I saw an article in TIME magazine.

It illustrated population increase of "pests" such as deer, raccoons, cougars, hogs, etc...

I was surprised to read that in 1930 the documented feral hog population was ~ 2.2 million and currently is ~ 5.5 million, a modest increase of 100%.

This number pales in comparison to increases of other pest breeds and really I found myself pondering: if the hogs were at 2.2 million then why didn't I begin hearing about the problems associated with them until recently (last 10 years).

Marketing and social media (to include the general media) portray these animals as the scourge of the earth and panic levels of fear regarding their daily existance.

I'm developing the opinion that Big Gun and Big Ammo makers and all associated technology firms are really pouring it on thick for a purpose ---> $$$

I try to explain an awful lot to my children and/or non-hunters about the why and how of hog hunting but the article I read today adds perspective to the backstory. Having done a lot of research on hog hunting I am finding a hard time finding articles from the mid 20th century regarding HOG ERADICATION or the need for it...

Thoughts?

Hog grow from 2.2 to 5.5 million is across the US, not just in Texas. It is a blossoming population by all accounts and blossoming more in some area than others. Back in the 1930s, my dad was free-ranging hogs. I am not sure who would know what a feral was or was not back then or who would be doing a population study. Lots of free-ranging going on back then.

The other issue is that nobody knows how many hogs there are, LOL. It is all estimates.

As for you not hearing about them, you probably have not heard about them as much in the last 10 years for several reasons.
1) you are into hunting more now
2) human population is moving into more area where there are hogs
3) hogs are moving into more area where there are people (e.g., hogs are in the middle of Dallas where I grew up now).
4) information spreads more quickly every day. 20 years ago, the internet was tiny. 10 years ago, it was going strong to PCs. Today it extends down to phones. The number of people with access to information has increased dramatically. Don't confuse relevance with the change in the media conveying the information. Nowadays, you can hear about a bombing in the Ukraine here in Texas before ambulances even arrive on scene and be watching video before they leave. Information technology has changes dramatically.
5) hogs are a large mammal that is trying to establish a toe-hold, so to speak in an environment already occupied. Rats and raccoons are tiny and can expand willy nilly. Cougars are not tiny, but the presence of one has the impact on humans like a dozen sounders. Somebody finds a mountain lion-looking track in a burb of Ft. Worth and there is a possible witness and 3 TV news stations will carry the story that night.

I see by your handle that you "are a hoghunter", if you had crops and livestock destroyed by the hogs you might have different thoughts, sure gun mfg's and all the rest are going to capitalize on it, same way car mfg's capitalized on the truck industry when all the city folks just have to drive a truck.

Just to clarify - I am not disputing that the damage caused by the hogs isn't relevant or that the need to hunt them isn't legitamate.

I just feel that if a pest has been around since the 1930's and was such a disruption that you'd might have read or been able to research the backstory on the problem.

Let's face it, capitalism is at the root of many things, I guess that is another point to be made... Corn's value even up to the 1960's is a fraction of what it is today hence the stigma of hogs.

To read or hear some tell it - they are multiplying at a rate that makes it seem as though we are going to be overun by what... 18 million in 10 years from now, or 30 million in 20 years...

And reading the article, they've only increased 2.2 million in 85 years.

I think that 5.5 million in the US is off..... way off..... maybe in Texas alone 5.5 million..... maybe more, there isn't a logistical way to get an accurate count, its all speculation.
I have seen for the past 30 plus years there has been a dramatic population increase along the creek and river systems throughout the State. I mainly hunted them in the Guadalupe and San Antonio River bottoms in the 70's and 80's. Started hunting the creek systems in the 80's and 90's and then hay and corn fields starting in the late 90's.
They are now making their presence known where major bodies of water tie into our urban sprawl. I call it "Huntin the Hood". We do it a couple of nights a month, sometimes more if the conditions are right. At the meeting I attended a few weeks ago, even the State refered to the river system as "Hog Highways".

DNS pointed out some really important contributing factors as to why the public is more aware now more than ever.
Add to that list, recreational sportsmen with a desire to hunt an affordable specie will glamorize it (call it the 'kewl factor') , relocation for an attempted domestication purpose (this is just plain stupid but it happens), and also without being specific......some of the hunting methods that are popular this day and age. Its just my opinion, but sometimes, I think we are creating our own issues with them.
Oh, and I forgot one that I deal with all the time. I call it the "I gotta crisis right now, but it happened 6 months ago so come fix it syndrome". All it takes is one lady at the bridge club or a couple of men in the coffee shop talkin and BAM.... its a 911 crisis.

Good subject HTH!!!!

