild turkeys.

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And I'm a land owner, not hunting leased land.

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I'm both. I don't know what that has to do with anything. Our camp is one of, if not the oldest continuous hunting camps in Mississippi and the southeast. We have a lot to lose besides just the hunting opportunities.

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I just have trouble buying the argument they are "rooot8ng everything up" in an area where people are pulling disc and spraying glyphosate to purposely plant an non native plant to feed the deer. Whatever your thoughts are on hogs, that just seems like and intellectually dishonest argument.

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Kind of like you, "though" deer caused more ag losses than native wildlife? Or like you, "think" we and hundreds who surround us in other camps only hate them because we're told to? Are you really going to sit here flat footed and say you have a hard time believing that feral pigs root up ground to the tune of 1½ to 2½ billion dollars worth a year - and that's just in areas where the cost is calculated? What is with you and the other guy going off of your "feelings" and "thoughts"? What an absurd thing to question. So because people are managing habitat for NATIVE wildlife, the hogs damaging it shouldn't be complained about because you like to hunt the stinking things? That doesn't even make any logical sense.

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I remeber hunting a lease years ago where we had a fair number of them, and one of the members was going on a rant about them tearing stuff up, while we were standing in about a 3 acre log landing covered in pine tops knee deep and looking down thr hill at skidder ruts you could disappear into.

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Intellectually dishonest argument, I think, and this time it actually is intellectually dishonest, and really doesn't track to a point.

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Don't think for a second the real big money behind big ag that wants to develop poisons and such for wild hogs would not like to do the exact same thing for whitetail deer

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More made up "I think'isms," and if they did come up with a hog poison, we're buying it by the pallet. Nobody is going to poison native wildlife and the most sought after North American game animal. You're being silly in your desire to try to justify your love for feral pigs. What people like you fail to understand is that, A) the wildlife biology and economics are planted firmly against your position, and B) it's not about what is, regarding the pursuit of native wildlife on hog infested land, it's about what it could be in terms of quantity and quality. We've seen the before and after on prime ground, and I will trade one million stinking invasive pigs for one single covey taking flight over my dog. Give me gobbling turkeys in every direction to where I don't know which way to go, you can have your suboptimal hunting ground and good pig hunting. Frick a pig and anybody who advocates for their existence and sport hunting.

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lol, long as they not on my land

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not surprising

Nvm

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I'm a land owner too and I hate everything they do to my property. You would have a healthier deer population without hogs.

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Also a land owner. We had more deer and turkey before hogs.

We focused on dropping the hammer on them and have seen tremendous improvements in the wildlife.

I've seen ONE pig on camera in the last two months. Before that we trapped two sounders of younger pigs (11 and 7).

We can now use our broadcast feeders for the first time in 5 years. (Dont judge me)

Do the math: catching 10 piglets (5F/5M) likely prevents ~50–250+ additional hogs over the next two years, with ~120 being a solid middle-of-the-road estimate.

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you can have your suboptimal hunting ground and good pig hunting. Frick a pig and anybody who advocates for their existence and sport hunting.

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The fact I got told F you over my comment is why I seldom every comment on anything, and why I don't have social media. I'm not advocating at all for or against hogs either way. They exist on this landscape and have for as long as my European ancestors have, and I enjoy hunting them. One thing you are 100% correct on, my hunting land is suboptimal. 100 acers of cutover briar patch and willow thickets, half of which floods from the pearl river. With all the king's gold it would never be some whitetail haven. But I live on it and hunt it and the public land that surrounds me hard and get to watch all the wildlife and impacts they have daily.

I don't doubt for one second hogs destroy crops. I know they do and have witnessed it firsthand many times. The point I meant to get across that perhaps I didn't articulate well is that the crop they are tearing up has already in and off its self-caused tons of impacts to native wildlife. An entire 16th section that has been nuked with roundup to kill every native plant, the gorund knifed in to kill every small native rodent and then planted in a GMO nonnative soy bean or corn isn't a healthy representation of a native environment, even if it might well help grow big whitetail antlers.

I've hunted in Iowa, norther MO and western NE for a couple of decades now. No hogs to be found. 10 to 15 years ago we use to hunt a ton of farmland just on permission alone, before leasing was even a thing up there. Every famer that ever gave us permission to hunt hated whitetail deer with a passion. If they could eliminate them from the landscape they certainly would, they are nothing more than an impact to their bottom dollar. Everyone that ever gave us permission would always strictly instruct us that we had to fill every doe tag we had in order to hunt, they could care less if they are left out in the field to rot.

I also don't for a second think everyone that hates hogs only does so because they were "told" to. Perhaps I tossed that out too generally. I think that is the case for many. Most others hate them because of either a financial impact, or because of their impact to another species they prefer to hunt. There are countless TV shows where they are hunting giant bucks and nuisance hunting does in suburbs full of mcmansions. Whitetail deer actually thrive in close proximity to humans. It would seem you can have large healthy populations of deer in environments that are not at all a representative of a healthy "native" environment. While MS has one of the highest hog densities in the country, we also have the highest whitetail density, both growing. Both deer and turkeys are expanding there range within the US. Not sure on deer, but there are states in the US where they have, and you can legally hunt turkeys where they were not native to that state. They have been introduced and flourished through conservation programs, but that large bird that was not originally native to the area is impacting food and carrying capacity to some other creature.

Perhaps I didn't articulate the log landing point well enough either as I was hurrying to type from my phone. Hearing somebody rant that hogs are destroying the property, while we stand in a log landing full of treetops and heavy equipment, on a lease that has been clearcut of all native trees, planted in a GMO pine tree, then sprayed as those trees develop, to me is an intellectually dishonest argument.

Poison. That's the only way.

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I will die on the hill that hunters complaining about having hogs is only done because they believe they're supposed to hate hogs. They are delicious and they give you more animals to hunt throughout the year.

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Until you have to deal with this: