Soon we'll be hunting hogs in our back yards!

[Alan R McDaniel Jr]

When I was a kid, somebody might kill a wild hog once a year. Now they are reaching vermin proportions.

Alan




http://www.kens5.com/news/Hunting-feral-hogs-encouraged-in-Southlake-75194767.html


Hunting feral hogs encouraged in Texas town

by Darla Miles / WFAA-TV
Posted on November 26, 2009 at 6:28 PM
Updated today at 6:30 PM
Hunting feral hogs may not be as popular as hunting deer or ducks during the holiday season, but with an estimated three million wild hogs in the state, the sport is helping to control the nuisance.
There's no mistaking the damage done by feral hogs. Only one hog probably was responsible for a lot of rooting at Marshall Creek near Grapevine Lake.
Neighboring homeowners in Southlake have spent thousands of dollars repairing the wild hog damage in their front yards.
"The wild hogs are using the lake to travel," said Matt Falkner, a park ranger with the Army Corps of Engineers. "They'll get on a creek bed, and they'll follow that creek bed plum to downtown Dallas if they could find a path to go."
That's one reason the Corps allows hog hunting on their property. The Grapevine Lake Wildlife Management Area is 2,500 hundred acres of free range.
"We basically allow people to hunt them year round on our property," Falkner said. "And there's no bag limit."
The program is only a year old, but there are already plans to expand.
"Feral hogs, we're going come up with some creative ways to probably open that up a little bit more to folks in the future," Falkner said. "Possibly some trapping, permitting. We'd like to do some youth hunts."
But in the short term, park rangers are preparing for the weekend holiday hunting rush.
"We're right down the road from two million people, and it's a quick hunt," Falkner said. "You can get a quick hunt Thursday morning before Thanksgiving."
So hunt as many hogs as you want.
E-mail dmiles@wfaa.com

[Hi Ball]

HOGS getting over populated will cause twice the damage of deer over running an area. I remember not long ago, reading and seeing the pictures of ferel hogs that worked over a couple of greens on a golf course. Now it cost around $18,000 dollars to put in a green on a golf course.

It looks like to me, there could be special hunts provided and the meat could be given to the Needy Folks etc. This would indeed help area's that are being over-run with porkers. Anybody down in Texas need the help of a handful of Misouri "sharp-shooters", just ring the bell or send a smoke signal.:D:D:D

[Bushman]

Wisconsin has a shoot on sight, no limit, no closed season on feral hogs. I have not heard of anyone here ever shooting one though and I guess the DNR wants to keep it that way. They were a lot of fun hunting them in Tennessee a few times when we went after them. Very good eating and can they ever run when they want to.

[postoak]

So what's changed in the last 40 years? My theory is that it's all this putting out of corn for the deer.

[Altjaeger]

So what's changed in the last 40 years? My theory is that it's all this putting out of corn for the deer.

Maybe, but then again there has been a lot of change in land usage as well with more area closed to hunting and shooting. Also fewer hunters could contibute. I suspect a combination of factors.

We are not the only ones. The number of hunters in Germany is declining also. About 5 years ago on a visit I saw more deer from the train and cars than I have ever seen. My father in law read an article o me about how the Europeanboar ere tearing up soccer fields in downtown Berlin.

[GF.]

So what's changed in the last 40 years? My theory is that it's all this putting out of corn for the deer.

No doubt whatsoever. How often do you see a trailcam shot of a feeder in Texas without a hog somewhere in the picture? The few places that have completely tight fences might be hog-free, but everywhere else, a 'game' feeder is just a hog farm happening on micro-scale. So JMHO, everybody who runs a feeder or a food plot in a hog-burdened state shares in the responsibility for the explosion.

Birdfeeders have made it possible for Cardinals to stay up north here all winter, and the secret to a critter surviving cold is simply being able to take on enough calories to stay warm.

Now, as I understand it, a limiting factor in the hogs' northern expansion is cold winters. So not to reignite the 'global warming' debate, but out in CO, for instance - where pine beetles are naturally kept in check by a few weeks of sub-zero temps every year - they haven't been getting those prolonged cold spells in the past 10 years or so. And when I was out there on my Elk hunt in September, I'll tell you, it was a whole different state than the one I grew up in. Mile after square mile with the overwhelming majority of the lodgepoles dead and dying from beetlekill, and there are trees from about 15 years on up to 18' in diameter standing dead everywhere. Fortunately, the trees 15 years and younger seem not to be affected....

Same thing has been happening up in Canada, I understand, and after the fire that is inevitably going to clear out all of that dead timber, it's going to be a completely different landscape everywhere the beetles have done their work. CO is gonna be one big alpine meadow, at least until the aspens come back in and the lodgepoles have a chance to return.

Anyway, as long as the warmer winters persist, the hogs will be breeding their way north. And as much as I'd love to have year-round hunting opportunities, I sure don't want a hog problem, and as I understand it, if you've got hogs, you've got problems!:eek: