Bullets alone can't solve Alabama's feral hog problem

AL.com ^ | Aug 6 , 2017 | Dennis Pillion

[glennaro]

BIG typo in the headline — they spelled “federal” wrong.

[jonno]

“Guns are needed, too.”

Ha - you got me!
8^)

[snuffy smiff]

It's funny, when I first moved to central GA back in '03 they were coming up in my yard in broad daylight to eat my pecans! There were seemingly herds of the damned things running around! I set up an ambush in a bottom field one night and counted 23 before I started shooting! A cousin and I shot about 2 dozen over the course of about 6 months and then they suddenly all just disappeared! Heard later that a local commercial tomato farmer had set a bunch of snare traps along with a LOT of poison and took them all out!

When I moved up here about 3 years ago I actually didn't think there were any around these parts (GA/NC border)-that is, until a couple weeks ago when I got a knock on my door about 12:30 AM. I answered the door with my Glock in hand and found two night hunters asking permission to cross my property in order to retrieve their dog what had cornered a hog "exactly 168 yards up the mountain behind my house". They must have been using tracking collars-but I wasn't aware they had become so sophisticated! They had contracted with a farmer up the road that has enough flat land(5-600 hundred acres) to plant corn and apparently this hog had been putting quite a hurt on it!

All I ever see around here is deer-even had one bounce off the side of the wife's car about a month ago-essentially totaling it! And they have been just wearing out my apple and pear trees. But meanwhile they all ignore the lone apple tree just across the road. Oh well, as soon as gun season opens it's payback time!

[irish guard]

I’ve hunted wild hogs in Florida and they are very lean. No fat, pretty damn tasty and not at all gamy. Hey are fun to hunt and I believe the feral hog population in Florida is about 500,000.

[snuffy smiff]

It has just about decimated the bobwhite quail population.

[snuffy smiff]

Then I guess using subsonic rounds is not the answer?

[snuffy smiff]

They are far smarter than they look-especially the older ones.

[fungoking]

Missouri went from year round, no limits, to no hunting of hogs. Hogs are smart, you might get 1 but the rest scatter and learn from the interaction.

Now the DOC does trapping, supposed to be working better.

[Alas Babylon!]

Come on dude, this is Alabama! We don’t tote that sissified California /Yankee thinking.

We need to trap them more. The article goes on about it. You can catch a lot more with a trap than hunting. And, the article points out, they are easier to then dispatch.

Which I take to mean shoot to kill in the pen.

[Dusty Road]

Problem with sub sonic’s is ft-lbs of energy and range. Some of the guys are using subsonic 300 Blackouts with 208 grain rounds but they’re pretty anemic past 100 yards. So far the most effective way I’ve hunted hogs is from Helicopters but the terrain needs to be fairly open. Large volume traps work but they’re usually only good for one set and may take a couple of weeks to get the hog’s coming in constantly. Once you trip it they won’t come back. Ar’s work great but a shotgun is the preferred weapon if you really want to take off a lot of hogs.

[Pining_4_TX]

Have they thought of paying people for every carcass brought in? I thought bounty systems were quite successful.

[webheart]

I was parsing that url and after Paula Deen i saw big boobs gibsons in there.

[Travis McGee]

“Trapping feral pigs, and other parables of modern life.”

https://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2012/10/24/bracken-trapping-feral-pigs-and-other-parables-of-modern-life/

[GingisK]

...and Bar-B-Ques by the jillion.

[OldMissileer]

Tell me if large caliber rifle’s report can’t be choked down enough to not to alarm the whole herd ? There would be hogs dropping and the other ones just looking around for the source of the thuds . Possible or not ?

Suppressors do not reduce the noise enough. They do make a substantial reduction but the shot is still more than loud enough. Also, bullets fired out of long guns, in most cases, are supersonic and noisy. Putting a suppressor on a firearm using subsonic ammo would be the best bet.

[Freedom56v2]

There’s a feral hog problem in D.C. too that needs to be dealt with.

---

Very clever ;)

[PGR88]

Do people eat these feral hogs? That’s a lot of free pork out there.

I expect they might be very lean or gamey, but I would bet with slow cooking and smoking, they would taste pretty good.

[snuffy smiff]

And like everything else the bullet will still make noise when it strikes. I figured the range wasn’t that great but not having any experience with .300 I just assumed it was better than that.
Yes, we tried the corral method a few times but only got 2 or 3 little ones each time. It needed to be much bigger but those panels sure ain’t cheap!

[snuffy smiff]

I made some excellent smoked sausage out of the first few I killed in central GA. Slow cooked over mesquite charcoal-was quite tasty! Then one evening whilst butchering a young boar, I found a weird, white, flat worm-like thing crawling out from in between the vertebra in it's spine...

I have not eaten any wild pork since. I'll take my chances on the commercial, vaccinated swine-thank you very much. Don't mind shooting them, just won't eat it. I have asked more than a few folks about the parasite I found and no one yet has been able to tell me what it was.

[Alas Babylon!]

There are some who say they’re trash; others say they’re full of worms...

I’d say kill and eat the young’uns, the older and bigger they get the more tough they are, like any mammal. Keep in mind that almost all beef, pork and chicken you eat from the farm/feedlot is generally a young adult animal. Otherwise, it’s hamburger, sausage and stewpot!

Clean them carefully, ensuring that boars have the sex organs cut out completely, thus there’ll be less testosterone in the meat. Cook them thoroughly! Eat and enjoy. Some of the best tasting pork I’ve had!