Pack of Beasts Wreak Havoc in Suburban Irving, Texas, Highlighting a Rapidly Spreading Problem That Costs the US $1.4 Billion Yearly.
GP: There was a love explosion after November 5th across America, in celebration of the return of patriotic, common-sense policies to the US.
But as we eagerly await Donald J. Trump’s inauguration, the mood has since partially shifted, with an unbelievable series of events, from UFO-Drones, chemical fog, multiple terrorist attacks… the list goes on.
So, perhaps it’s unwise to add to the growing list of worries ‘the feral hog invasion’ – I agree. But if you live in rural Texas right now, this is a ‘billion-and-a-half-dollars-a-year-problem’ that you can’t wave off – because it’s on your backyard, wreaking havoc. more here
In Eastern Europe they’re saying:
“Eeen Amerika bacon come to yoo!”
They are not fit to eat. We shoot them, and leave them laying, and the coyotes won’t even eat them. No joke.
Those guys in the helicopter weren’t shooting them.
They were shooting AT them.
Oh Noes! Aids! Killer bees! Wuflu! Birdflu! Globalony warming/cooling! Monkeypox! Now Killer Pigs! What will we do?
You mean we are now due for an oversupply of Footballs?
The only cost should be ammo.
A guy at work went on a feral hog hunt in TN and brought back some of the meat. It was quite delicious, though somewhat greasier than processed pig.
He had to pay for the hunt and the pork ended up costing about $45/lb. (cost of hunt, processing, and shipment back to NOVA).
And just think how many starving moslems could be fed!
mortem tyrannis
izlamo delenda est …
My family used to hunt them in NorCal. Edible, but a bunch of work to process correctly (lye dip, etc…). Nasty just inedible meat here in Texas.
And they’re dangerous! In Kali my uncle would hunt with a .308, and packed a .44 Magnum as backup. They would charge you wounded and could rip your leg off before they bled out. I have a “city” cousin that shot one here ten or so years ago, and went to follow it into the brush, and my Dad stopped him. Made him wait 30 minutes. Sure enough… The bore went 50 feet in to the brush, turned around facing my cousin and waited to attack. He bled out while my cousin waited.
Here in Texas we have lethal interactions every couple years. A home health care nurse missed an appointment at an elderly couple’s house east of Houston a couple years ago, and one of them walked out on their front porch and found her car parked outside. Then they found what was left of the nurse, and it wasn’t much.
KR
Sounds like local government should offer a bounty on every proof (saaaayyyy, left ear) of a feral pig kill. No license, no season, no limit.
^^^^ Every “invasive species” should have a bounty on them…..
A friend in Ga said…..they’d pen trap them (hawgs)…..cull all of them but one/two…..fatten them up with good feed/grain and barbecue them…..never tried that myself.
The pork in the picture is a Peccary. They are a wild pig, but they are game animals unlike the ones the article is talking about. There is a season and permits required for harvesting them. The Peccary is native to America
The wild hogs that are the problem, don’t look at all like the Peccary kind. True wild hogs have no season, no limit, no permits required. They are a pest. An expensive one if you do nothing about it.
As for eating, the young ones are tender. The 300 lb ones aren’t. My relatives that have 100s of acres just let them lie in the field where they died, also. Even the bugs need something to eat.
According to the accompanying article, these things will attack humans and pets and cause millions of dollars in damage while being otherwise fairly useless. I think at this point shooting them may be illegal, and I would suggest term limits.
Wait – we’re not talking about politicians? Nevermind.
“…cull all of them but one/two…..fatten them up with good feed/grain and…”
Technically illegal in Texas to keep them alive and feed them. There’s supposed to be a fine if a game warden catches you transporting any alive.
In fact, I’m wondering why there are any businesses at all that sell you a hog hunt weekend. If you’re keeping them alive, you are afoul of the law. If you’re hunting them every weekend, you’ll run out of them – unless – you are feeding and caring for the herd population so you can keep making money. The hog-hunt bus. will limit your kills – it’s all about the money, they want lots of hogs thriving on their property – quite the opposite of eradication.
I think these businesses should be illegal since they have no desire to eradicate the pest. Escaped hogs are how they became a problem in the first place. Ergo, they are perpetuating the problem for their own bottom line.
Went night hunting with some guys and 8 dogs and they had one in the water where it could stand but the dogs had to swim. 1 bullet to to head and it was BBQ time the next day. I remember it being good tasting except one of the kids didn’t tell us they drop a rack on the sand. Back then I had no idea how dangerous it was crawling through the hog tunnels in that swamp.
“Pack of Beasts Wreak Havoc in Suburban Irving, Texas,” as opposed to the packs of wild beasts in most blue inner cities.
Dadof4, the hog hunt businesses sound a lot like the current medical industry.
Keeping diseases and life-threatening illnesses from being cured in order to make more money.
Both of these businesses trade solutions to eradicate the problem for their profit, thus making the suffering of the innocent increase.
Shooting scatters the sounder and soon cerates more sounders. Better to pen-trap the entire sounder at once.
^^^^
AI says you can trap/pen…..
on your property in Georgia…..
but must be killed before leaving your property…..
and it was on their farm.
Send them to Islamic countries.
Me and a friend of mine had an idea years ago to take the wild pigs and load them up in big cargo planes and drop them from 20,000 ft in a Muslim country/city we were at war with.
By the Mediterranean… In a village I lived in, ferals were known to kill small kids on farms. Especially ones in dirty diapers, or kids pooping in the field. Hogs would bite, leave half the body, etc and then move on to the next place. There weren’t many wild hogs, though, which led me to believe people were eating them and it kept the numbers down.
What a world.
I lived near a farmer that kept pigs, they would escape every once in a while and boy, could they do a number on your lawn!
“Keeping diseases and life-threatening illnesses from being cured in order to make more money.”
BINGO!
Claudia, I would have more respect for a pharma company who said, “Yeah, we don’t know how to fix/treat that. Sorry.” Rather than fill us full of dope as a guess, or even worse, for money.
I guess we could capture some alive and airdrop them on the muslim country of our choice.
As Geoff C. and I contemplate our retirements and our final big project of creating our last home somewhere, it is stories like this that help me cross potential destinations off the list. Not that Texas was ever really under consideration. Say what you will about the PNW, at least we don’t have feral hogs eating children. And I’m glad to report that the Murder Hornet has been officially eradicated in the States, most especially ground zero, Washington.
(Leaving the coast will be a real hardship. The saltwater does something magical to our air, and the sound of the ferries’ horns have made an indelible mark on my genetic code.)
AbigailAdams
We’re facing the same dilemma. I think we’ve come to the conclusion where we are at is home. I dunno.
Bad_Brad — I wish we could say the same, but we also want out from under the weight of the constant maintenance a 100 year-old house with three floors requires. Plus we keep a fussy, formal landscape that would keep a full-time, skilled gardner busy 11 months out of the year. A “labor of love” conversely requires a “love of labor”, and we’re ready to move on to new loves with less labor. Our next place will be built around our convenience of use with spaces that will allow us to pursue our creative hobbies.
(Oh, are we friends again?)