+1 Kbar

Yes!

Why? Simple, it get's attention! (Panic mode media stimulates the economy)

Can you imagine the up-rage of shooting Wilbur ! (pig in Charlot's Web)

Vilify then exterminate, and if you buy X product you will be more successful. (capitalism at it's finest)

For X amount of dollars you can shoot a wild boar that is causing millions and millions of dollars worth of damage.

When its a big enough problem those that have a lot of damage will pay to get rid of them!

Latest numbers on hog population

One mans villan is another mans hero. An idea on either side of the argument gets a toe hold and soon becomes exaggerated. If you are a rancher or farmer experiencing damage, the sky is falling. If you are someone that enjoys hunting hogs (and you probably do because you are reading this on a hunting forum in a section about hog hunting), you see the opportunity to be able to hunt a large and capable game animal. You are thankful that they are here so that you can enjoy hunting them year around. Since this is Texas, you like it even more that you can hunt them 24/7/365. If we woke up tomorrow and all the feral hogs were gone, a good many folks would miss the opportunity they have become. A sizable amount of commerce would be halted.

So, yes, both sides villify the hog. Personally, I feel the population estimates are off by a considerable amount. Though they have a potentially high reproductive rate, I don't think they come anywhere close to maximizing it....particulaly in drought stricken areas.

Great topic HTH!

A couple of points that haven't been brought up are A: with the limited technology available in 1930, just how reliable are those numbers? B. With the much more advanced technology available now, why is the discrepancy in numbers so wide from what seems like minute-to-minute? C. TPWD is claiming over 2.5 million in Tx. alone and people are finding them in areas that they've never been seen before, so obviously their range is ever-expanding. D. Personally, while I enjoy hunting them, they wrecked my deer season last year and I bet that I'm not the only one.

I have to agree with dfwroadkill. Another problem is people's willingness to repeat whatever they've heard without really putting any thought into what they've just said. Example: landowner and I were talking and hogs came up, he says he sure hopes the hogs stay away from his place, they're just so damn destructive. This was coming from a guy running 600 head of Barbados, 30 momma cows and up to 15 head of horses and a dozen corrientes roping steers on 6 sections. All of that on property my grandfather built the fences on 70+ years ago. I suppose we all define "destructive" from a personal perspective.

Its easy to hate em and a lot of people that do don't know why they hate em they just heard other people hate em so they jumped on the band wagon. The part I don't get is why you hear how bad they are because they cost X amount of dollars in crop damage but I looked it up once and deer caused more money in vehicle accidents in a year than hogs did crops but we don't want to irradicate them. Deer caused more deaths also but they have antlers so its ok I guess. Saying they are a nuisance helps some people justify just killing them and leaving em, makes em think they are saving the world everytime they kill one.

Throughout the US, deer undoubtedly are responsible for many times more agriculture loss than hogs. But deer certainly aren't thought of in the same negative light as hogs are.

IMO, it's mainly because hogs are ugly and stinky while deer are beautiful and majestic

I farmed and ranched my whole life here in southwest Cooke County and had never seen a feral pig until 2008. Neighboring ranches to my south and southwest had problems with them 5-10 years prior and to my North along Red River, they had issues with them starting in the 90's and up till now. Hogs are not being vilified,they are simply multiplying and spreading with an alarming rate.One of the biggest problems that I've seen is that if you don't do something about the invasion in the first year, you won't believe the problems you're gonna see in the next. I know this from experience. Trapping was commonplace up here with people shooting them as much as possible but it didn't seem to make a dent in the population. However, when the helo hunters arrived we've seen a dramatic drop off in the number of pigs seen and last year's grain harvest had a lot less pig damage.

I keep reposting this and some of the links are dead now, sorry. That is a shortcoming of electronic media. The problem of feral hogs, however, goes way back as early as the early settlers in the US. The discussion was about the origin of feral hogs, many of which, I contend, are the result of free ranging....

Feral pigs have been a noted issue in Texas and the south in general since the 1800s, if not earlier, though most of the early documentation is from then. That you or a family member may not have encountered them is more of a sampling issue than of reality. Keep in mind that a very common practice for raising pigs is free-ranging and this went on everywhere pigs were introduced and everywhere this has gone on, there have been feral pig populations.

Really, where did all those feral hogs come from?

