The first thing about them to remember is they go just fine on da pit or smothered down in onions! (ain't that just like a coonass...........thinking about cooking them first?).
Y'all are right ............they were imported back in the 30's to Avery Island, La. (about 10 miles from me) by the McIlhenny's of Tabasco Pepper fame, and put in a cage on Avery Island. Some time later a hurricane destroyed the cage and they escaped into the marshes. They thrived there and are overrunning the state.
They destroyed most of the muskrats and the trappers started trapping them for their fur which makes good coats and stuff, however with the anti's the fur marked is off and they are overrunning everything. They are vegetarian and eat the marsh grass which leads to coastal erosion after it is gone. They have also seriously weakened levees in and around the New Orleans area.
No one that I know of actually "hunts" them per se. If some are needed for the pit a ride down a coastal canal with either a 12 gauge loaded with lead #5's, or a .22LR will do the job just fine. That approach also works at night with a Q-beam
. (oops did I say that?).
The last I heard was a few months ago the state was looking into putting a bounty on them hoping to keep their numbers down. Jefferson Parish (county to you Yankees
) had a bounty on them a few years back and it was working..............the levee damage had dropped and the coastal grasses were recovering, but some of the do-gooders got word of it and the bounty was dropped ........................ then it was like in the movie "were backkkkkkkkkkkkk."
There is no doubt in my mind that they will never be totally eradicated. The best we can hope for is to control them. Any that I see are destined for the cooking pot.
The State of Louisiana has supposedly either opened a web page or is thinking of opening one to promote them for food value hoping to give incentives for control of them.
K-Paul Prudhomme has begin to push the use of them (even though he can't cook his way out of a wet paperbag
. His sister Enola is a much better cook!!). If the effect is the same on nutria as was the effect he had on redfish, when he introduced blackened redfish that will be great.