I'm concerned with the invasive wild hogs ability to strive in our native land. I'm worried that they will have caused long term damage to our deer heard to the extent that there is no ability to repair the problem .. They are a known disease carrier and wolf up everything they can reach or dig up. Ive hunted in areas that just reeked of hogs and I am afraid that they could eventually take over every thing in the woods within there reach. This causing starvation and numerous diseases. I feel like that they need way more attention than they get. We need to treat them like a threat and not just something extra to shoot at. I realize that they are recognized as a pest, but long term we really need to terminate them. Deer are like the American Indian, they were here first and deserve their freedom from an invasive species before its too late.

You can wipe out the hogs on your land, but I want them on mine. Gives me something to hunt year round and hasn't affected the ability for me to let bucks grow to maturity on my place.

LOL, all animals including people are "known disease carriers." If you are going to wipe out an animal for this reason, you have to wipe out all of them. Hogs are not particularly unique and most everything they carrier can be found being carried by other animals on your land.



This is a more salient issue. They have a grand ability to out-compete many of the local indigenous fauna because they are not picky in their diet and have few natural vertebrate predators once they are a few weeks old.



Have you forgotten about the current and potentially continuing 5 year drought that is here after a succession of droughts?
1995-1996
1999-2002
2005-2006
2010-Present

Years ago, it was the fire ant population that was killing all the ground nesting birds, fawns, etc. Now it is pigs. Never mind all the other threats that remain active as well, LOL.



So we need to get rid of people, livestock, house sparrows, starlings, armadillos, cattle egrets, and anything else that came after deer?

Freedom for deer means being free so that we shoot more of them? I am not sure I follow the logic.

The deer population in the US is growing and it is growing in Texas as a trend, but trends have some years that don't comply. http://www.tpwmagazine.com/archive/2004/dec/ed_3/ http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2014/11/13/deer-population-growing-in-parts-of-south-texas/

Even so and as noted here, Texas has the largest deer population in the country. http://www.gameandfishmag.com/forecasts/texas-deer-hunting-forecast-2014/

Ecologically, hogs are not our friends here in the US. They do cause all sorts of problems. However, the deer are not significantly threatened as a species by hogs at this time. Hogs undoubtedly have a much greater impact on ground nesting birds and herpetofauna than they do on deer.

Im seeing signs of weakness. The Russian boar was released as a toy hobbie back in the day for an extra target. Then they migrated across the states breeding with the domesticated hog, thus making the feral hog. This is not a natural species of America. The goats that were released on the golopicus islands are still being hunted after centuries because they eat everything in reach and the native animals almost went into distinction on those islands. The goats were dumped off by humans. When we start defending wild hogs because we like them we have betrayed our ourselves and the deer. Last time I checked all the egrit did was eat bugs off livestock and as far as the nest robing starling. KILL EM ALL! because they do the same kind of harm a hog does. An armadillo doesn't do [censored] that makes me concerned and if it starts concerning me Ill kill them too.

I hate hogs and would like to kill every one of them, that are on or near my land. Simply because they tear up the land and eat crops at an astounding rate. But I highly doubt they are going to decimate the deer population. As Double Naught Spy wrote, the deer population is increasing in Texas. In Collin County I remember never seeing a single deer for decades. The first sighting I had was in the year 2000, and have seen many in person, as well as on game cam since, especially within the last four years. On the same token we have seen the same increase in ferel hog population. So that tells me they coexist just fine.

Okay, and how did you determine the weakness was caused by hogs and not by droughts, CWD, or any other afflictions of deer? Previously, deer population crashes in Texas have been noted to have been caused by over-browsing by deer and heavy parasite loads. https://tpwd.texas.gov/publications/pwdpubs/media/pwd_bk_w7000_0088a.pdf

Your cause and effect determination seems very iffy. Specifically, what is this "weakness" to which you are referring? "Weakness" is a pretty vague term.



OMG, NO! Ferals have been around for centuries in the US. This is a classic description of a problem of traditional, pre-fence hog rearing method of free-ranging (page 63).


https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=...eader&hl=en

So that is the earliest account I have found of feral hogs causing problems and it was LONG BEFORE Russian Boar were being sport hunted.

You don't make a feral hog by breeding a Russian boar with a domestic, LOL. What do you think "feral" means anyway?


Cattle egrets are believed to spread tick borne diseases and can carry H5N1 influenza. So maybe you should do more checking.

Hogs are bad, no doubt, but they are but one type of problem we are facing.

this is reason enough to shoot every one. they can tear up enough pasture
or hay meadow or crops in one night to warrant shooting all you see. drop
a tractor wheel in one of their holes one time or tear up an implement
and you'll agree

I guess Marty Stouffer was lying to me when he said that the Russian boar was brought over hear by a private family who wanted to hunt them. Then they multiplied and dispersed across the lands and mix bread with the domesticated hog thus creating the WILD FERAL HOG. A feral house cat didn't start out wild, it started out as a tame house cat that had strays that became wild. Feral means in a wild state, after escape from captivity or domestication. Ever seen hogs with more of a domestic look. You know the ones with all the multi colored spots. They have more domesticated hog in them than the solid colored hog. Ever seen the piglets with real defined camo stripes. These have a strong Russian blood line. Even the solid black high backed hogs have a Russian bloodline somewhere down the road. If the feral hog is natural how come they don't have it at the zoo?

I've seen black with a touch of white (hampshire influence) , red (duroc influence), near white (yorkshire influence), spotted (mut).

