re: Odd wild pig question but here goes

Only time I've ever gotten bacon off a wild hog was a pregnant sow. Fried it straight with no added grease and if I didn't know it was a wild pig I wouldn't have been able to tell.

Just wish they weren't such a pain to clean.

I own a hog control company and am a dealer for Jager Pro. Others have explained the notion behind cutting a boar then releasing, but a mature boar hog is the rankiest ever and not fit to eat unless you’re starving.

A sow can have 8-10 in a litter, and have a litter every 5 months. Then the piglets are sexually mature in 6 months. So as landowners, farmers, hunters, even homeowners, we have to kill 70% of the current population every year just to keep the population at status quo. And that’s not occurring, so the population continues to grow.

Shooting them, including night hunts with thermals, won’t put a dent in them. Dog hunting does even less. Mass trapping with cellular, electronic corral traps is the only way we can gain on them.

The poison that Glen Gentry at LSU has developed and patented seems to be held up in the EPA approval stage but I believe that it will aid in gaining on the pigs, and compliment the cellular traps.

The issue there is that the operator of the bait trough will have to be a licensed pest control operator by the State, according to my understanding of what LSU has proposed in their EPA application.

It will work similarly to the cellular traps, prebait pigs with corn and a camera, then introduce the trough which has a lid that can be opened and closed by the operator. When pigs come in, open the lid so they can eat the sodium nitrite poison…yes that’s the same shite that cures pork; pretty ironic.

Estimates are that wild pigs create more than $100M of damage in Louisiana alone every year and I believe that’s a low number. If we don’t up our game as stewards of our lands, they will continue to gain ground. Btw, pigs can decimate deer and turkey hunting. I’ve seen countless tracts of land that have produced abundant deer and turkey, then a population of pigs gets established and the owner doesn’t control them, and very soon the deer and turkey move out or get eaten by the pigs….they will eat a fawn, turkey eggs, and turkey poults.

I live on 400 acres in SW MS and had no pigs before 2011 when they first showed up. Since then I’ve caught over 1200 with the Jager Pro MINE traps. It’s fkn nuts to do the math on what those 1200 pigs would have equated to via their offspring, etc.

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The issue there is that the operator of the bait trough will have to be a licensed pest control operator by the State, according to my understanding of what LSU has proposed in their EPA application

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Hopefully that requirement is similar to the private applicator license. Study the book and pass the test at the local office.

The black liquid was to keep screw worms from getting in the wound and eventually killing the animal.
I used to help my grandfather castrate calves and pigs and he did the same
I don’t remember him doing that to the ears when he earmarked them.

I used to deer hunt in Gillespie County,Texas.Old man that owned the land said deer were scarce before screwworms were eradicated.

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I live on 400 acres in SW MS and had no pigs before 2011 when they first showed up. Since then I’ve caught over 1200 with the Jager Pro MINE traps. It’s fkn nuts to do the math on what those 1200 pigs would have equated to via their offspring, etc.

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What the freak! That's insane. So with 400 acres, what number would you say is manageable for a piece of land that size and how has it affected hunting other animals in terms of numbers and quality?

Also, what's going on with some pigs being caught alive and then sold off?

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What amazed me was how much the hog squealed and fought when we had our hands on him and he was getting castrated.

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I’d fight and squeal like hell too.

The key is to remove the glands on the inside of the upper legs. They can be eaten and maybe I was exaggerating because a sow that doesn’t have piglets on milk is much better than a boar, IMHO. And I did qualify a mature boar in my initial comment which would be over 130 lbs or so.

I eat em all. Only ever had one that tasted musky and it was a 160 lb boar that was rank when I went get him had pissed all over himself I’m guessing. I only hunt them when it’s cool so the meat doesn’t spoil before/during cleaning. I scrub all of em boar and sow with a brush and dawn. Helps allot keeping the meat clean.

I spent time at the Kerrville research center a few years ago with biologists Justin Foster.

It’s eye opening to really understand the hog problem.

Crazy to think about, but here’s some perspective on feral hogs:
If you could press a button today and instantly wipe out 70% of the entire feral hog population in the U.S., within just 12 months, their numbers would be right back to where they were before you pressed that button. That’s how fast they reproduce and spread. It’s like trying to empty a bathtub with a spoon while the faucet’s wide open.

Piney wood rooters.