Pig bomb - holy cow!

Z

zahnzieh

New member
Anybody see the Discovery channel show PIG BOMB recently - describes out of control feral /wild pig populations in the U.S? New breed of wild pig/eurasian wild boar hybrid. These things are breeding like crazy and getting bigger(400-700 lbs) and even attacking people! One town in North Carolina was over-run by pigs. As a Yankee from Illinois i never realized what a problem these critters are becoming for the South/East and West. Do you Southern hogdoggers really see this as a losing battle? Soon to be spreading to the Midwest as well. Looks like we'll be having a wild pig hunting season soon. With their incrasing numbers can I bring a machine gun? Pork - the other white meat!:D:D
 
Yes, I have and posted the various links of you-tube which resulted in a long discussion here... I may have titled it "pig bomb" if you care to search the discussion...
Brent
 
I watched the show last night.
It was a poorly done show, lots of hyperbole.
They said that the whole US wild pig population came from 8 hogs Columbus turned loose in Florida in 1493.
Sure, that was the start, but it was augmented hundreds of times, as farmers turned hogs loose to eat wild acorns and chestnuts etc.

When they got going on the "Wild Eurasian Hog" angle, the show just fell apart.
They spent ten minutes showing some Russians driving a rutted dirt road to a pig "hot spot," including several minutes of the jeep getting stuck in the mud.
That was fascinating, watching Russkies put logs in a mud hole, and crank on a come-a-long.
They got to a wilderness cabin, and they hung a camera on a pole, then they left.
They came back at night, and they had one pic, of some eyes in the darkness.
Then they showed the artist's interpretation that the hog might have weighed 350 pounds. Big deal.

That Russian adventure took up 1/4 of the show, and it was a waste of air time.

They went on and on about how it was possible that the American wild hog was a cross with the "Eurasian wild hog."
No kidding.
All of the American wild hogs are descended from Eurasian hogs, with the exception of the javelina.

I was really disappointed with the show.


ps--Edit: I will say, there were two wildlife biologists who were interviewed at length. This was a good part of the show. These guys were will informed and spoke rationally.
 
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I watched "Pig Bomb" for the second time last night. SimonKenton summed it up pretty well.

Wild hogs are a very serious problem in this part of OK. In 2007 we had a bumper crop of acorns and pecans in 2007 and in 2008 we had a bumper crop of acorns. As a result the wild hog population exploded. Despite working five and six days a week since February; I have trapped and shot well over 40 wild hogs this year.

Some of the hogs here look like purebred Eurasian boars because a rich Okie brought in 100 pairs from Germany and turned them loose all over the place. I have been chased twice this year by wild hogs. I now wear chainsaw pants all the time when hunting on the ground for hogs.

Except for the odd cougar, wild hogs do not have any real enemies here: Coyotes and bobcats cannot deal with them.

I have watched hogs chase the deer off food plots and out of wheat fields. Hogs root up the wetlands, root up the food plots and tear up the wheat fields. One huge area that I hunt is so populated with hogs that they have adversely impacted the deer population and at least 20 elk have migrated off the place.

The state of OK still refuses to get serious about wild hogs. They will not let us hunt them at night with a light unless we can prove crop damage and go through a mother may I drill for a night hunting permit.
 
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We have fewer of the russian influenced pigs in my area but some none the less. Most of our feral hogs are many generation wild farm breeds. But areas along the eastern seaboard are rife with russian blood as that is where the tycoon families of the industrial age lived and they had, at their disposal, many european style "Hunt Clubs" they stocked with all sorts of critters.
Brent
 
Here on Fort Sill, Oklahoma, the Game Warden told me that if I see a hog, shoot it with whatever you have if you're hunting small game. I asked about the ethics of wounding them and was quickly informed that it is unethical to let them live, or even wounding them, that they'll sucumb to their wounds eventually.....

After hunting this area for about a month I can see why. They dig up the food plots, scare the game away, and just make a mess of the land. After popping a couple of hogs with my .22lr, I can see how head shots make sense. Especially after the BB shot from my supernova finally took one of them out. What a resilent/delicious pest they are...
 
On that show, one point that that they did make was that the "Pig Bomb" has exploded since 1980.
That is intriguing to me, because that was the year I started hunting pigs.
This was down in the Oconee River swamps of central Georgia.
They showed a US map from that year, they said that there were 17 states that had wild hogs in 1980. I saw that the Oconee River swamps were included, so I guess that was an accurate map.
They said that, since then, there are 40 states with wild hogs. They said the US population has gone from 1.5 million, to 6 million. They said Mama Pig has 6 piggies to the litter, 3 litters in 14 months, and a pig can breed from age 6 months. They said there is no other large mammal that breeds so much.

That is fascinating to me. I haven't hunted hogs since 1990. Didn't notice much change in the hog population along the Oconee River in that time, of course, I did my part to keep the population in check, I killed 12 or 14 of them. Damn I love wild hog meat!

Now I live in the North Carolina mountains, I don't know of any wild hogs around here. Maybe they will move into this area and I will get to shoot some piggies again. I'll have to buy another smoker.
 
They said Mama Pig has 6 piggies to the litter, 3 litters in 14 months, and a pig can breed from age 6 months.
Click to expand...

The pig experts always say that because sows under the best conditions can have 3 litters in 14 months. Conditions in the wild are far from ideal, especially in a year when there is little mast.

