When eradicating the pig population which sex should be killed first, male or female?

I always shoot sows first when it’s a group especially if she looks pregnant or has piglets with her. When using thermal usually the biggest hog first then anything else I can get.

X2

What he said.
I typically go for size, then quantity.

The general, guiding philosophy regarding shooting hogs however, is shoot as many as you can of whatever size, sex, color, or other distinguishing characteristic you prefer, as you possibly can!

And you will still never eradicate the dang things

Sows first in a sounder with piglets. My hope is the piglets will get confused and circle back. One night I shot a sow with 5 piglets. After I short her the piglets came back 4 times and I shot all of them. If it’s adult pigs I shoot the biggest one first.

If I can get two pigs lined up in a sounder I go for th twofer every time.

I will shoot a sow first.
For fun I will set in a treestand with a shotgun full of buck shot (no plug). Then give them hell, big ones first.

Sow always if I can. Killing one or a dozen boars does nothing to the overall heard numbers other than loosing that small number. A sow in heat will find a boar. For every sow you take out she is gone and any future pigs she might be carrying or future litters.

Right, it is a production issue.

Scenario A
One sow in heat servicing 100 boars will result in just 1 sow being pregnant.

Scenario B
One boar servicing 100 sows in heat will result in 85-100 sows being pregnant

Which scenario will produce the most hogs? Obviously, Scenario B. The choke point is the factories (sows) and not the supplier of raw materials (boars). If you kill a given boar servicing a local population, he will very quickly be replaced by a boar in the local area looking for a sounder where he can sire offspring

A kmon1 suggests, if you shoot a boar that has impregnated a sow, you kill 1 animal and the sow still farrows the litter. If you kill one impregnated sow, you kill her and all her piglets that are in production at the time, which may be as many as a dozen, but probably is 5-6 on average.

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I have heard numerous times how the "dominant boar" will be the only boar to sire in a given group of hogs, and for some reason, this makes hunters want to shoot the dominant male (which is almost universally assumed to be the largest boar). I don't know how much experience these folks have, but I have seen sounders where multiple boars were mounting different sows. While there are dominant boars (not that they are not dominant to sows, but only to other boars - sows are the rulers of sounders), in a full 1/3 of litters studied, litters were sired by multiple boars. I am thinking that this may account for some of the extreme variation in litters composition (striped, spotted, solid colors) that sometimes occurs. The point here, is that even if you shoot the so-called dominant boar, there is a good chance the dominant boar wasn't the only one impregnating sows.
https://www.researchgate.net/public..._in_feral_pigs_Sus_scrofa_from_Texas_USA

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With that said, if you see a lone boar, you don't saying to yourself "Sows first" and give it a pass. You still shoot it. The SOWS FIRST plan really will only apply to sounders.

X3

I always try to shoot sows first for the reason stated above, also I find they typically are better table fare and have a higher % of body fat.

I have shot a sow many times and had the younger piglets shoats whatever you want to call them return to the feeder and get picked of one at a time till they are all gone.

DNS is right. If your goal is to get rid of all pigs the the first place to start is the factory. You won't get them all but you can make a reduction in factory output by shooting sows. If you want some pigs on your place to hunt for meat then you manage them after you think you have them under some sort of control. Remember that keeping them under control does not mean killing one or two pigs a month. for example..with 3 sows breeding you would need to kill roughly 105 pigs each year just to keep up with those 3 factories figuring an average of 5 sow piglets from each litter surviving and two litters a year. That is 3 sows producing 5 sow piglets which produce 5 sow piglets and if you wait till the first litter is old enough to reproduce. Thats the output from 3 sows and the first litter being allowed to reproduce. 3x5=15(original sows first litter) 15x5=75(litters from first litter) 3x5=15(original sows second litter for the year.) factory output for one year.
do the math and if you don't keep up with factory output you will be overrun with pork belly.

That 105 did not account for boar pigs being born only the number of sows. So if only 1 boar piglet lives out of each litter there is another 21 pigs each year.

He said...eradicating the pig population...!!!

Sows first if at all possible, most of the big boars I have killed were by themselves.

Usually shoot the biggest in the group whether it is a sow or boar. But more often than not the bigger boars are solo.