Since it was approved in 2017 anyone seen it in action? Odd that new study information has been released as if it had just been approved.

https://www.tpr.org/news/2023-11-11/poison-could-help-control-feral-hogs-in-texas

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/ne...-poison-test-texas-invasive-18430484.php

https://texasagriculture.gov/News-E...PORT-FOR-NEWLY-REGISTERED-FERAL-HOG-BAIT

It was pretty much 'Fast Tracked' the first Go 'Round. So...IMO it definitely needed more study.

I believe Sodium Nitrite was studied also. As I recall....some of the 'studies' were done by the Sister Company of the company that manufactured the product. What could possibly go wrong there....right?

Warfarin has been around a long time for use on Feral Hogs (Australia). It was banned there since they ultimately considered it inhumane.

Personally, I think Sodium Nitrite is the better product....but BOTH require special dispensers and weeks of 'conditioning' the pigs to eat from them, etc....etc.

Will be a great money making deal for someone....as hopeful (read gullible) land owners seek ANY relief from the damage done by hogs.

I can't see it making any significant impact on the population at this point.

It was immediately disapproved later in 2017 before it had even been distributed. https://www.texastribune.org/2017/04/25/feral-hog-poison-hold-now/ It is now re-approved in February, but virtually nobody is going to use it.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/ne...aput-feral-hog-bait-returns-18656137.php

The problems come from the price of the product, the price of the special feeders that must be used to prevent killing the wrong species, licensing to use it, and how much you have to use. This is not a one and done thing, but a continuous process until all the hogs are gone, ONLY that ain't happening. Why? Well let's say you use it in your 300 acre farm. Cool. None of the ranches around you are using it. So, you continue to have an influx of hogs onto your property from your neighbor's lands. So you continue to feed really expensive food to the hogs and maybe help take care of your problem and some of your neighbor's problems. Good on you for shouldering the expense of your neighbors!

Now the hogs die and ideally they should die on your place because you are the one poisoning them. Regulations state that you have to dispose of the hogs in a prescribed manner to prevent the poisoning of other animals, I believe from memory, burning or burial X feet deep are the prescribed disposal methods. Isn't that fun?

The really crappy part is that the feeders are not species-specifc as designed. They are made so that supposedly only hogs can open the gate to access the poison. BTW, use of the gate requires that the hogs learn how to use it. So you teach the hogs with non-poison and when the hogs learn how to use the gate on the special feeder, you change the food to poison and kill your educated hogs. Any new hogs have to be taught how to use the system and so you start over. HOWEVER, hogs are notoriously messy eaters and they spill poison from the feeders and so other animals can feed on it and die. In fact, that is part of what prompted the disallowance, by-kill of migratory birds at a test site, birds that should not have been able to access the poison, yet they did.

Here you go, if you are interested...
https://kaputproducts.com/feralhogs/

^^My neighbors don't do jack to try to control them (by trapping). If I was in a wetter area (with more pigs) I would have to just throw my hands up and not waste my time. I feel like I've made a dent, but I can never let my foot off the gas.

I feel you. I don't think any of our neighbors trap hogs either. We are overrun with pigs.

When I lived in Australia over 20 years ago I recall seeing a device some guy had made for killing hogs. He took dried corn on the cob and put an explosive charge in it. The explosive was set up so that only a hog had the jaw strength to set it off. His plan was to air drop rigged corn cobs all over feral hog territory and blow them up.

Found an article about it.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14319381-200-will-australias-pigs-bite-the-dust/

So a way to deal with hogs was developed by a "biologist and special effects expert" and it was for exploding corn, 30 years ago, and they don't have their hogs under control yet? What could go wrong with randomly dropping explosives filled with cyanide around the countryside?

I take it that the expert was in hospital during every time they were learning to work with explosives and poisons as his notion of safety is downright pathetic, lol.

How fast does this poison work? How is a landowner going to find every hog that has died? Hogs wander across fence-lines, what about landowners who don't poison and all the sudden have hogs dying on their place? Yet another solution that obviously hasn't been thought thru.

Probably too late, but we need something to try something at this point. Wind fans kill migratory birds too, but they haven’t shut any of them off because of it. Yes, it will probably get some non-target animals, but if it actually puts a dent in the feral hog population, I’d call it a win. The amount of damage and destruction of natural habitats and ecosystems is ridiculous. Everybody notices crop damages, but not always the big picture. I can’t see the majority of larger land owners not being in favor. I wouldn’t do it unless neighbors were doing it around me for reasons stated about. I read the disposal methods, but also read that it essentially coagulates and the concentration disappears?? So just exactly how toxic is the dead carcass? They can’t really think you are going to find every dead carcass

I don't think the plan was ever implemented on a large scale. But, yeah what could go wrong air dropping cyanide and explosives randomly around the woods.

But Australia does still use 1080 for feral animal control and that's some nasty stuff we don't allow here.

We have acreage in hunt county about 1 1/2- 2 miles off the river. USD to have a healthy population of hogs which we enjoyed hunting. Yes they caused some damage but overall it’s wasn’t too bad. I heard through the grapevine that several neighbors closer to the river had started using warfarin. Over a 3 year period, we went from seeing hogs every time we hunted, to now, we haven’t seen a hog in over 1 1/2 years. USD to enjoy the wild hogs suplimenting the venison. Now, with the poisoning, I would be afraid to eat any IF we were lucky enough to even see a wild hog.

If they were using warfarin, they were using it illegally as it wasn't re-approved for use until just February. https://www.houstonchronicle.com/ne...aput-feral-hog-bait-returns-18656137.php

Warfarin used as poison is dyed with blue coloring. The fat on the inside will absorb it and turn blue. If you kill a poisoned pig, you will know it.

