BY ERIC SHARP
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
They're the size of a riding lawn mower, can rip up the landscape like a John Deere and eat everything from acorns to each other.
They have 8-inch tusks, hides thick enough to stop a small-caliber bullet and have chased people around Point Abbaye into their homes and cars and up the wall of a barn.
European wild hogs -- which escaped last year from a Baraga County game ranch -- have become such a menace that local officials want the state Legislature to authorize year-round hunting. Experience in other parts of the country has shown that they are not only a menace to people but enormously destructive to the environment.
James Adamson owns a cabin near Point Abbaye at the tip of a narrow peninsula between Huron Bay on the east and Keweenaw Bay on the west, jutting out into Lake Superior in the western Upper Peninsula. His cabin is about a quarter-mile from Huron Bay Lodge, which opened two years ago as an upscale game ranch where people shoot deer, elk, hogs and other animals behind fences.
"We started seeing hogs running wild last fall," said Adamson, who lives in Green Bay, Wis. "Then this summer we saw a lot of the sows had litters with them. I've shot a dozen big ones and 20 little ones. The biggest weighed about 350 pounds. My son-in-law is a big guy, but the hog was so big the two of us couldn't pick it up. We had to use a front-end loader to get it in the truck."
The hogs keep showing up near his cabin, though.
"This summer I've seen seven sows with litters of little ones, and other people have seen females with young miles away," Adamson said. "They're all over. The hogs are really aggressive. One chased my wife back into the cabin. A neighbor walked into his barn, and a big boar was in there. It came right at him, and he had to climb the inside wall. When we see one, I make sure we get behind cover.
"When you come up on one, it doesn't run away. It stands there snorting and grunting at you. I think they'd eat you alive if they got you down. They even eat their own dead. When we shoot one, if we leave it in the woods, the next day there's nothing but some hair, the hoofs and hog prints."
Wild hogs are notorious for tearing up the landscape. While their preferred diet is acorns, worms and vegetation, they also eat small mammals, reptiles, birds, snakes, frogs, eggs, hundreds of varieties of plants and literally anything else they can get down.
European wild hogs, often marketed by game preserves as Russian boar, can weigh more than 600 pounds, but they rarely exceed 400 in the United States and average about 150, probably because they have mated with smaller domesticated pigs.
The Point Abbaye hogs arrived two years ago when Jack Buchan of Johnstown, Pa., opened a game preserve.
"When they wanted to get a license as a game preserve, they held public meetings in the area," said Joseph O'Leary, the Baraga County prosecutor. "At those hearings the people who own the place discussed exotic deer, they discussed exotic elk, but no one said anything about exotic Russian boars."
O'Leary said Buchan told him the animals escaped when vandals damaged a fence, but Adamson and other residents said the hogs escaped through poorly maintained gates. Buchan did not respond to calls from the Free Press.
Because they came from a game farm, the hogs are regulated by the state Agriculture Department instead of the Department of Natural Resources, O'Leary said. They are considered livestock and are covered by the same rules governing stray cows and horses, and it is unlawful to harm them.
But O'Leary has told Baraga residents that they can shoot all the wild hogs they like without worrying about prosecution, even though the Agriculture Department told him that "in their view, it's no different than a cow getting loose," he said.
"What that means is that if we want to get rid of them, the sheriff has to catch them and hold them for 15 days until the owner decides if he wants to pay to get them back. We don't have the time or resources for that.
"I have been advising property owners and others that they can shoot to protect their property. And if they are lawfully in the woods and lawfully carrying a firearm, they can defend themselves if they feel threatened by a wild hog. Maybe with the hunting season coming on, and a lot more hunters out in the woods, that will alleviate some of our problems."
Adamson said he got the same reply from the Agriculture Department, "so I told them that they can send up a team to lasso some wild boars and show us how to do it. I'm still waiting for them to show up."
