As odd as it sounds, the hunters are losing this fight.
Wild hogs reproduce at a ridiculous rate. “Wild hogs will breed year round, but births peak in spring and fall. Gestation is 114 days, and a sow will give birth to anywhere from 1 to a dozen piglets. She can have 2 litters a year.”
They are overrunning Texas, to the point where after first authorizing hunting from private helicopters, the rules have been relaxed so that almost anyone can hunt wild hogs anywhere, not just their own property.
There are now half hour long videos of helicopter hog shoots, just the “greatest hits”. And they can’t kill them fast enough. It looks like Vietnam War file footage at times.
And they are spreading into Oklahoma.
Oddly enough, the phenomenon is happening elsewhere as well. German hunters killed some half a million wild boars in the first year of open season. The next year, they killed two million, and barely made a dent in their numbers.
The pigs are everywhere.
No Oink About It, Feral Pig Problem Spreading
FoxNews.com:
"They’ve been spotted all the way from Texas to California to Michigan and in New York.
“It's estimated there are at least 4 million of them nationwide, but its impossible to count them all so there may be much more” said Carol Bannerman, a spokesman for the USDA Wildlife Services. "
What has caused their population to take off like it has? Is it just too many years of not hunting them and they hit a critical mass?
Recreational hunting is a vital cog in managing feral swine, but it is only effective if you kill a concentration of pigs. The AR-15 w/ 30-round mags is the perfect tool for the job.
The phenomenon is that the land owners in the states where this problem is going hog wild charge so flippin’ much to hunt the hogs on their land then complain there are so many hogs.
I’m OK with free enterprise, but bring the cost down so the common man can enter this private property on a regualr basis to help eradicate the hogs and there will be enough numbers of hunters to match the rate of procreation, or quit bitchin’.