I won’t be poisoning anything here except for bugs around the house. There’s always secondary poisoning when it’s introduced into wildlife.

That's assuming that they were buying the type with the dye. If poisoning illegally, I doubt they care if it was the "correct" type.

That is the assumption, but where else would you buy warfarin in the quantities needed that wasn't dyed? Non-died warfarin is going to be sold as medicine and require a script. Where are you going to get a script for enough warfarin to kill off all the hogs in the local area for several years? The other major source for warfarin is as a pesticide. Warfarin sold as a pesticide is dyed. It is dyed as a diagnostic tool for accidental ingestion in humans and pets.

That's good to know. So even if someone is doing it illegally, there should still be an indicator.

Somewhere around here I have a pic of an Eagle on a hog that I shot the night before.

Raptors feeding on a poisoned carcass would seem to be problematic.

That is why all of the poisoned animals (note, requires multiple feedings to produce death in most cases) must be quickly collected and buried or burned as per the Kaput protocols.

So you have to condition your hogs to learn to use the Kaput feeders and do so for 4-6 weeks using their Kaput brand bait. According to the directions, cutting this step short may result in hogs not being trained well enough to get enough of the poisoned bait (added later). Once you start feeding, start inspecting the feeding 'area' 4 days after feeding to locate hog carcasses and then every 2-4 days thereafter to locate carcasses that must be properly destroyed (burial with no access by scavengers, burning, or other methods). See the right column, SURVEILLANCE AND FOLLOW-UP https://bexar-tx.tamu.edu/files/2024/03/Kaput-Feral-Hog-Bait-Label-3-13-17.pdf

I don't know about y'all, but if I wait 4 days to look for a hog or hogs, I won't find them. There may be grease spots and fur, and a random bone or two, but after 4 days, that hog is going to be fully scavenged in most cases. Heck, they are sometimes gone by the very next day. By their own directions, scavengers are going to be getting dosed and scavengers may include pets, working dogs, hawks, eagles, etc. Never mind the by kill from poison spilled by the hogs.

They want you to post Bilingual warning signs on the property when the bait is in use and to report any carcasses of NON-Target animals discovered if thought to be victims of the bait.

LOTS of things required (Lawyer proofed) that just aren't going to happen. Clearly more about making money than effectively reducing the hog population anywhere except high fenced, managed and monitored properties.

This was a medium sized hog which was shot about 8AM. The photo was taken between 2-3PM the same day.
Now, I had cut off the hind quarters and backstraps, but the vultures did the rest. I'm thinking coyotes were not involved because the rib cage is still mostly intact.
Yeah, dead hogs on the ground don't last long.

The only way for warfarin to work is that we all have to use it at the same time. Let's say 1:50 of landowners decide to use it. If those hogs do not return to the bait property to eat and do it enough times, the poison won't kill them and will pass through their system and they will be fine afterwards. Hogs that don't eat the warfarin all 4-7 days before it kills them could potentially build up a tolerance to it. So you have a group hitting your place 4 nights a week. That means they are eating elsewhere the other 3 days, probably at locations with easier to obtain resources, LOL. So the poisoning program you started with said hogs is now going to be prolonged because the hogs are not just eating solely at your place. Warfarin works best when the dosages are every day. If hogs are like humans, then if they miss 3-4 days, it is pretty much gone from the body. Maybe hogs are different, but I doubt they are that different.

Worse still is that in the 4-6 weeks it will take you to teach the hogs to eat the bait's bait so that they will take the bait, then the 4-7 days to kill your hogs with the actual bait, now all your trained hogs are dead and you have to start training the next group that don't know the system and how to operate the feeder.

Even worse, if like rats, they may slowly get used to it. If we used rats as a case study as to what to expect, expect it to work locally only and over time, it won't be as much of a problem for the hogs.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090205214433.htm

How about a price point? Can't find any prices and it isn't listed in the Kaput catalog online. The 2 places I found that claim to carry are "call for pricing" which usually means either the product isn't in stock and they haven't determined a price, maybe they are selling below MAP, or is it prohibitively expensive. However 5 lbs of their warfarin squirrel poison is $40. I see where you can get 25 lbs discounted for $112. If these prices hold for hogs and they suggest 25 lbs at a time in the feeder (which they do suggest), this will get pricey. If they consume it like pipepipe, 25 lbs could be gone in a day or two. Then you add another 25 lbs. Between that, licensing, feeder cost, and carcass hassles, why bother?

I'm not a fan of this at all. I actually enjoy hunting pigs more than I do deer these days.

The fact of the matter is that these hogs are a great resource. Due to strict government regulations on the harvest and sale, you pretty much have to trap them at the perfect size and age and transport them live to a USDA facility to take advantage of it as a resource. Or catch them young and raise them. Most of us don’t have the means or the time, so there is not a good way to turn them into money other than to sell hunts. That is not an effective means of controlling them, so they have no value to most people. Just another pest that destroys property and has no value.

That is why they have to use poison. It’s the only effective means for a lot of folks. I don’t like it, but it is what it is. They should just drop the regs on the sale of boar meat and let people spend their money and make their choices and take their chances. It would be a game changer. After all, the only reason we have them is because over 500 years ago, everybody knew they could turn them loose on the land and they would become a reliable food source.

We are importing all our meat from countries without regs anyway, what difference does it make?

I see too many downsides to using this poison. It doesn't appear that there will be an effective way of keeping the stuff out of the food chain, or upsetting whatever "balance of nature" we've been able to achieve and maintain thus far.

I think the best way to deal with them at this point is to "coexist" as we are now, which means in a state of perpetual warfare (which does have its up sides)---GUNS, man!

Maybe better techniques will come along at some point, but I don't see this stuff as being a viable solution at all.