Feral Pigs---Fact or Unicorn?

[silveragent]

Read this article last night. It's from The Guardian so treat it with a bit of salt. It paints a picture of the American south west that hunting properties are part of the problem of propagation. They pay poachers or procure live hogs because they are making a lot of bank on booking hunters on their property that they need to restock with pigs.

https://www.theguardian.com/environm...itable-hunting

[Ghilliesuit]

Good capture and advise Beretta.

In Canada we have cold winters and the coyote population was well established before the introduction feral swine, in BC there are thriving cougar and wolf populations as well. A few friends have reported seeing pigs on highways looking for an escape route but none sporting tusks or familiar with moving thru terrain. There are a lot of remote valley bottoms in BC, some, with a good canopy, are almost snow free in winter.

I haven't met dogs nor cats that don't like bacon and a grizz will make short work of even the deepest dens.

[huntinnewbie]

I personally know someone that shot 2 in the back of their property in the South Langley area. They actually sent photos of them to someone in wildlife asking if it was ok to shoot them and the answer was yes like yesterday! This was 4-5 years ago. I saw the pics and they were all black, longish hair and snouts. Could have come across the border from WAshington State. They said they were good eating.

[Rob Chipman]

"a grizz will make short work of even the deepest dens."

I doin't think the issue is that predators can't kill them. I think it's that they reproduce so quickly that they withstand a lot of predation. They're in California and Oregon, and there's cougars and coyotes there.

But, your comment made me hit google to see if there are wild pigs in places south of the line with G-bears. Guess what? Idaho and Montana are worried about wild hogs.....coming form Canada! Go figure!

[Ohwildwon]

BC has a predator imbalance...

Be pretty tough to get established

without them showing up in droves

on farm land...

[Rob Chipman]

^^^ Might be true (them getting established, not the pred imbalance). What I got from the Montana and Idaho concerns is that any wild pigs here probably are escapes from here rather than coming form the prairies. They survive in Siberia, though, where wolves are their main predator, so there's no doubt they're robust. I doubt we'll be hunting them here anytime soon, mind you.

[Ghilliesuit]

From what I've been told, farm or transport escapees probably don't have tusks, they are removed when piglets are young. In the wild, they are an excellent digging tool and a formidable weapon. After a brood is established and raised young in the wild, they are smarter than most predators, reproduce like crazy, eat almost anything---a real survivor.

Cougars are lone hunters, a healthy boar or mother defending her young is probably is not a good choice for the next meal, not when there are unaccompanied younger, inexperienced choices. A pack of wolves or a grizz, different story.

I don't think they came from Alberta except in a truck. The passes are high and at least one boar and sow are needed to establish a colony. US border jumpers have the Okanagan, Kettle, Columbia and many other rivers and streams that lead north.

[KodiakHntr]

Piglets have their wolf teeth cut when they are a day or two old. Those aren't their tusks. Domestic hogs still grow tusks.

Coyotes have an easier time picking off piglets when the snow is deep and pigs are on their established trails between bedding and feeding areas. Trails are narrow and a sow will be in front with piglets single file behind her. Pretty easy for something to ambush a little porker when it is going past and a sow can't do much in deep snow. On the ground in the open though there isn't much that is safe from a pig. Pigs are FAST with an incredibly short turning radius. I raised a lot of hogs for a few years, and have a heeler that is pretty agile that would round up escapees from the hog pens and put them back. Pigs could out maneuver him until he figured out their usual movement patterns. Open ground where a hog can maneuver easily I don't think coyotes would have much impact on them at all.

[Rob Chipman]

They hunt them with dogs in Florida, but they're generally bigger than any coyote as far as I can tell. Piglets, I am sure, have a high mortality in the wild (probably why they have so many, right?).

Do you think your heeler could have killed one of the bigger hogs if he'd been so inclined or just move them where he wants them to go?

[KodiakHntr]

When they hunt hogs with dogs, the dogs don't kill the hog, they just hold it in place until the catch man can get in close enough to grab hind legs and the knife guy can then stick him in the ribs. On a pig heavier than say 50lbs a dog wouldn't have long enough teeth to get through to anything important on a pig to kill it inside of a few hours.

My heeler is hard on groundhogs, muskrats, field lions, stuff that size. Stuff in that 5-15lb range he is pretty murder-y, there is zero change he could kill a 60lb pig. A 60lb pig is immeasurably stronger than a 60lb dog (and my heeler is about half that). If you ever picked up a 2 day old piglet to clip its wolf teeth or buck out its nuts the first thing you notice is that for something the size of a big kitten they are very heavy. Its pretty much picking up a moving brick of squealing kicking contracted muscle. Pretty much any hog older than 12 weeks old is going to be pretty immune to a coyote, and probably pretty hard for a wolf to catch. A pig can turn 180* in less than 2 body lengths when it is running at full speed, and it will hit top speed in probably 2 body lengths. They are explosively fast. Not much else out there can do that simply by virtue of their body form, longer legs, higher center of gravity.

I sold a couple of live hogs that turned into a rodeo (it ALWAYS does if you have multiple pigs). They were 225-240 on the hoof, both pigs ended up out and loose, and we coerced one into the trailer with some grain and the heeler decided the other one needed to go back into the pen while we were still messing with the first one. He got the pig lined out headed for the gate... Which was closed. Hog gates need to be built beefy, and this one was vertical spruce 2x4's with a half inch gap between them and sandwiched between 2x4's top and bottom. The hog hit the gate hard enough to spread the center of the 2x4's apart 4" and crack them. And then the heeler latched onto its ass, and the hog set its feet and pushed its head through the gate, and pushed until it broke the 2x4's enough to get through. It broke five 2x4's, at once.

We sold a boar to the neighbor for his breeding program, that was over 700lbs. Pretty gentle as far as boars go, which was lucky as he had tusks that were probably 5" above the gum line.
They taught him to wear a chest harness and a leash so they could move him around and stake him out on a picket pin (lol) and a piece of steel cable to break raw land for garden patches. They were having a family reunion at their place when they noticed Brutus was roaming loose. They managed to catch him, but he was getting agitated with the number of people around that started running. They did get him tied off to the roll cage on their Razr, but when he was running around he turned really sharp and slipped a hip out of joint (post mortem inspection) that made him really mad. On three legs he built enough speed to drag a parked, shut off Polaris Razr. And not just drag it, he drug it fast enough that when he ran into the side of their Ford Ranger he caved in the drivers door. They had to sort his biscuits with a 45/70 before someone got hurt. They ended up with over 600lbs of sausage and pork chops, so he was likely way over 700lbs. (Which surprised me that he was edible even, as he had nuts the size of footballs.)

I'm fairly convinced that pound for pound, there probably isn't an animal that is stronger than a hog.