State legislators appear more eager than ever to get rid of feral hogs — the Texas House voted 137-9 to expand helicopter hunts.
Good for them. Sometimes sentiment and intense resistance from PETA-types stand in the way of doing a dirty but necessary job.
For years, Texas has made it easy to kill the hogs. They aren’t considered game animals. Hunters on the ground can shoot as many as they want and leave them for dead.
Still, the wild hog population keeps soaring, and the damage to ranches and farms is approaching a half-billion dollars a year.
The hogs gotta go. Killing them is a necessary evil.
I’ll not sugarcoat it — shooting hogs from a helicopter isn’t pretty. Here’s a video clip of a hunter sitting in a copter and killing dozens and dozens of pigs on the run. If you like pigs, I wouldn’t watch it. It’s brutal. But that’s life. Well, not for the hogs.
I’ve shot and eaten a few hogs over the years. They taste great if they’re young and under about 80 pounds. But hogs can easily grow to 400 or 500 pounds, and the big ones are nasty and inedible. Can you imagine how much a 500-pound hog can eat in a day? Ask a farmer who has seen his crops destroyed by what amounts to a swarm of four-legged locusts.
Slaughtering these animals and leaving them to rot on the ground is unforgivable, there has to be a better way.
This is wrong. Sure they are growing in numbers, but shooting them and leaving them to die is horrid. They suffer if not killed instantly and their young are left to fend for themselves. This is something I wish wouldn’t happen.
Texas has the largest population of these non native invaders of any state-estimated 1-2 MILLION. They destroy agriculture, native wildlife (turkeys, ground nesting birds) and are thought responsible for the lettuce ecoli breakout in California. They pollute water sources.
They are in River Legacy park and have invaded homeowner’s lawns.
The folks who wring their hands haven’t seen, don’t know the dangers they pose.
Helicopter hunting won’t work in urban areas ( you can’t be firing guns either) and is expensive. Trapping is the only option, followed by a close range bullet..
Mr. Prince, I agree with you except for the claim wild pigs reach 500 lbs. You’ll only get that size with a domestic penned animal feed copiously by humans. The feral pig is much smaller compared to domestics. When is the last time you’ve seen a fat feral cat? Same dynamic at work.
The adult feral hogs near Throckmorton where I most recently hunted were huge. I would guess they were well over 200 pounds but probably not over 300 pounds. They weighed more than the deer. But you’re right, I’ve never personally seen a hog anywhere near 500 pounds in the wild.
Well, getting rid of these property-destroying pests isn’t pretty, but it is necessary. I’d like to hear some different options of “solving” the problem from people who say it’s “unforgivable”. I see nothing wrong with doing what’s necessary. Of course, we could leave them alone and let them breed until their population is large enough to destroy the earth….