Hog damage!

[Fisheadgib]

I'm sorry to say that I've met quite a few people that wanted to knock down every deer they see weather they have antlers or not. Several years ago we were sitting around the campfire talking about the large number of deer along the highway going into Selma at night and one of the guys said "the best we ever got was 12". One of my friend asked "all you saw was 12? We probably see at least 30 or 40 every time we drive through there." The guy answered " I mean the most we ever shot was 12!" Road hunting seems to be a popular pastime in the southeast.

[tennmike]

The law change in TN was largely due to the farmer's groups, and the Farm Bureau in particular, in getting the hogs delisted as big game and listed as pests. The hunter's groups that had been keeping the hogs on the big game list didn't have enough horsepower to overcome the farmers.

Funny story. Several years ago some hogs from the Star Mountain area East of Etowah, TN decided to move West. They found the golf course in Athens, TN to their liking as it had lots of stuff to eat, and the water traps made good wallows. After they had rototilled a good bit of the golf course over a one week period, and annihilated the shrubbery and flowers the game dept had to get rid of them; lead poisoning was opted as the most efficient means. They put out corn in several spots, and used M-16s and spotlights at night to get rid of the piggies. Several Asian pot bellied pigs were in the mix. Them little fellers get pretty big if you throw the feed to them. The pigs in the Star Mountain area are pretty smart. The Cherokee National Forest land borders the highly productive farmland in the valley. The piggies come out at night and pig out on the crops and go back to the 'safe area' of the National Forest during the day. The hunters that lease the farmland are totally inadequate at keeping the numbers down; they have bought into that 'trophy hog' baloney. The hogs can wipe out 100 acres of corn or soybeans in short order.

[snake284-1]

Trophy Hog??? What a crock!!! I love an 80-120 pound sow. Now that's a trophy on the table. If it's hog and I see it it's dead, unless I screw up, which I try real hard not to do. Kill them hogs!!! If all you see is a 300-400 pound boar, smoke his butt. If you don't want to take him home, leave him lay, buzzards and Coyotes gotta eat too. If you want to mount the head, take it and leave the body. Whatever ya want to do but just Kill 'em. If you see a mama with a bunch of pigletts, shoot mama first and then shoot as many pigletts as you can hit. Those pigletts are nice on the BBQ Pitt. Hell learn to make sausage iffin you don't know how already. Wild hogs make great sausage.

Just do it!!! Don't get buck fever, cause it ain't no buck. Just try to keep your cool and mow as many down as you can. If it's a hog just shoot it on sight. Then go cull through them and keep what you want to eat. But first just shoot 'em.

And I know there's some of us here that don't want to see them completely exterminated, because they are fun to hunt and good to eat. But I don't think, even with a hard campaign, that we'll ever wipe em out. They are hard to keep down because they are SOOOO Prolific. But we gotta try to control them. Shoot all you can and trap the rest. That's a good policy.

[Fisheadgib]

I posted this picture not too long ago in another thread and it's me about 25 years ago on a cull hunt at a game ranch that used to be right outside of Wetherford Texas. If you look behind me you'll see a couple of feral hogs that have no fear of man and whenever they hear a gunshot, they consider it a dinner bell as they know they will have a gutpile to eat. They don't fear anyone because nobody wants to pay to shoot one. If you shot one on that ranch, you would have to write a check as the owner of the place thought they were hunting trophies. He didn't get too many takers and their population just grew and odds are he lost the place by now. Back then there were a lot of ranchers in Texas that thought that way and wanted money for anyone to shoot a pig on their property. Now it's the other way around and they're paying people to kill the pigs.

[snake284-1]

I posted this picture not too long ago in another thread and it's me about 25 years ago on a cull hunt at a game ranch that used to be right outside of Wetherford Texas. If you look behind me you'll see a couple of feral hogs that have no fear of man and whenever they hear a gunshot, they consider it a dinner bell as they know they will have a gutpile to eat. They don't fear anyone because nobody wants to pay to shoot one. If you shot one on that ranch, you would have to write a check as the owner of the place thought they were hunting trophies. He didn't get too many takers and their population just grew and odds are he lost the place by now. Back then there were a lot of ranchers in Texas that thought that way and wanted money for anyone to shoot a pig on their property. Now it's the other way around and they're paying people to kill the pigs.

