You have to wonder why they don't use this as training for military units. The military helicopter pilots could use the training, and this would also provide good training for snipers and door gunners. There wouldn't be concerns about people doing stupid things as US military personnel are good at following orders.
There’s orders of magnitude more supply than demand. Farmers are rolling with helicopters and truck mounted mini-guns and suppressed sniper rifles with $18k thermal optics and it’s just not keeping up.
I don't think they are actually trying hard enough. As Homer Simpsons put it "We've wiped out entire species before, we can do it again"
--- helicopters and truck mounted mini-guns and suppressed sniper rifles with $18k thermal optic.
This all sounds like people wanted to spend money on those things rather than humping around shooting day in day out to suppress the threat. Also it's an activity that costs money. So what's cheaper than dealing with the problem. Scaring it onto your neighbors property.
This is already being done, but not on a wide scale basis.
You can actually, legally hunt the hogs from the air with automatic weapons. People have done it.
But it's really expensive, and not particularly efficient, nor is it methodical.
Hawaii has this problem as well, not the scope that Texas has, they have teams of professional hunters that go out at night to hunt them.
Folks want them gone, but at the same time they don't just want anyone running around on their land either. Some places in Texas have a bounty on them, $5-10, but you I don't know if you can just leave them to rot in place. With price of ammunition and gas, plus all the rest, $5 isn't necessarily a profit making enterprise.
I don't think anyone would want be around an area where 100 hogs were slaughtered and left to nature for composting. The ecosystem may well be able to reclaim only so much.
The military is a large organization. While there are some important and famous instances of people not following orders, most people in the service, follow orders most of the time.
Do you really think in the history of militaries, they tend not to follow orders well?
I’m not sure why one would think it’s mistaken to say this. Even if there are many instances of personnel disregarding orders, that’s only interesting as a talking point because of how it differs from the norm.
The historian Hegesander tells us that the ancient Macedonians wouldn’t allow men to recline at symposia until they had speared a boar without the use of a net.
I actually started to look into it online, and came across some YouTube videos about helicopter hunting, including with a minigun, and…
…seeing those hogs terrified, running for their lives and the cheers of cruelty from the hunters felt really, really bad and wrong.
(including quotes from Full Metal Jacket, without understanding they’re actually denouncing cruelty).
Can’t hunting be more dignified?
PS: No vegetarian here - I just posted you a suckling pig recipe!
Second wave, really, excluding populations in the arctic and far southern South America. Pre-clovis peoples were pretty effectively wiped out by the ancestors of most of today's Native American ethnic groups.
Why are they called 'feral hogs' in America? This is the original wild species of pigs, if I'm not mistaken. I think wild boar would be better. We also don't call wolves 'feral dogs,' no matter how little we like them.
If I recall, there was a Wired article about this problem.
Original European settlers brought over domesticated hogs during colonization. I believe to raise and to hunt. They eventually were abandoned or got out and starting breeding with wild hogs.
Yes, it's said they are descendants of domestic pigs, my bad. They do look like wild boar though, and seem to revert back to their wild form quickly and be similarly dangerous animals.
because they are domestic pigs gone feral, plus a minority of boar-pig hybrids resulting from the contact with wild boar.
> This is the original wild species of pigs (…) I think wild boar would be better
Feral hogs are not the same thing as wild boar. The latter are the ancestor species from which pigs descended, whereas the former are domestic pigs gone feral plus a minority of hybrids. Western wild boar have a chromosome count of 2n = 36, whereas pigs (including the majority of feral hogs that aren't hybrids) have a chromosome count of 2n = 38. Hybrids typically have 37 or 38 chromosomes.
> We also don't call wolves 'feral dogs,'
… because they aren't, just like wild boar aren't feral hogs. Wolves aren't domestic dogs who went feral but just wolves who stayed wolves. So the equivalent of the wolf in the porcine world would be the wild boar, not the feral hog, of which the equivalent in the canine world is… a feral dog.
Although the domestic pig as we know it today took hundreds of years to breed, just a few months in the wild is enough to make a domestic pig turn feral. It will grow tusks, thick hair, and become more aggressive.https://mybosstools.com/fun-facts-domestic-pigs/
Don't know why you're getting downvoted -- this viral tweet was a huge catalyst to getting people aware of this issue. There's even a Reply All podcast about it: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/n8hw3d
There's a conflict of interest in the hog hunting-tourism industry. Companies profit from the existence of the hogs, because they are legal to hunt year-round in Texas, with no permit and no bag limit. People have deliberately captured and transported the hogs to neighboring states with the hopes of propagating the problem and the profits that follow.
Of course, hunting hogs with a rifle makes people feel like they're helping. But shooting at these hogs, even if you bag a few, actually diffuses a herd across wide areas. It breaks up what was previously a single, easily trackable group. The young hogs reproduce like crazy and soon you've got two or three as many hogs.
