Open season: The jig is up for state's wild pigs
Skip Card; The News Tribune
It's a lousy time to be a wild pig on Washington's Olympic Peninsula.
Biologists classify you as a European invader. Ecologists say your omnivorous appetite destroys rare plants and disrupts the natural balance. Cooks prize your tasty, lean flesh. Those who have seen your kind say you're ugly.
Worst of all, state wildlife officials have declared open season on you, hoping to eradicate wild pigs before they attract a fan club. Hunters are free to kill all the pigs they can, with virtually any weapon, any time, no license required.
"We want to get rid of them. We don't want them to become a permanent population that we have to deal with all the time," said Jack Smith, a regional wildlife program manager for the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Unregulated hunting, Smith said, "might be the best way to keep their numbers low."
Consequently, hunters gripped by pig fever have been sniffing around Grays Harbor and Mason counties, where most pigs have been spotted. Many are drawn not so much by the pigs as by the appeal of hunting without the typical limits.
"Usually you need a Philadelphia lawyer to figure out the rules and regulations from the State of Washington," said Vicky Failor-Solberg, owner of Failor's Sporting Goods in Aberdeen.
Sportsmen who come into Failor-Solberg's store to ask about pig hunting are often skeptical when she tells them the state has no rules.
"There were guys who didn't believe it. They said, 'No way, there's got to be something.' And I said, 'No, I'm telling you,'" she said. "A lot of times men are funny. They don't want to listen to a woman."
The situation may sound like a sportsman's dream, but the odds of bagging a pig are low. Locals warn pig sightings are down dramatically since word of unfettered hunting spread last fall.
"Last year, it was pretty active. We knew of about 80 pigs they got," said Rogene Gates, co-owner of Western Sports Unlimited in Montesano. "This year, not even the locals are seeing them."
And the pigs seem to realize something's up, Gates said.
"They hear a truck turning rocks in a gravel road, they're hiding," she said. "Because every time they stuck their head out last year, they got shot at."
How wild pigs arrived in Washington is a mystery. At least one game farm imported wild boars from Europe to the Olympic Peninsula in the 1930s, and many suspect today's pigs are their descendants.
But domestic pigs that escape the barnyard and breed in the woods can produce feral litters in as few as three generations, biologists say.
Sharp tusks emerge from lower jaws. Coarse, dense hair covers toughened hides. Bodies become leaner and more muscular. Tails grow straight. A razorback ridge appears on the spine. Goodbye Porky, hello Pumbaa.
Failor-Solberg spotted two 60-pound specimens about four months ago trotting along a road near her home outside Aberdeen.
"They look just like you see on 'National Geographic.' I couldn't believe it," she said. "They've got the long snouts and the little tusks and the whole bit. And you can see the strength in them. Their legs look extremely strong."
The animals also change in the eyes of state land managers, who consider wild pigs "deleterious exotics."
"It's a fancy name for animals that cause a lot of problems," Smith said.
The chief concerns are the pigs' voracious appetite and destructive dining habits. Using their tusked snouts as effectively as a shovel, the pigs root up plants, bulbs, seeds, insects and grubs.
California has been struggling with wild pigs for years.
"They'll eat anything. They're omnivores. Pigs, bears and people all have the same type of molars," said Doug Updike, a senior wildlife biologist for California's Department of Fish and Game.
"You've got an exotic that's coming in and disrupting the soil and tearing up and eating plants that are already rare or endangered," Updike said. "In doing that, you expose the soil to other exotic plant species that are now able to take hold and invade a plant area.
"It's certainly very disruptive."
On California's Santa Cruz Island, a nature preserve off the Santa Barbara coast, the presence of pigs has lured golden eagles, which also hunt endangered kit foxes. Land managers from The Nature Conservancy are working with hunters to kill off the pigs.
Pigs also cause environmental disruptions on Hawaii's islands. Yet, pig meat has become such an important food source for some Hawaiians that efforts to wipe out the invaders meet stiff opposition from local hunting groups.
Pigs also have become sought-after prey in the South and Midwest. Hunters in some of those areas long ago persuaded state game departments to regulate pig hunting much like they do elk and deer.
"They're very highly regarded as game animals throughout the states that have them," said Gerry Rowland, president of the nonprofit Modern Firearm Hunters of Washington. "They're recognized as a worthy animal to hunt. They're smart. And they can be very ferocious if you get in their way."
Rowland was surprised to learn pigs were present in Washington, and shocked to learn pig hunting was unregulated.
"It sounds totally out of character for the Fish and Wildlife Department to not lay down some guidelines and some seasons," he said. "I would suggest they need to formalize this a little."
That's precisely what wildlife manager Smith doesn't want.
Smith said state wildlife officials don't have the time or money to study, track and manage another game animal - particularly one that causes ecological problems. Smith said he also doesn't want to devote staff to monitoring another hunting season and a new crop of hunters.
Once hunters develop a taste for wild pigs, Smith said, the animals "almost immediately develop a constituency, a group of people who say, 'Hey, they're good to eat. I don't mind them. I can live with them.'"
State officials say they would rather live without them.
Unrestricted hunting may never eliminate Washington's wild pigs, Smith said, "but if there are 30 of them instead of 30,000, that is a significant difference."
Hunters who see or shoot a wild pig are asked to call Department of Fish and Wildlife program manager Jack Smith at 360-249-1222. Smith has no information on where to hunt pigs, and he urges hunters seeking tips to call sporting goods stores in the Grays Harbor area.
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