Unfortunately not all of them Fish. Around here there's still enough land owners that want to maximize their profits from their land and want money for any hunting. That's one of my main complaints now days. They want their cake and eat it too. I guess things will soon get bad enough they'll be begging people to shoot the hogs. But there's still enough people with more money that brains that will pay big money to hunt anything. Not enough of them to deal with the hog problem, but just enough of them to make it cost too much for the locals to hunt them.

[snake284-1]

Woodsrunner is absolutely right. We have a couple of guys that think it's cool to have so many hogs as they have that much more game to hunt but I spend quite a bit more time in the woods than most of the other members and I'm seeing about two thirds or so of the number of deer that I saw last year. On my cameras I'll see deer feeding alongside racoons, turkeys, possums, squirrels, rabbits, almost any other critter in the woods but not pigs. When the pigs show up, the deer leave. We have eight members and everyone has to keep two feeders out during the closed season and I personally buy 400lbs of feed every three weeks and I don't spend that money to feed pigs. As buffy said, they're just rats with hooves.

Yes Fish, good point. I can tell you the lease I'm on this year has a lot of quality deer. I wasn't there last year, but what I've seen so far is outstanding. And the last couple of years a guy has leased a big part of the more open prarie, not the deer hunting area, for growing rice. He set up four towers around one of the rice fields and shot hogs almost every night in the off season. He killed over 160 hogs. This knocked the numbers down and allowed more deer to move in. The problem now is Coyotes. I'm not shooting them right now, but the day the deer season's over I'm going to start serious coyote hunting. Get a call and load up my .22 cfs and get after it.

[Varmintmist]

Exactly.

I gotta go with Snake on this one. There is some revenue generation involved but when it comes right down to it it is a lefty righty thing. Sometimes its the righty's being ignorant and having a influence group calling them, normally the influence group is driven by lefty's.

Ex. PA has a flintlock season AND a separate muzzleloader season for deer. 2 years ago a righty legicritter was pushing to get inlines into flintlock because "they would be easier for handicapped to use". Please explain how the mechanics of shooting differ a Flinter and a inline differ? Load them from the front, aim and squeeze. Yes the inline is a easy button when it comes to dropping deer, but there is no physical limitation that hinders a person who can shoot a inline from shooting a flinter.

EX2. Sara Speed, HSUS all the way and has advocated for REPEAT for game regs like Sunday hunting in PA. Why? Well, PA is mostly private and the open ground is AG. PA has had Sunday hunting for predators, crows and a few other critters, but never big game because the farmers are against it. Very traditional and they like the day off without strangers running around their land. PA's trespass law is pitiful and it is the only state I know of that you can break the law trespassing while taking game and it isn't poaching, they re-define the word. If Sun hunting for deer comes out, without real teeth added to a trespass law, then farmers will shut down land to access. See, they have a group also, the PFB PA Farm Bureau. So Sara Speed (HSUS) advocates Sunday hunting for deer in PA to stop hunting in PA by getting land access off limits.

Lefty's think long term.

[Varmintmist]

Not YET in Alabama

Edited to add:
I've had lengthy discussions with one of them, and we have the idea that they should change the laws so that from April 1 through Oct 1 (after our spring turkey and before bow season) they should make it a COMPLETELY open season, bait, NV the whole shebang. Since there's no deer season open, doing it for those 6 months eliminates "bubba" trying to get out of a charge for baiting deer by saying he was baiting for hogs. Our laws say any "bait" must be gone 10 days prior to hunting, and bow season normally opens around Oct 15, so ending the "hog season" 10/1 gets the legal hog bait removed before it becomes illegal deer bait

Hmm, a Sept Alabama Forum Hog Hunt, SAFHH