One litter per year is the norm in the wild hog population here. The litters here are usually 6-10 pigs. Some pigs are lost to coyotes and bobcats. By the time the pigs weigh about 30 pounds the sow is usually running with 4 or 5. The big mean old sows often raise all their pigs to weaning time. Even at this rate the wild hog population quadruples in one year.

Strange things sometimes happen with those sows. I have killed five 2-4 year old sows in the past year that have never had a litter. Two of them were pregnant with their first litter.
 
It was a poorly done show, lots of hyperbole.
They said that the whole US wild pig population came from 8 hogs Columbus turned loose in Florida in 1493.
Click to expand...

Hyperbole indeed. Or perhaps blatently outdated information.
....Especially when considering that it was been widely accepted (for over 25 years) that Columbus's 'landing in Florida' was actually a mis-representation of his time in Cuba. Analisys of his logs and charts show that he spent a small amount of time in Central America, mainly around what we know as Honduras; but most of his time was spent in the Caribbean, and on Puerto Rico, Hispanola, Cuba, and San Salvador.
This is important to any theory of Columbus landing in Florida because..... His logs indicate that he believed "Juana" (Cuba) to be a penninsula. (He never attempted circumnavigation of the island to find out.) The time frames and travel times corresponding to references of specific islands, in proximity to "Juana", make it impossible for "Juana" to have been Florida.


Sorry. I couldn't resist the history lesson. I know it was the show's doing, but have a problem with incorrect fallacies of history being passed off as fact. Columbus is credited with discovering the "New World" for Europe. I do give him that. (Even though the Bafoon thought he was in India, and the world was only 13,000 miles around the equator. Papal scholars had told him, and the Spanish crown that the world was over 25,000 miles in circumference. -He refused to believe it.) As for discovering the mainland now known as the USA... nope. The Spanish were responsible for that.
 
Thank you for the History lesson, Sr. FrankenMauser.
I had not heard before that Columbus landed in Florida in 1493, glad to get that clarification.

Like I said, this show was short on facts.
 
How to deal with a Gopher Bomb: Hire Carl Spackler

Carl Spackler: License to kill gophers by the government of the United Nations. Man, free to kill gophers at will. To kill, you must know your enemy, and in this case my enemy is a varmint. And a varmint will never quit - ever. They're like the Viet Cong - Varmint Cong. So you have to fall back on superior intelligence and superior firepower. And that's all she wrote.
Click to expand...

From CaddyShack

Cheers,

M
 
Feral Hogs

The domestic cat can return to wild in about 3 generations. Then they are called feral cats. It seems that the hog situation is similar, and it was baffling that this never was mentioned. The theme of the show seemed to be about how smart the scientists are determining that the wild hogs here are supposedly originating from Eurasian boars. How the hell did that conclusion come about? As posted above, there may be some Eurasian genetics in some of these hogs, but after 100 years (considerably less time that there have been wild hogs in America) the traits that are an advantage for survival would have been selected by nature. Thus the domestic hog traits would slowly be weeded out and the long snout, bushy mane and bristles, tusks, nasty disposition etc would become more apparent.

Looks like more scare tactics of the media.

Hog hunting would be fun. I heard that in Texas the ranchers and farmers will gladly let responsible hunters shoot hogs and leave them lay. Killing the destructive critters is a happy thing for the folks that have to live with them.
next thing ya know, like the grizzly and wolf, these will be listed as endangered and hunters will be casterated for shooting the damn things. :D
 
Pigs in Tennessee

TWRA (Tennessee wildlife resources agency) has put a page in the state hunting guide that feral hogs can be taken any time during the year without a license except on wildlife management areas.These pigs destroy deer habitat as well as crops and a sow can have 3-4 litters a year.To put that into perspective a pair of pigs breeding and their offspring could go from 2 to 500 in about 2-3 years.
 
Have you hogdoggers noticed the pigs actually getting larger on average over the years? - might indicate a natural adaptation.
Also, i didnt know they were a problem in Michigan already - with their winters, probably Russian blooded varmints. Matter of time before they spread out over the Midwest. Snake-head fish in the waters, asian long-horned beetles in the trees, pigs in the woods - WHAT do we pay these govt. agencies to manage invasive species ANYWAYS!!!!:mad::mad::mad:
 
zahn, I do see some large hogs but I also have pockets of predominately black hogs with little teeth and not quite as much the dog wreckers even if they weight 250+. But then are pockets of reddish with more russian looking backs and higher shoulders than rumps that will have 2.5 inch tusks and dog wrecking warriors at 150 pounds. Various traits run in pockets but one thing I find to be most true is that, like humans, the young adult male is the most ready to fight. A 160-180 pounder of any color bothers me far more than a 300 pounder... That show may have put out some info that is outdated but it is pretty much the most accurate depiction I have seen on TV.

As for 1980... that was a key year in the hog industry. It was around that time that the pork industry fell flat on it's face. Hog prices went down to $.08 per pound and that wouldn't cover the gas to haul them to a sale barn. As these farmers tried to hold out until the market improved, many farm hands were let go, fences and barns were let get into disrepair and the farmer couldn't afford feed so the likelihood they would attempt escape increased exponentially... Just a redneck observation as we were in the business about that time...
Brent
 
yep, i gotta few bombs out rat now!!!!
all dis hi water we have'n.. dem hawgs get ta high ground:D
bouta 150lb is my limit... doan like ta get biguns out of tha swamp
by hand!!!!... we be known ta field dress when needed too....
but its too hot fer that now....
 
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