feral hogs and why they are a nuisance

¶ … people usually think of wild hogs, they might think, "Mmmm, that sounds tasty!" Indeed they are. People like me who are dealing with the problem of feral hogs on our property wish we could round them all up and fix a feast for all our friends and family. It's not that easy, though. We are pecan farmers who happen to be dealing with a pig problem, not pig farmers who happen to have a pecan problem.

Setting up traps for the hogs and actually going through the hard work of slaughtering them takes up a lot of time we could be using keeping the farm in order. The wild hogs present several problems to the local farmer, not least of which is tearing up our profits by tearing up our land. They literally tear, using their snouts to root through the ground around the trees.

In addition to eating the pecans that have fallen and any new trees that we have planted, they also threaten the safety of our farm with the diseases they spread. I would like to know where these hogs come from, as well as what local farmers can do together to minimize the damage they cause to our crops and community. Wild pigs are not endemic to the United States. The animals were brought over from Spain in the 16th century (University of Georgia).

Since then, the species has proliferated and now they can be considered an invasive species. Any local farmer would agree that the wild hogs are literally invasive; they run through and around our property and do tremendous amounts of damage. The resulting damage is both ugly to look at and costly because they eat our cash crops. The animals will eat almost anything in sight when they invade.

Trussell has it right when he calls the animals "eating machines." It would be super if they only ate weeds and cut our grass for us, but of course, they are eating our pecans and rummaging through our vegetable gardens and flowerbeds. It is not just my family's farm they damage. Every single one of my neighbors has had a problem with wild pigs.

We all have stories to share, and in retrospect they are funny but a lot of the time, we commiserate over our lost profits as well as having to rebuild areas of our land. They also know how to propagate their own species and protect each other by remaining in groups, screaming at high voices when they feel threatened. These pigs have survived as long as they have in the wild for a reason; they are survivalists.

Here they are in the southern United States, a continent away from where they came from. Yet they continue to wreak havoc. Their territorial behaviors and their successful enterprises at invading land and eating everything in sight is why it seems almost impossible to get rid of the animals. According to the University of Georgia, "complete eradication of the wild pig in Georgia is improbable.

The best that we can hope for is population reduction and control of this species." We have come to accept this fact, which is why farmers like me have been working hard to do our part to at least minimize the damage by trapping as many as we can and putting up barriers so that they cannot penetrate the most valuable areas of our land. Georgia has a new program partnering farmers with hunters to enhance our ability to control the wild hog populations.

The program is known as Hunters Helping Farmers (Fabian). I have not personally used this program yet, but my family and I have taken matters into our own hands. We set traps known as corral traps, which are loaded with bait. As Lewis, Berg, and Cathey et al. state, trapping is "a process, not an event." This means that we cannot just set up a trap and boom, wake up the next morning to find a hog.

The process is a lot more complicated than that, as we have learned the hard way over the years. Of course, the wild hogs have been a problem for generations so there is a lot of local knowledge shared by our parents and grandparents, and interestingly, much of what they did is no different from what we do now. We use traps we basically build ourselves, using regular mesh and panels we can find at any farm supply.

I have never had to design the trap doors myself, but I am trying to learn. The bait we use is simple, just corn soaked in sugar. It seems to work well, and if we happen to unfortunately trap another animal like a deer, the trap is designed so that it can get out but not the hog.

We have a large property, so it has been easy to set up large traps, which happen to be the most effective for capturing large numbers at once (Lewis, Berg, and Cathey, et al.). Because our property is large and we do see large numbers of hogs, we have found that the corral traps are the best way of making sure that we capture as many as possible. Capturing the hogs is only half of the fun.

After they are trapped, we have to figure out how to deal with the animals next. In my experience, we check the traps several times a day. Eventually we see some hogs in the corral, and comes the really hard work of processing the animals. We do know how to butcher our own hogs.

This is something that we have had to learn over the years, not just because of the wild pig problem but also because we are relatively self-reliant as a community and take pride in sourcing our own food. In fact, when we are done butchering the hog we sometimes take it to Gilliards in Cairo, Georgia, where we can get the hog meat turned into sausages with jalapeno and cheese. These sausages are only one of the many delicious treats wild pigs can transform themselves into.

We would prefer that they did not propagate themselves so fast, but at least we do have access to a fresh local source of meat. With wild pigs, though, we need to be careful. Wild hogs are one of the animals known to carry several diseases like tularensis and brucellosis (CDC). The infectious disease brucellosis is caused by bacteria, and when we butcher meat that has been infected we can also become infected.

Unfortunately, there is no sure way to tell if a wild pig has the disease, so we need to take all the necessary precautions like wearing protective gear and making sure that the meat has been properly cooked before we eat it (CDC). I do not know anyone who has been infected with this or any other disease caused by wild hogs, but I have heard some stories second hand. Wild hogs cause damage to our entire community. The farmers I know who raise livestock have lost animals to hogs.

As the University of Georgia puts it, "Pigs are opportunistic omnivores and will readily feed on newborn sheep, goats, and calves." In addition to just eating young animals, the pigs will also interfere with the livestock's food, eating out of their feeding lots and preventing the farm animals from getting enough food. We have seen how wild hogs destroy our local forests and ecosystems, and it even appears that they can contaminate ground water locally (University of Georgia).

Sadly, we have seen also how wild pigs reduce the number of local wildlife like ground species of birds. Timmons, Cathey, Rollins, et al. claim that wild hogs can eat about a fourth of all wild.