Other states have banned the practice of hunting for this reason, instead favoring the capture of the hogs. It seems to me that as long as it's profitable to hunt and spread these hogs, there will be an increasingly large hog problem in the US.
actually diffuses a herd across wide areas. It breaks up what was previously a single, easily trackable group. The young hogs reproduce like crazy and soon you've got two or three as many hogs.
If separating results in three times as much reproductive success why do these animals group up in the first place?
This is just a guess, but forming up into sounders (group name) probably was good vs predators that existed in Europe long ago, but don't exist now in the southern US. There are a few mountain lions but not enough anymore to impact the population and coyotes might take an abandoned young but even one adult would probably scare them off I think?
Farmers that really want rid of them use big net/cage traps that catch a whole sounder at once, because escapees learn to spot the traps and spread the knowledge apparently. Not sure what they do with the meat.
If anyone in the San Jose, CA vicinity are looking for a recreational hog hunter to help control the pig population on their land i.e. shoot them, feel free to reach out. Zero cost to you, and will abide by all rules, regulations, and any preferences that you have. Will also share some of the dressed meat!
This could be a case where gene drive extinction solutions could work safely. There aren't any native species in the Americas with which either a feral pig, or a European wild boar, can interbreed, and controlling gene flow from wild stocks into domestic pigs shouldn't be very difficult, since essentially all domestic pig breeding is controlled breeding with known sires. You would definitely want to have controls to make sure the gene drive wasn't exported to Eurasia, but that seems doable.
57 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 105 ms ] thread--- helicopters and truck mounted mini-guns and suppressed sniper rifles with $18k thermal optic.
This all sounds like people wanted to spend money on those things rather than humping around shooting day in day out to suppress the threat. Also it's an activity that costs money. So what's cheaper than dealing with the problem. Scaring it onto your neighbors property.
Not saying you can't wipe them out, but it's hard, even with expensive optics and firearms.
I like the idea of training military marksmanship hunting pigs, but there is a difference in environmental damage between a rifle, and machine guns.
You can actually, legally hunt the hogs from the air with automatic weapons. People have done it.
But it's really expensive, and not particularly efficient, nor is it methodical.
Hawaii has this problem as well, not the scope that Texas has, they have teams of professional hunters that go out at night to hunt them.
Folks want them gone, but at the same time they don't just want anyone running around on their land either. Some places in Texas have a bounty on them, $5-10, but you I don't know if you can just leave them to rot in place. With price of ammunition and gas, plus all the rest, $5 isn't necessarily a profit making enterprise.
I don't think anyone would want be around an area where 100 hogs were slaughtered and left to nature for composting. The ecosystem may well be able to reclaim only so much.
History begs to differ.
Do you really think in the history of militaries, they tend not to follow orders well?
https://portuguesecooking.wordpress.com/2013/05/25/130/
Can’t hunting be more dignified?
PS: No vegetarian here - I just posted you a suckling pig recipe!
That's a strange -- and dangerous -- thing to say for an American of European origin.
Original European settlers brought over domesticated hogs during colonization. I believe to raise and to hunt. They eventually were abandoned or got out and starting breeding with wild hogs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_boar
because they are domestic pigs gone feral, plus a minority of boar-pig hybrids resulting from the contact with wild boar.
> This is the original wild species of pigs (…) I think wild boar would be better
Feral hogs are not the same thing as wild boar. The latter are the ancestor species from which pigs descended, whereas the former are domestic pigs gone feral plus a minority of hybrids. Western wild boar have a chromosome count of 2n = 36, whereas pigs (including the majority of feral hogs that aren't hybrids) have a chromosome count of 2n = 38. Hybrids typically have 37 or 38 chromosomes.
> We also don't call wolves 'feral dogs,'
… because they aren't, just like wild boar aren't feral hogs. Wolves aren't domestic dogs who went feral but just wolves who stayed wolves. So the equivalent of the wolf in the porcine world would be the wild boar, not the feral hog, of which the equivalent in the canine world is… a feral dog.
Although the domestic pig as we know it today took hundreds of years to breed, just a few months in the wild is enough to make a domestic pig turn feral. It will grow tusks, thick hair, and become more aggressive. https://mybosstools.com/fun-facts-domestic-pigs/
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peccary
It’s a reference, of course, to “Leiningen Versus the Ants” by Carl Stephenson, http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/lvta.html.
Of course, hunting hogs with a rifle makes people feel like they're helping. But shooting at these hogs, even if you bag a few, actually diffuses a herd across wide areas. It breaks up what was previously a single, easily trackable group. The young hogs reproduce like crazy and soon you've got two or three as many hogs.
Other states have banned the practice of hunting for this reason, instead favoring the capture of the hogs. It seems to me that as long as it's profitable to hunt and spread these hogs, there will be an increasingly large hog problem in the US.
If separating results in three times as much reproductive success why do these animals group up in the first place?
Farmers that really want rid of them use big net/cage traps that catch a whole sounder at once, because escapees learn to spot the traps and spread the knowledge apparently. Not sure what they do with the meat.