Sara Linsmeier-Wurfel, a spokeswoman for the Agriculture Department, said the hogs "come under the Animals Running At-large Act, which puts the onus on the owner to get them back. The act does let law enforcement capture them and either get the owner to pay to get the animals back, or sell them and keep the profits."
Closely related to domesticated pigs, the wild hogs have longer legs and retain their long, curling tusks and thick coat of hair. Under the skin on the forward half of his body, the male has a layer of tissue 1 to 2 inches thick that protects his shoulders and ribs from the tusks of other boar during fights over females and territory. The armor is thick enough to stop or deflect a light bullet.
"At first, I couldn't kill any because I only had a shotgun with me at the cabin," Adamson said. "I'd shoot them, and they'd just run away. I finally brought a rifle."
After escaping, the animals originally stayed near the game farm at the tip of the Abbaye Peninsula, but lately they have been seen 10 miles south near Aura, about 10 miles from L'Anse. O'Leary and Adamson worry that if they aren't eliminated quickly, they will spread beyond the narrow finger of land into the interior of the UP, where it might become impossible to eradicate them.
With the wild hogs in a regulatory limbo, state Rep. Rich Brown, D-Bessemer, hopes to pass a bill allowing year-round hunting for them when the Legislature returns to session in November.
James Ekdahl, the DNR's Upper Peninsula field deputy, said the agency has few options because the hogs are escaped livestock.
"The livestock laws were written back when the local sheriff would see old Bossie wandering loose, put a rope around her neck and lead her home," Ekdahl said. "I wish I had a better response for the people who ask the DNR for help, but our hands are tied by laws that are archaic and were never meant to cover this situation."
Adamson has received a similar response.
"When I went to the DNR, they said there's nothing they can do," he said. "Then one of the DNR people pulled me aside and said that I should use the old Three S method -- shoot, shovel and shut up. That's a hell of a thing to have to hear from the wildlife agency."
Contact ERIC SHARP at 313-222-2511 or esharp@freepress.com.
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
They're the size of a riding lawn mower, can rip up the landscape like a John Deere and eat everything from acorns to each other.
They have 8-inch tusks, hides thick enough to stop a small-caliber bullet and have chased people around Point Abbaye into their homes and cars and up the wall of a barn.
European wild hogs -- which escaped last year from a Baraga County game ranch -- have become such a menace that local officials want the state Legislature to authorize year-round hunting. Experience in other parts of the country has shown that they are not only a menace to people but enormously destructive to the environment.
James Adamson owns a cabin near Point Abbaye at the tip of a narrow peninsula between Huron Bay on the east and Keweenaw Bay on the west, jutting out into Lake Superior in the western Upper Peninsula. His cabin is about a quarter-mile from Huron Bay Lodge, which opened two years ago as an upscale game ranch where people shoot deer, elk, hogs and other animals behind fences.
"We started seeing hogs running wild last fall," said Adamson, who lives in Green Bay, Wis. "Then this summer we saw a lot of the sows had litters with them. I've shot a dozen big ones and 20 little ones. The biggest weighed about 350 pounds. My son-in-law is a big guy, but the hog was so big the two of us couldn't pick it up. We had to use a front-end loader to get it in the truck."
The hogs keep showing up near his cabin, though.
"This summer I've seen seven sows with litters of little ones, and other people have seen females with young miles away," Adamson said. "They're all over. The hogs are really aggressive. One chased my wife back into the cabin. A neighbor walked into his barn, and a big boar was in there. It came right at him, and he had to climb the inside wall. When we see one, I make sure we get behind cover.
"When you come up on one, it doesn't run away. It stands there snorting and grunting at you. I think they'd eat you alive if they got you down. They even eat their own dead. When we shoot one, if we leave it in the woods, the next day there's nothing but some hair, the hoofs and hog prints."
