Here is an article from today's Houston Chronicle on the hog problem in Texas. In spite of our liberal hunting of them (unlimited quantity ... by any legal means ... 24/7/365) ... they are growing in population.
It's a reproduction issue. Consider having 1 boar and 1 sow. Assume modest litters of 6 piglets survive to adulthood and that they are 50% male and 50% female.
At the end of 1 year ... you have a population of 14 pigs.
At the end of 2 years ... you have a population of over 50 pigs.
At the end of 3 years ... you have a population of about 250 pigs. (starting to explode)
At the end of 4 years ... you have a population of over 1,100 pigs. (getting out of control)
At the end of 5 years ... you have a population of over 5,300 pigs. (an explosion)
If the initial pair lived 6 years ... you have a population of over 24,700 pigs. But at this point, whether they lived that long or not is moot ... their progeny are continuing to multiply. Texas is doing everything it can to stop the explosion.
Link to article on the web
By SHANNON TOMPKINS
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle
RESOURCES
GOING HOG WILD
Feral hogs like 'four-legged fire ants'
Feral hogs are multiplying at alarming rates and causing million of dollars of damage each year across Texas
• Texas' feral swine are descendants of domestic hogs that escaped or were lost by early explorers and settlers. The pigs may have arrived with Spanish explorers as early as the 1500s.
• Texas holds as many as two million feral hogs, more than any other state and almost half the nation's estimated population.
• Texas' feral hog population exploded in the 1980s and have been documented in 225 of the state's 254 counties.
• In 1990, feral hogs were found only in Texas and 18 other states. Today, they are in 39 states and four provinces in Canada.
• Texas has three types of feral hogs: standard feral hogs (escaped domestic hogs that reverted to wild behavior and appearance), Eurasian hogs (true "wild" swine native to Europe and released in Texas) and hybrids. Almost all Texas wild swine are feral hogs or feral/Eurasian hybrids.
• Although boars and sows can grow as large as 400 pounds, the average feral hog weighs between 100-150 pounds, stands 20-24 inches at the shoulder, is covered with a coat of rough, stiff hair, and has a straight, brush-tipped tail. Black is the most common coloration, but they can be brown, reddish, striped, white, spotted or variations.
• Feral hogs have a tremendous reproductive rate. Females begin breeding at 8-10 months. Sows can throw two litters every 12-15 months. Most litters produce 4-8 piglets, but some older sows can produce a dozen or more piglets with each litter.
• Feral hogs are omnivorous and will eat a wide variety of food. They eat almost any vegetation — grasses, forbs, roots, tubers, grains, fruits, shrubs. In autumn, they concentrate on acorns and other mast. But they also eat much animal matter, from beetles to carrion, and will prey upon young livestock and wild mammals.
• Officials estimate feral hogs annually do $52 million in damage — destroyed crops, busted levees and fences, predation, reduction in forage for livestock and wildlife, etc. — to Texas agriculture. Landowners spend about $7 million a year to repair damage and attempt controlling feral hog populations.
• In 2005, the Texas Legislature appropriated $500,000 to fund a two-year Feral Hog Damage Abatement Pilot Program.
• Approximately 100,000 feral hogs a year are captured and sold to two approved processing plants in Texas. Much of the meat is shipped out of the country.
Texas holds the nation's largest population of feral hogs, the atavistic progeny of domestic swine lost, escaped, released or otherwise loosed into the wild.
Most hunters see this as a blessing.
But almost all landowners, wildlife biologists, land managers and natural resource experts consider it a curse.
"There's not much middle ground when it comes to feral hogs," said Billy Higginbotham. "You either love them or hate them."
While he heartily agrees wild pigs make great quarry for hunters — the animals are smart, wary, abundant, can be pursued using many hunting methods and are incomparable on the table — Higginbotham's bottom line on feral hogs is not complimentary.
"They're four-legged fire ants," said the wildlife specialist with the Texas Cooperative Extension Service.
Comparing feral hogs to the much-loathed fire ants is fitting. Both are non-native species. Both have spread across the landscape at a surprising rate. Both outcompete and even prey upon native animals, have almost no natural predators to help regulate their numbers and can do tremendous damage to the land.
