Kentucky Afield Outdoors: Trapping Is The Most Effective Way To Control Wild Pigs

FRANKFORT, Ky. – In Kentucky, wild pigs may be hunted with firearms year-round with no daily bag limit, but wildlife biologists believe trapping is the most effective way to control the feral pests.

“In established populations, hunting often educates more pigs than it removes,” said Chad Soard, a wildlife biologist with the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources. “Research has shown that relying too heavily on hunting will not control pigs and may hasten their spread.”

Kentucky Fish and Wildlife is working with landowners to help them deal with the destructive, unwanted swine which pose serious ecological, economic and disease threats.

“We’ve had verified sightings of wild pigs in 37 counties,” said Soard. “For many of these sightings there’s no evidence of established populations. They’re just isolated occurrences of free-ranging pigs living independent of humans.”

Soard said he gets regular reports from landowners about their ongoing efforts to remove pigs from areas of Kentucky with established populations. “You have to adapt your strategy to completely eradicate wild pigs,” said Soard. “You have to understand the species. Shooting them on sight isn’t always best.”

Wild pigs live in maternal groups called sounders, usually made up of several related sows with their offspring. Several maternal groups may come together to forage so there could be as many as 20 to 30 pigs on a food source.

Mature boars tend to be solitary and don’t tolerate the presence of other males.

Hunting in general, and sport hunting in particular, is ineffective for controlling or eradicating wild pigs because boars are targeted.

“The removal of all age classes concurrently is critical to any successful control or eradication plan,” said Soard. “Reproduction often outpaces the most intensive hunting efforts. Juveniles can breed at six months so you have to concentrate your efforts on maternal groups, continually trapping over a long period of time.”

Shooting into a group of pigs forces them to search for sanctuary. “You’re going to spread out the population and push them onto neighboring properties,” said Soard.

“Wild pigs are not prone to wandering. They’re not overly territorial, except when boars are fighting over breeding rights,” said Soard. “Populations tend to stay in a small area unless they are pressured.”

Wild pigs make their presence known by the sign they leave such as rooted up areas in woods and fields and wallows around small ponds or wet areas.

Trail cameras are a good way to assess wild pig numbers and find suitable trap sites. “You can’t just trap anywhere; you have to locate the trap on fresh sign, where the pigs are actively feeding or traveling,” said Soard.

Large box traps can be used to catch wild pigs, but corral traps are better. “They allow non-targeted species to escape and are capable of catching entire maternal groups of pigs at one time,” said Soard.

Corral traps are made from wire and typically have a swinging, saloon-style gate which lets the pigs enter, but blocks them from leaving the trap. A good strategy is to establish the trap site at an area where pigs can feed unmolested. Then, monitor the site with trail cameras and set the trap when the largest numbers of pigs are feeding at the site.

In Kentucky, it is illegal to possess wild pigs. Any captured pig must be killed at the trap site. They may not be removed from traps alive.

Corral traps are commercially available or can be homemade. “We have a cost share program to help landowners offset the cost of the traps,” said Soard.

Winter is the best time to trap. Food is in short supply and pigs readily come to bait piles. The best trap sites for pigs are located along travel routes between bedding and feeding sites.

Trapping works. “The staff at Bernheim Forest corral trapped steadily for three years and reduced the population to the point where damage and observations have ceased,” said Soard. “You can’t trap for a while and quit. You’ve got to stick with it.”

Wild hogs could be past point of elimination in Ohio – Dayton Daily News

By Steve Bennish, Staff Writer

Ohio could be past the point of being able to eradicate destructive wild hogs from the state, a federal wildlife specialist said.

The swine, popularly dubbed “Hogzillas” capable of growing to 500 pounds or more, have taken a foothold here as they have rapidly spread across the United States in a population explosion, a new survey shows.

So far, Ohio’s animals are apparently free of diseases that could harm people, said Craig Hicks, a wildlife disease biologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture based in Reynoldsburg.

But they remain a serious threat to native wildlife and the environment, and hunters should still use caution when harvesting them, Hicks noted.

“Their existence here can only wreak havoc on the natural environment,” he said. “We may be beyond the point of removing all feral swine from Ohio.”

In 2009, the first year of an ongoing program to test the wild hogs for diseases, Hicks examined samples from 14 swine killed by hunters. Tests came back negative for classical swine fever, swine brucellosis and pseudo rabies.

That doesn’t mean hunters shouldn’t be vigilant, he added.

As with deer or any wild animal, hunters should wear rubber gloves when handling raw meat and properly bag discarded pieces after field dressing, Hicks said. Hunters should also wash their hands and clothing. And, as with any pork product, the meat should be cooked to an internal temperature of 165 degrees.