Wild hogs are notorious for tearing up the landscape. While their preferred diet is acorns, worms and vegetation, they also eat small mammals, reptiles, birds, snakes, frogs, eggs, hundreds of varieties of plants and literally anything else they can get down.
European wild hogs, often marketed by game preserves as Russian boar, can weigh more than 600 pounds, but they rarely exceed 400 in the United States and average about 150, probably because they have mated with smaller domesticated pigs.
The Point Abbaye hogs arrived two years ago when Jack Buchan of Johnstown, Pa., opened a game preserve.
"When they wanted to get a license as a game preserve, they held public meetings in the area," said Joseph O'Leary, the Baraga County prosecutor. "At those hearings the people who own the place discussed exotic deer, they discussed exotic elk, but no one said anything about exotic Russian boars."
O'Leary said Buchan told him the animals escaped when vandals damaged a fence, but Adamson and other residents said the hogs escaped through poorly maintained gates. Buchan did not respond to calls from the Free Press.
Because they came from a game farm, the hogs are regulated by the state Agriculture Department instead of the Department of Natural Resources, O'Leary said. They are considered livestock and are covered by the same rules governing stray cows and horses, and it is unlawful to harm them.
But O'Leary has told Baraga residents that they can shoot all the wild hogs they like without worrying about prosecution, even though the Agriculture Department told him that "in their view, it's no different than a cow getting loose," he said.
"What that means is that if we want to get rid of them, the sheriff has to catch them and hold them for 15 days until the owner decides if he wants to pay to get them back. We don't have the time or resources for that.
"I have been advising property owners and others that they can shoot to protect their property. And if they are lawfully in the woods and lawfully carrying a firearm, they can defend themselves if they feel threatened by a wild hog. Maybe with the hunting season coming on, and a lot more hunters out in the woods, that will alleviate some of our problems."
Adamson said he got the same reply from the Agriculture Department, "so I told them that they can send up a team to lasso some wild boars and show us how to do it. I'm still waiting for them to show up."
Sara Linsmeier-Wurfel, a spokeswoman for the Agriculture Department, said the hogs "come under the Animals Running At-large Act, which puts the onus on the owner to get them back. The act does let law enforcement capture them and either get the owner to pay to get the animals back, or sell them and keep the profits."
Closely related to domesticated pigs, the wild hogs have longer legs and retain their long, curling tusks and thick coat of hair. Under the skin on the forward half of his body, the male has a layer of tissue 1 to 2 inches thick that protects his shoulders and ribs from the tusks of other boar during fights over females and territory. The armor is thick enough to stop or deflect a light bullet.
"At first, I couldn't kill any because I only had a shotgun with me at the cabin," Adamson said. "I'd shoot them, and they'd just run away. I finally brought a rifle."
After escaping, the animals originally stayed near the game farm at the tip of the Abbaye Peninsula, but lately they have been seen 10 miles south near Aura, about 10 miles from L'Anse. O'Leary and Adamson worry that if they aren't eliminated quickly, they will spread beyond the narrow finger of land into the interior of the UP, where it might become impossible to eradicate them.
With the wild hogs in a regulatory limbo, state Rep. Rich Brown, D-Bessemer, hopes to pass a bill allowing year-round hunting for them when the Legislature returns to session in November.
James Ekdahl, the DNR's Upper Peninsula field deputy, said the agency has few options because the hogs are escaped livestock.
"The livestock laws were written back when the local sheriff would see old Bossie wandering loose, put a rope around her neck and lead her home," Ekdahl said. "I wish I had a better response for the people who ask the DNR for help, but our hands are tied by laws that are archaic and were never meant to cover this situation."
Adamson has received a similar response.
"When I went to the DNR, they said there's nothing they can do," he said. "Then one of the DNR people pulled me aside and said that I should use the old Three S method -- shoot, shovel and shut up. That's a hell of a thing to have to hear from the wildlife agency."
Contact ERIC SHARP at 313-222-2511 or esharp@freepress.com.