But unlike fire ants, feral hogs have some grudging advocates.
"It's all a matter of perspective. Not everybody out there considers them completely bad," Rick Taylor, a Uvalde-based wildlife biologist with Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, said of wild hogs.
"A high majority of hunters like to have hogs on their leases," Taylor said. "And not all landowners consider them a negative. There are people in this state that make a lot of money — some make a living — off hogs."
And there are plenty of hogs to go around — more than ever, and in more places.
"There are two kinds of landowners in Texas," Higginbotham said. "Those that already have feral hogs, and those who will have them."
Scattered groups of feral hogs have been roaming Texas forests and fields since perhaps as early as the 1500s, when Spanish explorers and settlers brought domestic swine to this part of the New World.
Hogs that slipped their bonds immediately reverted to pre-domestic appearances and habits.
For centuries, Texas' feral hogs survived in relatively isolated pockets in 30-40 counties in East Texas, South Texas and the edge of the Edwards Plateau and were found almost exclusively in river and creek bottoms.
But over the past three decades, the population exploded and spread.
"Basically, hog populations expanded for a lot of the same reasons white-tailed deer populations grew at the same time," Higginbotham said.
Managing land to improve wildlife habitat began catching on in the 1970s and really took off during the 1980s as deer and deer hunting grew into major economic engines in Texas.
Habitat improved for deer is great for hogs. So, too, is the stupefying amount of "supplemental" feed — shelled corn, protein pellets — hunters and landowners make available for wildlife.
Also, the growing hunting industry — guides, outfitters, landowners — noticed people would pay them to hunt feral hogs, particularly when other hunting seasons were closed. So they began live-trapping wild hogs and released them into new areas, hoping to develop herds for hunting.
"The intentional release of feral hogs — moving them to new areas for hunting purposes — was one of the major ways hogs spread," Taylor said.
Today at least 225 Texas counties have feral hogs, and the statewide population is estimated to be as high as 2 million. For comparison, Texas' deer population is about 3.5 million.
That feral hogs have expanded their range and numbers so greatly and so rapidly seems counterintuitive given their legal status.
In Texas, feral hogs are considered free-ranging exotic wildlife. They have no protection under hunting laws. It is legal in Texas to hunt hogs year-round, day and night, using any method and taken in any number.
They can be, and are, unrelentingly trapped, gunned down from helicopters, chased and caught using dogs, baited and hunted with bows and rifles.
There is no estimate of how many feral hogs are taken by recreational hunters. But the two feral hog processing plants that buy, butcher and commercially sell feral hogs reported taking in more than 100,000 of the animals this past year.
Considering feral hogs — at least the sows and young boars — are outstanding table fare, it would seem that such unfettered harvest would quickly exterminate the beasts.
That would be flawed logic, said those most familiar with the animals.
"You're talking about the ultimate survival machine," Taylor said of feral hogs. "You don't get rid of them; the best you can hope for is to control them."
Feral hogs are opportunistic omnivores, able to eat and survive on almost anything.
"They are so adaptable. They can survive and even thrive during drought and other hard times that would really knock back other animals. They can make a good living off cacattailtttail tubers!" Higginbotham said. "And they can live just about anywhere."
They are mobile — able and willing to move dozens of miles to find suitable forage and refuge.
Feral hogs are the fastest reproducing large mammal in the country. Sows become fertile before they are a year old and can produce two litters of 4-12 piglets every 12-15 months.
While coyotes and bobcats might occasionally take a piglet, adult feral hogs face no significant natural enemies.
And the swine can be incredibly wary.
"They are, without a doubt, the most intelligent animal out there," Taylor said of the wild pigs. "They learn fast, and that can make them very difficult to hunt or trap."
"They are a heck of a lot smarter than a deer," Higginbotham said. "If you hunt them, they wise up and go completely nocturnal. You can have a lot of hogs on a place, and you'll never see them."
Hogs' destructive work, however, is easily seen.
Feral hogs generally forage by "rooting," using their stout, flat noses to plow ground allowing them to reach and extract tubers, roots and other plant material.
"They are like Rototillers on legs," said Stuart Marcus, manager of the hog-hassled Trinity River National Wildlife Refuge.
