Its all about money or over regulation. Private land owners in Texas found they could entice deer hunters and exotic hunters with a cheaper feral hog hunt. When you see the average hunter go on a guided deer hunt on land where no one can go except the privileged few or the sponsored you find the land is well managed and few animals are taken only of trophy quality. This simply makes good business sense, supply and demand. This works very well with deer and exotics as they are not quite as hedonistic as Wild Hogs. Apply your entrepreneur and conservative techneques to hog hunting and charging even minimal prices and soon you have more hogs than you can find paying hunters to shoot.
It may be too late in Texas for any control technique to work other than Warfarin, the weaponized blood thinner now used to poison hogs. Most of us don’t want to see this happen in Louisiana. We have a large population of hogs but nothing compared to the millions in Texas. But up pops the entrepreneurs again this time with Airboat Hog Shooting and Helicopter Hog Shooting. Now this works for hog control but its not being used for control its being used to make a profit. Once again selective trophy hunting is being done which does nothing to control hogs. This is done on private land, mostly large plantations, where hogs are causing serious damage, logic would dictate eradication is in order.
Eradication, however is not the name of the game when a lucrative business tells the guides to go easy on the kill ratio in order to have plenty of hogs for the clients. This done while advertising how the clients are aiding in the control process is lost in the reality that shooting from a moving Airboat is acceptable on hogs and considered fun, as they are not considered game animals. Put a price tag on going hog shooting from an Airboat and few pigs will be taken to keep the business going, they wont tell you that but what do you think?
Louisiana Wild Life Management areas are the breeding grounds for many wild hogs. Deer hunters do not come close to taking 75% of the state population which has been listed as what needs to be done for proper control of these prolific animals. On the contrary they pass up hogs looking for a deer in many cases. The WMA rules say you cant pack a center fire weapon in the off modern firearm deer season. You can shoot a hog with a 22 while squirrel hunting, or take one with archery equipment during the Bow Deer season but it is a sport take serving little for control or eradication. One hunter who hunts hogs with dogs on the WMAs where it was allowed found extra regulation implied telling him the dogs were disturbing the Black Bears.
This past season I was literally run over by a sounder of about 30 hogs during the primitive weapon season. I couldn’t load my single barrel shotgun fast enough to get off more than 2 shots. That was to turn them to keep from being cut or worse. It is understood that the old rules of regulated weapons was to keep deer poachers out of business. Now the hogs and coyotes cause far more deer and turkey deaths than poachers. Poachers are easier to control than hogs.
Ironically using some old poaching techniques would go far better than sport hunting as is. Shooting hogs from a moving vehicle with a spotlight works well as does shooting over a baited area with experienced riflemen with suppressed AR-15s. Corral Traps work well as large amounts can be trapped at one time. Even then there will be some smart ones that get away as hogs are intelligent animals. Airboats and Helicopter shooting works well once you remove the sport and business aspects and add the word eradication. In the marsh lands the airboat shooters would be effective if they went at the task strategically instead of for fun. The concept of the European Drive Hunt works if you can get the Shooters trained and organized. You can see how that is done on YouTube, as about 10 hunters can put down up to 100 hogs in a morning.
As bad as it seems you have to destroy them all, and forget the idea of the Bar-B-Q and the Trophy. A sharpshooter can’t afford to let anything pass, but there will be plenty to eat in the end. If we don’t take the gloves off now in Louisiana and elsewhere, the idea of the using poison will come into play. Would this be anymore effective than shooting is very debatable?
The big problem with warfarin is the collateral damage. The truth is they are even having second thoughts about using blood thinners in medicine as litigation advertisements are public knowledge. The bait stations purposed are accessible to Black Bears, while spillage from Hogs will affect anything that eats it, and it is transferable in some cases, which somehow makes this reporter wonder the final outcome. With the hype about lead shot poison being so advertised, warifrin poison used within the flight path of a California Condor, now introduced in the Grand Canyon would upset years of attempts to save the species.
It is strange that the near extinction of the American Bison was accomplished with single shot rifles, while wild pigs can’t be controlled with near mechanized infantry. As I said before its about money, and over regulation to please certain individuals that need to reevaluate their priorities. Pass it on.