Posted on 12/23/2006 3:55:07 PM PST by Sybeck1
Fayette County officer kills 600-pound boar
Fayette County resident John Cocke walked out onto his deck, clapped his hands, and hollered.
He first thought a neighbor's hog was on the loose, but he quickly saw the animal ripping into his chicken coop had long tusks, beady eyes and hair that stood up on his back like an angry dog.
"He acted aggressive, like if you come out here, I'm going to tear you up."
Cocke called for help.
Fayette County Animal Control officer Thomas Petrowski felled the wild porker with three blasts from a 12-gauge shotgun. Cocke's nephew carved the beast into slabs of bacon and mounds of pork chops.
Fayette County folks have been talking about the ferocious hog that weighed 600-plus pounds and spanned 7 feet, snout to curly tail.
Feral hogs are once-domesticated animals that have returned to the wild. Sometimes hogs escape the pen, or people turn them out to forage, or they're stocked for hunting purposes.
Wild hogs have become increasingly common -- and a growing nuisance -- throughout the South, though the exact number in Tennessee is unclear, said Ben Layton, big-game biologist for the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency in Crossville.
Nationally, feral hogs are increasingly on the radar of state wildlife officials, who note their rapid rate of reproduction and their threat to game and wildlife.
"Feral hogs are very destructive creatures that can destroy native plants and natural resources," said Layton. "Our agency has taken a stand of trying to stop the uncontrolled introduction of these animals into the wild."
Cocke said he hadn't seen any wild hogs on his property before the one that was killed several weeks ago.
"He'd been up the road at a neighbor's house before he came down here. He'd broke in their horse barn or pasture and broke a gate down, and their horses got out. We live 1.5 or 2 miles (east of) Somerville and those horses were so scared they went to Somerville."
Animal Control officer Bill Crook ran the hog back into the woods, but the animal returned.
Then Petrowski arrived.
The hog had literally ripped a pole holding a trash feeder from the ground, he said.
Petrowski said hunters don't comprehend the danger of coming up on a wild hog in the dark.
"They are nothing to play with," he said. "Hunters should be aware in the woods."
-- Shirley Downing: 529-2387
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‘FOREIGN’ ANIMALS MOVING IN
A manatee swims up the Mississippi River from the Gulf of Mexico. An Arkansas black bear crosses the Mississippi River and hikes across Northwest Tennessee. Dead armadillos line the roadside and alligators bask in McKellar Lake.
Details
Increasingly, Mid-Southerners see animals once foreign to the area. Reasons vary, but largely involve changes in clime and habitat, free-ranging animals and the return of domesticated animals to the wild.
"You can clump armadillos, alligators and fire ants together," said Gary Cook, regional manager for the Jackson office of the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency.
"Some of those are temperature dependent. The warmer it is, the farther north they will expand their territories. Because we have had relatively warm temperatures for the past 10 years, those animals tend to expand their territories north.
"That's the reason you are seeing alligators in the Mississippi River and armadillos expanding northward."
Coyotes are "a totally different story. We've had coyotes for a long time, from about the mid-1970s."
The arrival of coyotes is due to natural range expansion, he said. "That has nothing to do with temperatures. All species expand their range when they can do so."
University of Memphis biology professor Mike Kennedy said coyotes are drawn to the Mid-South because "our habitat is good. We have abundant rabbit and rodent resources that are the primary food items for coyotes."
Copyright 2006, commercialappeal.com - Memphis, TN. All Rights Reserved.
Leni
No sooner do you get back from Reelfoot than you find out you could have been et by a hog.
I use a .45-70 when I boar hunt. For that Hog, I might have to go up to something heavier. Like an RPG or bazooka.
Hey, I live in Tennessee and maybe I can use this to justify moving up to that .50 caliber handgun I've been wanting.
Son of Hogzilla....
Yum. 600 pounds of Pork Chops and Bacon! Enough to keep the muzzies away ...for a while.
Wow, a place where dinner walks onto your property. Sounds like heaven. Think I'll move there.
No, that's a 600 pound B-O-R-E.
Not to discredit your 45-70, and while not a hunter, I was thinking 450 Marlin. An attacking critter of that type is not something to mess with.
Let's hope he soaked those cuts in a big cooler filled with changes of ice and icecream salt until the water ran clear. Otherwise, that meat was rank!
I shot one many years ago while deer hunting in the Suwannee river bottoms. Cooking the meat stank up the house -- and you could forget about eating it...
We trap the young ones here in the Texas Piney Woods, (and treat as above) and they are good eatin'! We just shoot the big'uns...
FWIW, if you think hitting a deer messes up a vehicle, you ought to see what hitting one of these feral hogs does -- total destruction!
Swine are one of those species that as they get older, they continue to increase in size. But swine, for the most part, do not live all that long, and it is a rare thing to see one more than three or four years old at most. Since hogs are raised primarily for the production of pork, and the ideal slaughter size is about 225 pounds, a size most swine reach before six months of age, only a percentage of females and a very few males see even their third birthday. A three-year-old sow may well be over 500 pounds, even after giving birth to five or six litters by then. A 600-pound boar, five or six years old, is not an uncommonly large animal for that age. Sometime around that point, the very large pig will die of some organ failure (heart attacks or stroke are not all that uncommon).
And very large pigs have been known to develop arthritis, go lame, and be unable to move.
"Boar" implies masculinity. "Barrow" would be more accurate.
600-pound bore, is more like it.
Not to discredit your 45-70, and while not a hunter, I was thinking 450 Marlin. An attacking critter of that type is not something to mess with.
Call us crazy,,,there's people here hunt hogs with a knife.
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