This rooting tears up roads and fields, even damaging and often breaching levees.
These gashes, holes and ruts accelerate erosion, and the uneven ground often causes extensive damage to farm machinery.
The disturbed soil often is invaded by non-native plants and trees.
"I call feral hogs 'walking tallow trees,' " Trinity NWR manager Marcus said, referring to the highly invasive and habitat damaging Chinese tallow tree. "When hogs tear up an area, tallow trees are the first thing that moves in."
Farmers suffer greatly, as sounders of hogs mercilessly fall upon row crops — corn, milo, peanuts, rice — tear up irrigation lines and otherwise wreck havoc.
Hogs plunder commercial pecan orchards and have taken to raising their heavy bodies onto smallish peach and other fruit trees, bending the trees to the ground and stripping the fruit.
Land and vegetation are not the only victims of feral hogs. In some areas, livestock and wild animals suffer. The omnivorous swine will greedily kill and eat young sheep, goats and deer fawns.
"They're not active predators, but they are opportunistic," Taylor said. "If they happen on a lamb or a fawn, they'll eat it."
Hogs can be particularly tough on smaller terrestrial wildlife.
"They are absolutely devastating to all kinds of snakes and take a tremendous toll on frogs and lizards," Marcus said. "It would be hard to find something good to say about feral hogs."
None of the nearly 800 Texas landowners Higginbotham surveyed on their attitudes toward feral hogs could.
"I thought at least some of them would say they liked the extra income they got from hog hunting," Higginbotham said. "But not a single one had a good thing to say about hogs."
That animosity is understandable given the estimated $52 million in damage hogs annually inflict on Texas agricultural interests and $7 million landowners annually spend in repairing hog-caused damage done to land and equipment.
Efforts to reduce hog populations have met with limited success. Certainly, recreational hunting is having little or no effect on the population.
"You are not going to control hogs from a deer stand," Higginbotham said. "It takes a concentrated, long-term program using multiple methods to even make a dent."
Even then, new hogs quickly move into any vacancies.
"As soon as you quit (a control program), they're back," Taylor said. "You have to stay after them all the time. And even then, you're never going to get rid of them.
"Hogs are here to stay."
At least they taste good.
It's a reproduction issue. Consider having 1 boar and 1 sow. Assume modest litters of 6 piglets survive to adulthood and that they are 50% male and 50% female.
At the end of 1 year ... you have a population of 14 pigs.
At the end of 2 years ... you have a population of over 50 pigs.
At the end of 3 years ... you have a population of about 250 pigs. (starting to explode)
At the end of 4 years ... you have a population of over 1,100 pigs. (getting out of control)
At the end of 5 years ... you have a population of over 5,300 pigs. (an explosion)
If the initial pair lived 6 years ... you have a population of over 24,700 pigs. But at this point, whether they lived that long or not is moot ... their progeny are continuing to multiply. Texas is doing everything it can to stop the explosion.
Link to article on the web
By SHANNON TOMPKINS
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle
RESOURCES
GOING HOG WILD
Feral hogs like 'four-legged fire ants'
Feral hogs are multiplying at alarming rates and causing million of dollars of damage each year across Texas
• Texas' feral swine are descendants of domestic hogs that escaped or were lost by early explorers and settlers. The pigs may have arrived with Spanish explorers as early as the 1500s.
• Texas holds as many as two million feral hogs, more than any other state and almost half the nation's estimated population.
• Texas' feral hog population exploded in the 1980s and have been documented in 225 of the state's 254 counties.
• In 1990, feral hogs were found only in Texas and 18 other states. Today, they are in 39 states and four provinces in Canada.
• Texas has three types of feral hogs: standard feral hogs (escaped domestic hogs that reverted to wild behavior and appearance), Eurasian hogs (true "wild" swine native to Europe and released in Texas) and hybrids. Almost all Texas wild swine are feral hogs or feral/Eurasian hybrids.
• Although boars and sows can grow as large as 400 pounds, the average feral hog weighs between 100-150 pounds, stands 20-24 inches at the shoulder, is covered with a coat of rough, stiff hair, and has a straight, brush-tipped tail. Black is the most common coloration, but they can be brown, reddish, striped, white, spotted or variations.
