Looks like Alabama need some help with Hogs

104RFAST

http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2017/08/alabamas_feral_hog_problem_can.html

Looks like they out breed the hunters

snake284

104RFAST wrote: »

http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2017/08/alabamas_feral_hog_problem_can.html

Looks like they out breed the hunters

I personally believe it takes both trapping AND hunting. Trapping works great at first but they get smart and won't go in the trap. I don't remember who was talking a few years back but I thought they were from Alabama or somewhere in the deep south, but they were complaining that in Texas it's legal to bait animals. If you're talking hogs which are considered a pest here and not a game animal then you're never going to make any progress. If you're talking deer they're considered game and are not real destructive, so that's another argument for another thread.

Also, somebody said they can't use a light at night where they are from or maybe it's that you can't hunt hogs at night. Hogs are smart and they're nocturnal. If you don't hunt them when they're out there you'll never have a chance of controlling them. Here we barely keep up with them and we hunt them over bait and at night. Actually this is war and you don't win wars using politically correct methods (think Vietnam). You gotta be aggressive. You gotta go for the juggler vein not the tail

Fisheadgib

Agriculture is not the biggest business in Alabama so there's not enough people that care about the hog problem. I was on a lease in South Central Alabama that had a lot of deer and a lot of hogs and the members rarely shot a hog. They thought that it was cool to have them available but they didn't want to risk spooking a deer if they shot one.

BAMAAK

Um, cotton is agriculture and it's huge in AL Just not a hog favorite. While not Iowa, corn is pretty big here as well as soy beans. There are a lot of farmers getting damage and it's frequently in the news. The state needs to hire more than just those two hunters. I know someone who knows one of them. They get just about any cool toy they want. A farmer complains to Dept. Of Ag. and they go to work.

Fisheadgib

I didn't say there was no agriculture, it's just not the biggest business in Alabama. In the top five biggest industries in Alabama, forestry is #4 and all of that timber company land is a haven for hogs.

snake284

Fisheadgib wrote: »

I didn't say there was no agriculture, it's just not the biggest business in Alabama. In the top five biggest industries in Alabama, forestry is #4 and all of that timber company land is a haven for hogs.

Alabama needs to hire or appoint a spokesman like woodsrunner, somebody that knows the horrors hogs can unleash upon the land. One thing, hogs can over graze a parcel of land to the point it will reduce the number of game such as deer it can support in a healthy state. In other words over grazing can damage the land. And that's saying nothing of other maladies hogs in great numbers can generate such as disease and parasites.

Farmers, ranchers, hunters, land owners all need to realize this and take measures to limit hogs.

Fisheadgib

People know that hogs=bad, they don't need a spokesperson to tell anyone that. It's about people giving a crap about something that doesn't affect them directly. The top five industries in Alabama right now are automotive, chemicals, technology, forestry, and aeronautics, in that order. That's where the money is and feral hogs don't really impact those industries. If Alabama really took the hog problem seriously, they would have more than two people working to control them in the whole state. Two people couldn't control the hog population in Crenshaw county much less the whole state.

Fisheadgib

alphasigmookie wrote: »

Seems to apply to a heck of a lot. Also leads to letting a lot of issues get a lot bigger than they have to. Something like this is much easier to control when the problem is small rather than it waiting until it gets big enough to actually directly affect enough people that they want something done about it, at which point it's much much harder to deal with.

Seems like you're trying to add a political bend to this thread. How bout we keep this about hogs in Alabama?

The article pointed out that last year, 16 people were arrested for illegally transporting feral hogs. Odds are, they were given a small fine and a pamphlet about hogs being bad. I personally know a couple of people that boasted about having brought feral hogs up from South Florida and released them on the hunting lease that I used to belong to but being part of the "good old boy" network, nothing was ever done about it.

Varmintmist

Needs to be a bounty on them and get the bunny huggers out of the way.

snake284

Fisheadgib wrote: »

People know that hogs=bad, they don't need a spokesperson to tell anyone that. It's about people giving a crap about something that doesn't affect them directly. The top five industries in Alabama right now are automotive, chemicals, technology, forestry, and aeronautics, in that order. That's where the money is and feral hogs don't really impact those industries. If Alabama really took the hog problem seriously, they would have more than two people working to control them in the whole state. Two people couldn't control the hog population in Crenshaw county much less the whole state.

Not all people know of the hazards of being overrun with too many hogs. I hear people all the time saying dumb stuff like "They need to stop those idiots from shooting hogs from helicopters"which is one of the best methods of keeping their numbers manageable.

NCFUBAR

NC is serious about removing live ferals from traps. When we checked with the Ag Agents and NC Wildlife Officers before we sent up pens in Eastern NC they were very emphatic about the fines ... and each made sure we knew it was up to $5000 per feral if you are caught transporting. The Ag Agent in one county gave us a pretty good lesson on brucellosis and how to spot it. Most of the time we would keep one or two pig pickin' sized ones for BBQing and leave the rest for buzzards and such but if there was the least sign of brucellosis we'd take one to the Ag lab after we stack and burned the others to try and keep them from spreading it.

NC is not as bad as other states but the southeastern counties are getting there and land owners here have started asking for help rather than try and charge hunters. The problem is hunters can't keep up with the damn breeding cycle of the pigs. Using the catch pens we catch more young pigs and maybe a larger sow or two so we take a big chunk of piglet producing machines but like the trophy buck the big males seem to be smarter and not go in and the hunters can have at them.

snake284

knitepoet wrote: »

I have a friend that is a possum police, he and I agree the current laws on hogs are plain STUPID.

Until reduced to hunter's possession, they're giving the same protections as "game animals"

He and I agree, if the state was SERIOUS about wanting to control them, between the end of deer season, and the beginning of the next deer season, all bets are off. Open up spotlighting, baiting etc, everything that the landowner's predation permit allows, that hunting clubs and such that lease their land CAN'T obtain.
Then hunters MIGHT be able to at least make a dent in the growing numbers.

:agree::that:

You can't equate wild vermin with game in the way you hunt them. You have to be aggressive and you have to go after them however you can if you want to make a dent in the population.