Feral Hogs in Texas

[treeman]

The hog story in Texas has reached crazy proportions, some of the tales are starting to have a Urban Legend feel.
https://www.facebook.com/WOSpaces/vi...5642354146354/

[treeman]

All the below is cut and paste, just a quick insight into the Texas situation.


HAYS COUNTY, Texas

– Wednesday marked the beginning of Hays County's feral hog bounty program, which was developed to curb the growing hog problem in the county.
Hunters can receive $5 for every feral hog they kill with a maximum payment of $500. The program will run through Aug. 22.
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County each put up $5,000 for the program, so there’s enough cash to claim two thousand bounties. Sounds straightforward.But!Stephen Ditchkoff is a professor of wildlife ecology and management at Auburn University. Last year he published a study on the effectiveness of a hog bounty program at Fort Benning in Georgia.
“The problem is, and specifically with pigs, we believe that bounties – it’s impossible for them to work from an eradication perspective,” he says. “And surprisingly [we] found that the populations actually increased while the bounty was in place.”
You read that right. He said increased, not decreased.
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AUSTIN — Counties are posting and increasing bounties on feral hogs as they grub their way through fields, gardens, even lawns, pressing their search for food closer to urban areas and carrying disease and parasites with them.
Hays and Caldwell counties in Central Texas are offering a $5 bounty for each member of the non-native invasive species bagged by hunters, up $2 from last year, the Austin American-Statesman (http://bit.ly/18EOKx7 ) reported in its Saturday edition. Bastrop County is offering a $5 bounty for the first time.
Texas has the nation's largest feral hog population, with nearly 2.6 million pigs counted in June. Experts blame the animals for about $500 million in statewide damage, including $52 million a year to agriculture and hundreds of millions in torn up lawns, gardens, golf courses and buried cables and Internet lines.
"There is nothing more destructive that affects more things than drought and hogs," R.A. "Bubba" Ortiz, a professional hog hunter and trapper, told the American-Statesman.
The hogs also cause environmental damage. "They cause a lot of damage and contamination to water sources," said Nick Dornak, coordinator with the Plum Creek Watershed Partnership, a group concerned with water-quality issues.
And they are such prolific breeders that their population continues to build by about 20 percent annually, despite hunters taking about 750,000 from the population each year. So if reducing their numbers is an exercise in futility, the best that can be hoped for is to clear areas through maintenance hunts, Ortiz said.
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I am trying to find the article that got me started reading up about the Texas hogs.
The article claimed that after a (I think it was) 6 month program and depletion of bounty fund, an accesment study was done in regard to impact of the hog bounty program effect on hog populace. It was unanimously found that the hog population had suffered no recordable decline in numbers.
It was also claimed that the original numbers estimated were under counting by at least half the population.

[BBT]

Yikes!
So it looks like the hunting didn't even make a dent in the numbers!

[BBT]

Imagine what the population would be if they hadn't hunted them at all

[Johan.e]

So if roughly 300 piggys buys you a plane ticket and they drop the maximum payment , i believe it can be profitable to go give them a hand for a year or so.

[krieger]

The swines have become a real problem. They do lots of damage to the feed corn grown in my part of the county. They can destroy 1/4 acre in a night. They damaged our cemetery a few years back. Word got a round the barber shop I will hunt them for free. Now I never run out of free hunts. Wondering around the creek bottom lands at night is my fun. My wife always laughs and tells everyone I go hunting yetis in the brushy creek bottoms.

[treeman]

Imagine what the population would be if they hadn't hunted them at all

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Do an exponential calculation, 10 000 pigs x 2 baby's each twice a year .
10 000 x 2 = 20 000 2nd litter = 40 000 + the ten thou.
Next year would be 50 000 x 2 = 100 000 + second litter = 200 000
One year more would = 250 000 + 500 000 x 2 +1.25 M pigs in 3 years. That’s at only 2 offspring per adult.

[BBT]

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Do an exponential calculation, 10 000 pigs x 2 baby's each twice a year .
10 000 x 2 = 20 000 2nd litter = 40 000 + the ten thou.
Next year would be 50 000 x 2 = 100 000 + second litter = 200 000
One year more would = 250 000 + 500 000 x 2 +1.25 M pigs in 3 years. That’s at only 2 offspring per adult.

Yoh!

[treeman]

Yoh!

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Ya but keep in mind thats Treeman math's - about like my grammar most days

[krieger]

the sows have from 6 to 12 piglets 2 to 3 times a year. These pigs have no natural predators except hunters.