• Feral hogs have a tremendous reproductive rate. Females begin breeding at 8-10 months. Sows can throw two litters every 12-15 months. Most litters produce 4-8 piglets, but some older sows can produce a dozen or more piglets with each litter.
• Feral hogs are omnivorous and will eat a wide variety of food. They eat almost any vegetation — grasses, forbs, roots, tubers, grains, fruits, shrubs. In autumn, they concentrate on acorns and other mast. But they also eat much animal matter, from beetles to carrion, and will prey upon young livestock and wild mammals.
• Officials estimate feral hogs annually do $52 million in damage — destroyed crops, busted levees and fences, predation, reduction in forage for livestock and wildlife, etc. — to Texas agriculture. Landowners spend about $7 million a year to repair damage and attempt controlling feral hog populations.
• In 2005, the Texas Legislature appropriated $500,000 to fund a two-year Feral Hog Damage Abatement Pilot Program.
• Approximately 100,000 feral hogs a year are captured and sold to two approved processing plants in Texas. Much of the meat is shipped out of the country.
Texas holds the nation's largest population of feral hogs, the atavistic progeny of domestic swine lost, escaped, released or otherwise loosed into the wild.
Most hunters see this as a blessing.
But almost all landowners, wildlife biologists, land managers and natural resource experts consider it a curse.
"There's not much middle ground when it comes to feral hogs," said Billy Higginbotham. "You either love them or hate them."
While he heartily agrees wild pigs make great quarry for hunters — the animals are smart, wary, abundant, can be pursued using many hunting methods and are incomparable on the table — Higginbotham's bottom line on feral hogs is not complimentary.
"They're four-legged fire ants," said the wildlife specialist with the Texas Cooperative Extension Service.
Comparing feral hogs to the much-loathed fire ants is fitting. Both are non-native species. Both have spread across the landscape at a surprising rate. Both outcompete and even prey upon native animals, have almost no natural predators to help regulate their numbers and can do tremendous damage to the land.
But unlike fire ants, feral hogs have some grudging advocates.
"It's all a matter of perspective. Not everybody out there considers them completely bad," Rick Taylor, a Uvalde-based wildlife biologist with Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, said of wild hogs.
"A high majority of hunters like to have hogs on their leases," Taylor said. "And not all landowners consider them a negative. There are people in this state that make a lot of money — some make a living — off hogs."
And there are plenty of hogs to go around — more than ever, and in more places.
"There are two kinds of landowners in Texas," Higginbotham said. "Those that already have feral hogs, and those who will have them."
Scattered groups of feral hogs have been roaming Texas forests and fields since perhaps as early as the 1500s, when Spanish explorers and settlers brought domestic swine to this part of the New World.
Hogs that slipped their bonds immediately reverted to pre-domestic appearances and habits.
For centuries, Texas' feral hogs survived in relatively isolated pockets in 30-40 counties in East Texas, South Texas and the edge of the Edwards Plateau and were found almost exclusively in river and creek bottoms.
But over the past three decades, the population exploded and spread.
"Basically, hog populations expanded for a lot of the same reasons white-tailed deer populations grew at the same time," Higginbotham said.
Managing land to improve wildlife habitat began catching on in the 1970s and really took off during the 1980s as deer and deer hunting grew into major economic engines in Texas.
Habitat improved for deer is great for hogs. So, too, is the stupefying amount of "supplemental" feed — shelled corn, protein pellets — hunters and landowners make available for wildlife.
Also, the growing hunting industry — guides, outfitters, landowners — noticed people would pay them to hunt feral hogs, particularly when other hunting seasons were closed. So they began live-trapping wild hogs and released them into new areas, hoping to develop herds for hunting.
"The intentional release of feral hogs — moving them to new areas for hunting purposes — was one of the major ways hogs spread," Taylor said.
Today at least 225 Texas counties have feral hogs, and the statewide population is estimated to be as high as 2 million. For comparison, Texas' deer population is about 3.5 million.
That feral hogs have expanded their range and numbers so greatly and so rapidly seems counterintuitive given their legal status.
In Texas, feral hogs are considered free-ranging exotic wildlife. They have no protection under hunting laws. It is legal in Texas to hunt hogs year-round, day and night, using any method and taken in any number.