Every ferel hog does not have to have Russian influence to be a ferel hog. Raise 6 domestic hogs from birth for six months and then cut em loose in the woods. See what happens. They become ferel. Same story has been happening with American domestic hogs for hundreds of years.

The ferel hog is no more natural than the quarter horse is. But european descent humans, and their hogs have been on this continent for centuries.

Where did our ferel horses, the mustang, come from?

have gun, will travel. Time warp. First got on THF. Checked the different sections, like shooting Black Powder. Not as young, physicly , enjoy hog hunten. They call me, huntsolo ... Okay, nickname gave meself. Seen some posts, asking bout the Free hog hunts . started telling people bout were do most of my hog hunts, public WMA even tried ta get few hunts going. Realize the damage hogs do, yet ask ta hunt hogs for en & chillen. that answers the question. one of the leases was on seen the front passanger of a 4x4 sink up to the bumper. Not from hogs, rather fire ants. Pastures torn up with moles. The 24-7-365 hog season is why got on first lease. The other leases, after, didnt have hogs, & whin a WMA opened up just down road, twas Thankful. Some interesting posts. hogs the other wild game. i got cheap posts.

I like to kill hogs too, but I feel like they do oppose a threat on deer and I kill them do get rid of them. They eat all the acorns that serve as a fat content for a lot of native species like deer and squirrels. I kind of wonder how this effects the deers health during the winter. Lately when I skin a deer there is no fat at all on them. Ive killed deer in the past that were loaded with fat layers under the skin. And the last time I checked there are about four months out of the year that deer graze on grasses because all the browse is gone. So when I see a deer run out and put its mouth to the ground because that's all there is to eat I know they are putting their snouts in the same grass as a nasty [censored] hog. Ive got to tell you that I would hate to see the day that we were scarred to clean a deer because it had gotten a nasty [censored] hogs disease from feeding on the same grounds, or even scarred to eat them. And possibly dying off because of disease. All this talk about hogs is making wanting to go kill some today.

X2

What's the difference between a hog and pheasants, axis, blackbuck, elk, and sika?

Those don't beat the hell out of a tractor that is trying to work where they have been rooting.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Amen!


Just took a ride with my Father-in-Law yesterday in one his pastures...to survey damage done by the latest herd of hogs. His Kawasaki 'Mule' ATV has a 'suspension'...but even so, the ride was bone jarring. There is scarcely a spot in that 50 acre pasture that doesn't have big holes in it....from hogs rooting the ground over the years.

Three summers ago..I was moving some dead limbs with his large 'Cab Tractor' in that same pasture. I turned the steering wheel nearly to its 'lock' in order to effect a sharp turn. I was going VERY slow, but when the outside wheel dropped off into one of the 'rootings' (they are hard to see when overgrown with grass)...the entire tire, hub and wheel popped off the spindle.

The threads stripped so badly..they were not repairable. The new spindle was not terribly expensive, but changing it.... out in a pasture, in TEXAS, in AUGUST resulted in expletives flowing at about the same rate as my sweat!

'Most' farm equipment/implements do NOT utilize any type of suspension, so driving across a field/pasture that resembles a bomb field is not only uncomfortable, it takes a toll on equipment.

I don't think you can kill all of them, ever. They are so destructive...this morning I hit a hole made by hogs that must have been a foot deep. They are fun to hunt/shoot and taste pretty good too. Don't think there going to wipe out the deer.

I have said it before and I will say it again. Whitetail deer do more crop damage in Kansas than all the hogs in the entire United States. It isn't even close. If you have a hog "problem", open up your land to the public and I guarantee you that your "problem" will be fixed very quickly! As sportsman and land managers, we have to take the good with the bad.

You don't have that many hogs in Kansas...yet.

Killed some hogs today with the .22 rim fire. Cant get the pictures to download. awesome.

stxranchman, I am saying that the deer in Kansas do more damage in Kansas than all the hogs in the US do in every state. If you count all the whitetail deer in US compared to all hogs in the US, it would be like a Million to one in favor of deer damage.

You missed my point. If you think that the deer do much damage to crops in Kansas wait till you get hogs started in Kansas. I have seen hogs root up most of the seed in a freshly planted corn field the first night in Medina County along the Hondo Creek. Had to replant the next day and put up and electric fence. A lot of the farmers there have gone to electric fences to slow them down. Seen where a farmer with 200 acres of cropland on the Colorado River bottom in Colorado County forced into putting up brand new 48" hi-tensil net wire fence due to damage to his corn crop.

Why pay for electric fence when he can open it up to the public to hunt them? Much more effective. This is what a lot of farmers do in Kansas because of the damage that deer and turkey do to their fields. I have seen a flock of 200 to 500 turkey take 50% of the seed out of the ground in a week. Didn't take the farmer long to allow hunting on his property. Kansas has a great walk in hunting program that pays the landowner nicely and takes all the liability away too. Sure wish more states to the south would jump onto this program.

Hey Kansas dude didn't you know that Texas is full of a hole land barrens. HaHa! We are not cool like the northern people. When I was a kid there was way more freedom to hunt than now days. Got to improvise. My web is ultra slow right now. yah

I have a love/hate relationship with hogs and I have lots of them. I hate the tractor ride across my fields but love the cash I get everytime I unload a trailor load of them at the local hog buyer. I kinda got used to them and enjoy having them around. Pay for a 10 acre food plot seed/fertilize usually every year plus corn.

There are a lot of nice land owners in Texas too. I have access to hunt on several ranches. I was on the plane a couple weeks ago and sat next to a retired farmer from north of Lubbock. Before the flight was half over, he gave me his name and number with permission to hunt on his land anytime I wanted to.