The total number of wild Ohio hogs — a mix of farm escapees and much larger European boars that fled game hunting camps — is 500 to 1,000, according to estimates.

They’re in 26 of 88 counties including Belmont, Gallia, Guernsey, Lawrence, Monroe, Morgan, Noble, Ross, Scioto, Vinton and Washington in the southeast.

They’re also in Adams, Brown, Butler, Darke, Preble and Shelby counties.

Reports also have located them in Auglaize, Champaign, Fayette, Logan, Mercer and Pickaway counties, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

As wild hogs have spread, they have developed permanent populations in more regions, said Jack Mayer, a scientist with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Savannah River National Laboratory in Aiken, S.C.

In a Scripps Howard News Service report, Mayer said he’s tracked the spread of the pigs to 44 states. America’s wild pig population more than doubled in size and range in the past 20 years. Two decades ago, 500,000 to 2 million roamed the United States. Now the population is 2 million to 6 million. In 1982, they were documented in only 17 states.

Mayer said that when a wild hog community is large enough, it reaches a critical mass and gains what scientists say is a permanent foothold.

Twenty-one states fall into that category of having an “established” hog population. When the population is smaller, it can still be removed by hunting and trapping.

Twelve states have so-called “transitional” or “emerging” populations including Ohio, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Wildlife experts have said the hogs are increasingly running roughshod in rural areas, suburbs and even a few cities. They’re digging up cemeteries, gardens and lawns, causing car wrecks — and occasionally attacking people.

In 2009:

• A wild pig attacked a St. Petersburg, Fla., woman in her backyard in April, goring her leg. Seven months later, an Avon Park, Fla., driver was killed when her sports utility vehicle flipped after colliding with a wild hog.

• In Detroit, a wild pig wandered through downtown, making its way to the home of a family in nearby Warren, Mich.

• In September, in a Redding, Calif.-area subdivision, an estimated 100 feral hogs tore out landscaping and turned lawns into muddy messes.

According to the Scripps Howard report, no national strategy or program exists to corral what is a cross-border problem. Without federal intervention and enforcement of laws that limit transporting animals, the battle against the pigs — which each year cause an estimated $800 million in property and crop damage and 27,000 auto collisions — could very well be lost, Mayer said.

The USDA’s Hicks said wild pigs are challenging to kill.

“They’re a pretty smart animal, and they learn from our mistakes,” he said. “They are prolific breeders. In our southern counties, trying to find them on a large tract of land can be difficult.”

via Dayton Daily News.

The Liberty Vindicator- Texas Feral Hogs

Outdoors With Larry Wilburn

In light of all the Swine Flu panic, I thought it would be appropriate to write an article on the history of wild hogs. Unfortunately it turned out to be much longer than the 500 words that you like. Actually it is over 900 words. Perhaps you can run it in two parts. In order to tell the story, it took that many words. If you can not, let me know and will write something else.

With all the media attention on the Swine Flu outbreak, there has been a lot of attention focused on swine both domestic and wild. Of course, we have wild hogs in abundant numbers around southeast Texas.

These animals do a lot of roaming around looking for good food sources and that often times brings them in contact with people.

The wildlife officials, as well as the health officials, report that there is no danger of getting Swine Flu from feral hogs.

To some, feral hogs are a menace and are looked at as vermin that does nothing but destroy pasture, crop land and kills livestock.

To others, feral hogs are an economic boom as hunters are willing to pay for opportunities to hunt the wild pigs of Texas.

Hunting for wild hogs is a great way to scratch that hunting itch while we wait on deer season to roll around again.

Texas wild hogs are second in large mammal numbers behind white-tailed deer with an estimated population of over one million animals. In some areas of the state biologist are concerned that the wild pigs will soon out number white-tails and cause declines in deer numbers as hog compete with the deer for acorns and forbs.

Where did all these wild hogs come from? Well it’s a long but interesting story that spans hundreds of years.

Wild hogs are in the family Suidae, the same as domestic breeds. There are 23 recognized sub-species of wild hogs in the world. Hogs are an old world specie that are not indigenous to the US.

Actually today’s modern swine can be traced back to the ice age. Hog bones have been found in caves and were apparently hunted by humans in the stone age.

It is believed that domestication of hogs dates to around 4,000 BC.

The first swine to enter the United States was in 750 to 1000 AD as Polynesian immigrants brought pigs to Hawaii.

The earliest record of hogs coming to the Americas is in 1493 when Christopher Columbus on his quest to discover America, had eight hogs on board as he landed in the West Indies.

It wasn’t until the year 1539 that hogs first made land fall in the continental US.  Click Link Below for the rest of this great article!

via The Liberty Vindicator.