They can be, and are, unrelentingly trapped, gunned down from helicopters, chased and caught using dogs, baited and hunted with bows and rifles.
There is no estimate of how many feral hogs are taken by recreational hunters. But the two feral hog processing plants that buy, butcher and commercially sell feral hogs reported taking in more than 100,000 of the animals this past year.
Considering feral hogs — at least the sows and young boars — are outstanding table fare, it would seem that such unfettered harvest would quickly exterminate the beasts.
That would be flawed logic, said those most familiar with the animals.
"You're talking about the ultimate survival machine," Taylor said of feral hogs. "You don't get rid of them; the best you can hope for is to control them."
Feral hogs are opportunistic omnivores, able to eat and survive on almost anything.
"They are so adaptable. They can survive and even thrive during drought and other hard times that would really knock back other animals. They can make a good living off cacattailtttail tubers!" Higginbotham said. "And they can live just about anywhere."
They are mobile — able and willing to move dozens of miles to find suitable forage and refuge.
Feral hogs are the fastest reproducing large mammal in the country. Sows become fertile before they are a year old and can produce two litters of 4-12 piglets every 12-15 months.
While coyotes and bobcats might occasionally take a piglet, adult feral hogs face no significant natural enemies.
And the swine can be incredibly wary.
"They are, without a doubt, the most intelligent animal out there," Taylor said of the wild pigs. "They learn fast, and that can make them very difficult to hunt or trap."
"They are a heck of a lot smarter than a deer," Higginbotham said. "If you hunt them, they wise up and go completely nocturnal. You can have a lot of hogs on a place, and you'll never see them."
Hogs' destructive work, however, is easily seen.
Feral hogs generally forage by "rooting," using their stout, flat noses to plow ground allowing them to reach and extract tubers, roots and other plant material.
"They are like Rototillers on legs," said Stuart Marcus, manager of the hog-hassled Trinity River National Wildlife Refuge.
This rooting tears up roads and fields, even damaging and often breaching levees.
These gashes, holes and ruts accelerate erosion, and the uneven ground often causes extensive damage to farm machinery.
The disturbed soil often is invaded by non-native plants and trees.
"I call feral hogs 'walking tallow trees,' " Trinity NWR manager Marcus said, referring to the highly invasive and habitat damaging Chinese tallow tree. "When hogs tear up an area, tallow trees are the first thing that moves in."
Farmers suffer greatly, as sounders of hogs mercilessly fall upon row crops — corn, milo, peanuts, rice — tear up irrigation lines and otherwise wreck havoc.
Hogs plunder commercial pecan orchards and have taken to raising their heavy bodies onto smallish peach and other fruit trees, bending the trees to the ground and stripping the fruit.
Land and vegetation are not the only victims of feral hogs. In some areas, livestock and wild animals suffer. The omnivorous swine will greedily kill and eat young sheep, goats and deer fawns.
"They're not active predators, but they are opportunistic," Taylor said. "If they happen on a lamb or a fawn, they'll eat it."
Hogs can be particularly tough on smaller terrestrial wildlife.
"They are absolutely devastating to all kinds of snakes and take a tremendous toll on frogs and lizards," Marcus said. "It would be hard to find something good to say about feral hogs."
None of the nearly 800 Texas landowners Higginbotham surveyed on their attitudes toward feral hogs could.
"I thought at least some of them would say they liked the extra income they got from hog hunting," Higginbotham said. "But not a single one had a good thing to say about hogs."
That animosity is understandable given the estimated $52 million in damage hogs annually inflict on Texas agricultural interests and $7 million landowners annually spend in repairing hog-caused damage done to land and equipment.
Efforts to reduce hog populations have met with limited success. Certainly, recreational hunting is having little or no effect on the population.
"You are not going to control hogs from a deer stand," Higginbotham said. "It takes a concentrated, long-term program using multiple methods to even make a dent."
Even then, new hogs quickly move into any vacancies.
"As soon as you quit (a control program), they're back," Taylor said. "You have to stay after them all the time. And even then, you're never going to get rid of them.
"Hogs are here to stay."
At least they taste good.
