Feral piglet question

They always run and leave their babies behind.
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Always? That seems like unusual maternal behavior. Is there something about wild sows that make them that way? I mean, don't most animals protect their young, especially if they are predatory? So... I could just walk up to one of the many sows out here and reach for her piglet, and she wouldn't try and protect it? Not that I would! But it just seems so strange to me. Do they have no protective instincts for the others in the sounder?

By the way, what IS all that screaming about? Is it adults attacking adults, or adults attacking babies? I have one video of the big sow going after another sow that had done absolutely nothing wrong (well, that I could see). One second they were all busy destroying the ecosystem (lol sorry :) ) and the next she was attacking the other sow.

As Spock would say... Fascinating.
 
I was deer hunting a couple years ago sitting in my elevated box blind. It sits on a ranch road that runs between a cleared field and thick mesquite flat. I spotted a big boar, about 350 lbs, down in the field about 400 yds away tearing up the ground. Since I don't feel comfortable shooting at that distance I climbed down and worked my way thru the trees to get a closer shot. I got within about 70 yds and could not get any closer due to lack of cover. He was head down on the other side of the fence that runs the length of the field quartering away from me behind a small bush.
By now I'm all excited and made the mistake of trying to shoot him through the bush. Needless to say I missed. That boy turned towards me and ran full tilt through the 5-wire fence headed right in my direction. I don't think he even saw me, he was just running away. I leveled my Remy 7400 '06 and blasted him to extinction. He dropped about 20 yds in front of me.
I don't believe he was purposefully charging me but he would have torn me up if he ran into me. His tusks were about 4 inches long and pretty sharp. Plus, you wouldn't believe how fast they can run.
 
By the way, what IS all that screaming about?
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It may be sows punishing pigs for infractions of hog behavior. It could be
food fights. When grazing at game plots and on wheatfields hogs are quiet. Some get testy at feeders.


Hog trivia:

Hogs are very well organized. The sounder puts out scouts to locate food. Scouts are usually immature boars. When coming into a feeder or pond the sounder often stops and waits a few hundred yards away. Then you will sometimes hear a pig squealing like mad and the sounder will come on in, lead by a young hog that has drafted as a point pig. The squealing was when he was forced to the front of the sounder.

Sounders often have a big boar that acts as security while the sounder is at a feeder or pond. i often see this while sitting in tree stands near feeders.

Sometimes most of the sows in a sounder will come out to feed without their pigs. There is a nurse sow or two back at headquarters taking care of the pigs. Any lactating sow will nurse any pig in the sounder.

Some sows will bite off grass and build a bed to have their pigs in. African bush pigs do this too. Learned about bush pigs while working in Angola. Bush pigs are not Sus Scrofa. The bush pig species is Potamochoerus larvatus and they have bad attitudes. There are several subspecies.

Strawberry or cherry flavored Jello sprinkled on the corn will sometimes entice trap shy hogs to enter the trap. Molasses works well too.
 
Okay, I am so intrigued! I just went and bought a book from Amazon on wild boar behavior. That's fascinating about the point pig and the nurse sow... but the only time I've seen a huge hog (well, 250 pounds or so, which to me seemed pretty big!) with a sounder is when there were about thirty tiny piglets and at least seven sows. The smaller sounders with like 3 sows and a handful of larger piglets seemed to be traveling boar-less. I can't wait to get this book now!

And cherry-flavored Jello would get me into a trap, too. :)
 
I think a lot of people get into trying to identify all the species, sub species, mixed species, etc. of hogs to relate to behavioral characteristics. I can only relate to the large number of them I've dealt with in Texas, but they are probably a mix of lots of species. You won't see much of the short nosed domestic type here as most of that has been bred out of them, but every color a domestic pig comes in is represented in the woods. A person can look hard enough to find agressive instances and I would guess most of them are either initiated by people and the hogs are trying to defend themselves or hogs getting confused about which way to run to get away.
Hogs do tend to get noisy during some of their daily activities, but most of it is not fighting. Something as simple as one bumping into another can get a grunt of squeal out of one and this is normal to them. A person seeing boars fighting is just a show of dominance such as is seen in almost any species...including some humans after a few adult beverages. A few disagreements can be seen around food sources as pigs jockey for the best chances at the food ( they have little for table manners and can make real hogs of themselves).
As far as european species making it into the U.S. there are reasons for this as well. Texas..as well as some other states...has a big market for exotic species and raises them for hunters. This is big business and people pay simply insane amounts of money to get a trophy to hang on their wall. You can find people here that buy and raise all kinds of exotic animals for this market behind high fence operations. Hogs are masters of escape and there is a good chance the hog with the ear tag could have come from one of these operations. A really gnarly old boar that looks russian or exotic and has a really large set of tusks could fetch a thousand dollars or more in a trophy fee from one of these game ranches. There are many exotic types of deer, antelope, goats, etc...roaming on private lands in south Texas now that started out on game ranches.
I see ads occasionally on places such as Craig's list here wanting to buy feral hogs over the 200 lb. mark as some hunting ranches are short of them in their area. Now you talk about hog noise...try moving a bunch of them somewhere they don't want to go and they will tell you about it.
 
