Can only imagine…

How many have been killed in Texas in the same time frame.

And if you were to imagine, what number would you throw out?

It’s 6 figures I bet

Easy 6 figures

Half of that amount dead on side of highway in rolling plains

I would agree with easily 6 figures and I would guess that it would be in at least the mid 6 figures over a 2 year period, maybe more. What follows is how I sort of came up with suggesting a total. It isn't necessary reading unless you like to play with numbers.

https://www.kait8.com/2022/02/19/task-force-removes-27000-feral-hogs-arkansas-over-past-two-years/



It is good to see that they are putting forth some state sponsored effort to get on top of the problem. Looking at the numbers and assuming 650 is the total number of all properties (private and public) and not 650 private plus all of the public properties, then the number isn't that impressive, at least not without knowing what sort of hog problem they really have. Maybe that don't have many hogs in Arkansas?

According to here, and I don't know where they got their numbers, there were roughly 200K hogs in Arkansas as of last year. So the task force is getting under 14% per year, averaged?
https://theinfinitekitchen.com/guide/where-are-wild-hogs-in-arkansas/

27803 divided by 650 = 42.77 hogs removed (on average) per property. Of course, this was over a 2 year period and that means that roughly 21 hogs were removed per property per year on average. If that was in Texas, I would consider those to be recreational hunting numbers. There are a lot of recreational hunters who have a couple of feeders on their property and hunt a couple of times a month who shoot that many without much effort.

Y'all are guessing 6 figures for Texas hunters over the same period. That covers a lot of territory. Nobody seems to have a realistic clue of the number of hogs in Texas (and I doubt they do for Arkansas). We supposedly had roughly 2 million hogs in Texas starting in the early 2000s and then over more than 10 years of reporting with a grow rate of about 20% per year (estimated at 18-21% IIRC, AFTER hunting and vehicle hits). Well, you can't have a growth rate of 20% per year and maintain a population of around 2 million. By 2013 or so, it was being suggested we might have 3 or 4 million hogs and now, figures are a high as 5 or 6, but sources are still claiming we only have about 2.6 million hogs in Texas. https://www.houstonchronicle.com/ne...g-Houston-neighborhoods-and-16649885.php This is either accurate, or stupidly low. I don't know which, but it seems to be the current stipulated amount. It dates to at least as far back as 2016, however.

Let's say we have 2.6 million hogs. At Arkansas' 14% per year take, Texas would need to take 364,000 hogs per year. I don't think that would be a stretch at all, especially given how many hunters we have and the overall size of Texas. I bet we kill a lot more than that, but I would also bet the percentage isn't that great as we probably have a lot more hogs than claimed.

Nearly got one outside Sweetwater last night in an area I really didn't expect to see one. Big ol' boar, thankfully he chose to step back instead of get in the road in front of me.

As I discovered while researching numbers during our fight against Kaput, the fact is almost all the numbers you hear about feral hogs are mostly guesstimates, poor research, politically driven or outright lies. Our glorious agriculture commissioner, Sid Miller, was so bent on satisfying his agriculture constituents that he never questioned the numbers behind Scimetrics study as to the efficacy of the feral hog bait, Kaput. Nor did anyone else on that side of the debate. The study was complete rubbish. At his press conference introducing Kaput, Sid made the statement that feral hogs did 52 million dollars in damage each year. The next day on a radio show he used the number 100 million. The truth is neither number was arrived at by any comprehensive study. Any damage number at this writing is merely conjecture or guesstimate. I would have to dig it out, but A & M did a paper around 2011 that put the number at around 2 million. They stated that it wasn't a proper study at the time. The theory used was to do limited counts in various areas and then use that topography compared to like topographies to extract a number. I'm sorry, but people that use that number are spewing hogwash (pun intended). The fact is that no one has a clue of the number of feral hogs that are in the state. We'll probably never know. Without that number it becomes impossible to learn over time what the percentage is that needs to be removed to alter the population. Turns out hogs are not very good at census reporting.