Hogs are masters of escape and there is a good chance the hog with the ear tag could have come from one of these operations.
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That hog came to the US in a shipment imported by a wealthy OK City car dealer. The guy turned them loose all over SW OK, north of highway 62; including the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge. For years the wildlife refuge and Ft. Sill were over-run with with the offspring of those hogs. The wildlife refuge and Ft. Sill are finally getting control of wild hogs with extensive trapping and shooting from the air. Wild hogs on Quanah Parker firing range are getting scarce.

The bad news is that hybrid hogs have spread into the area south of highway 62. They have not yet reached the Red River.

The few short nosed hogs i've shot and trapped recently looked like they had just come from the stock sale. They probably had come from the stock sale. One of my properties is near the Pauls Valley hog hunting ranch. Another property is further from the place. It too is becoming infested with wild hogs. There was no hog problem in that area until the guy started his hog hunting ranch. He buys hogs by the stock trailer load.

States will continue to have serious hog problems until they shut down the hog hunting ranches. The only thing that would cause that to happen is an outbreak of hoof and mouth disease in cattle being spread by wild hogs.
 
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I know that at one time, biologists claimed that domestic (short-nosed) hogs, once gone feral via escape from pens, would regress to the more primitive long-nosed type within a very few generations. The type-appearance would begin to show by the fourth generation.

I dunno. That's from reading about east Texas "piney woods rooters", maybe forty years back.
 
I know that at one time, biologists claimed that domestic (short-nosed) hogs, once gone feral via escape from pens, would regress to the more primitive long-nosed type within a very few generations. The type-appearance would begin to show by the fourth generation.
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Methinks that is correct. The offspring of hogs in WV that the avoided the lumber camp kitchens 80-100 years ago have long noses, narrow hams, long hair and wide shoulders.

This very old boar hog was killed in South central OK. His teeth were so worn he could not eat corn. Methinks he's a second generation or later hog. The hog had not been neutered. His small fangs were about 1/4" in diameter.

 
Short nose and broad shoulders with short legs make for a "power feeder" at the slop trough...

They can take up a wider spot while having leverage to lean on their trough mate to get even more...

Feral pigs need the long snout, narrow head and shoulders and long legs to make travel effortless... the long snout allows for deeper rooting as well...

Feral hogs caught as piglets and pen raised and bred will soon throw the shorter and shorter snouts they need for domestic life... I have seen this more than a dozen times with entire "ol' skool" small pig "keeps" done by fellow hunters...

After the second generation, they no longer exhibit the attack risk unless cornered which any pig will charge over that...

Brent
 
Read my post again: The wild hogs in your area may be different from the ones here and in other places. Many of the hogs here have Eurasian boar blood. Yeah, i know, i've never done DNA testing to prove that. No one has ever done any testing that disproved it either. i have hosted German hunters here : They say many of the hogs here are German boars and boar crosses. I killed this very old boar in 2007 on Ft. Sill. He had a tag in his ear from a game farm in Bavaria:
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We kill lots of pigs that look like that..only they don't have tags in their ears...
I have heard of Eurasian boar being turned loose in this county..in the past..from more than one ranch....It is a big mix....U never know what kind of pig might show....But the river property generally has the ones with more Eurasian traits....Mostly black pigs with less of those traits on my other properties..on the other side of the county....
This discussion has been on here before....

Many folks try to play up the aggression of pigs....I just don't see it..unless there is a reason....
 
I would like to hear a geneticist take on how their snout can change over a couple of generations. I suspect it is more likely interbreeding with existing long snout hogs in the wild population, or their snouts may continue to grow with age, where domestic hogs usually don't make it very long.
But, wouldn't be the first thing I have been confused by.
 
Beetle or Van?
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Believe it or not that pig has gotten bigger every year since it got turned into bacon back in about 1964.

By the time I'm in an old folks home I expect it'll be the size of a school bus.
 
In reply to Thallub's remark about his hog's fangs being about 1/4 inch in diameter.....you must have a different type of hog in your area than we do here. Maybe you are hunting them at the wrong times...like under a full moon when they are on a blood quest. Ours don't have fangs, but maybe I have just shot them in a different moon cycle.
 
robhof

Actually the snout length and general body shape, at least for the boars is directly related to their testosterone levels; wild boars have much higher levels than their pen raised counterparts. The higher levels are a necessary adaptation to wilderness conditions and once elevated are readily passed as a genetic trait to their offspring. Pigs are as smart as dogs and maybe even smarter and trappers must constantly adapt; changing bait and trap locations as well as changing color and camo of the traps to keep getting results. I've personally seen pigs on a night watch, feeding all around baited traps and even turning over a box trap to dump the bait without getting caught.
 
I can relate to the turning over of the traps, as I have had them burrow under the sides many times, while the doors were wide open. They are voracious feeders and all seem to have what I refer to the D.C. pork belly syndrome. They learn really fast to belly up to the trough and get all they can get, but none of them want to get caught with their snout in the cookie jar. They can squeal like all hell when caught....but act ignorant of the situation.
 
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