For the last few years, I have read various accountings of hogs being introduced into the wild, the tie to the first Spanish releases, unintentional losses, the apparent and highly celebrated subsequent introduction of known Eurasian stock for hunting, etc. Somehow, the distribution of hogs, population, etc. seems difficult to account for even with their long history in the US and long period of occasional escapees. A few weeks ago, I was chatting with my father who group up outside of Cooper, Texas. He was responsible for the raising of pigs and part of his daily chores were to unpen the pigs in the morning and turn them out to the bottoms so that they could free range all day long. In the evening, he would have to round them up again. Over time, they would lose a few hogs, gain a few, and occasionally have to get with neighbors who did the exact same thing and return errant hogs. In short, the program meant that the hogs could be fed on the cheap by letting the hogs find most of their own food, kept the amount of hog refuse in the pen down to what accumulated overnight, and kept an active breeding program that prevented inbreeding. No doubt it also meant that there were free range hogs that simply opted to never go home. Let's face it. Folks have enough problems keeping penned and fenced hogs from escaping and so you know there would be losses, er, escapes from free-ranging hogs. That was back in the 1930s and 1940s. Go back nearly 100 years. Hogan in "The Republic of Texas" (1946, p. 34, UT Press) talks about this same process where hogs were "raised in the woods in great abundance" with no corn except a little to help keep them gentle. In other words, people basically kept free range hogs using corn to keep them from straying too far, not keeping them fenced or penned at all. I certainly don't doubt that the free-range raising of hogs has been commonplace throughout the south with a long standing tradition that undoubtedly would have contributed significantly to likely establishing in many areas, maintaining, and certainly expanding feral hog populations. In fact, free-ranging of hogs appears to have been a dominant norm historically across many parts of the US and even back in the 1600s, the problem of free-range hogs going feral and the population exploding was noted (see Virginia below). Other references... Free-ranged swine in New York in 1842 (pp. 384-385) http://books.google.com/books?id=d6r...ne&f=false New London Company's importation of hogs in Virginia in 1600 that were allowed to free range had resulted in the colony nearly being overrun by 1627 as they had become wild feeding in the woods (p. 63). Free-ranging was also noted in several other colonies at this time. Page 64 also refers to native hogs of the west, the description being of feral hogs from various earlier settlements. http://books.google.com/ebooks/reade...;output=reader In this 1812 report, swine in Louisiana are common and raised without expense by allowing to [free] range in the woods. See pages 168, 185-186, 229-230, 379. http://books.google.com/ebooks/reade...;output=reader Free-ranging mentioned in this 1888 volume on page 252. http://books.google.com/ebooks/reade...;output=reader Free-ranged swine in New York in 1842 (pp. 384-385) http://books.google.com/books?id=d6r...ne&f=false More feral hogs addressed here in 1897, p. 1134. http://books.google.com/ebooks/reade...;output=reader 1881 notation of free-ranging of hogs in Texas and efforts to keep them from going feral as they turn feral quickly. http://books.google.com/ebooks/reade...;output=reader Page 62 of this 1858 Texas Almanac noted hogs subject to running wild in Denton County, but there were losses attributed to bear that were aplenty, and also to wild hog claimants. http://books.google.com/ebooks/reade...;output=reader No doubt the Spanish released some hogs that went feral, but by and large, the feral hog population looks like it has been steadily and continually salted (pun), populated, and repopulated by the use of free-range ranching methods of domestic hogs from at least as early as the first part of the 1600s to at least the mid 1900s.
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So while the article starts with the 1930s, hogs were already an issue for many folks by then, but it just depending on where you were.

Something else to consider is that in 1930, Texas had less than 6 million humans. In 2012, we had over 26 million humans. So our population has more than quadrupled in that time. Encounters are going to be more common with more people, and nowadays, at least half of those have a cell phone and participate in some form with social and real media.

As for the gun makers and such, I don't think they are making that much off of the whole hog issue. They certainly are not pushing it that hard. They are capitalizing off of it, sure, but that isn't where the real vilification comes into play. The real vilification is with stupid shows put on by Discovery and Animal Planet and the like such as the Mutant Pigs, Pig Bomb, and episodes of Monster Hunters dedicated to pigs. That is where the true fear mongering comes into play. That gets the general public all hyped up about how hogs are attacking people all the time and are bigger and meaner than ever before and that nothing can stop them.

They are a problem.. maybe not to city dwellers or subdivisioners but anyone who works property or land knows they are

My biggest problem with them is just the damage that they do. Yes, deer and turkeys will eat the he ll out of a wheat crop but they don't destroy fences to get to it and root the field up 2-3 ft. deep. Deer eat corn from feeders, but they won't wreck a feeder to get to it. FWIW, I've got a DEER lease down around Oplin and didn't shoot a single deer because right before deer season, when we were seeing lots of deer on camera, the pigs moved back in and the deer disappeared. Yes, we can hunt pigs and I love eating them, but I didn't spend several thousand dollars last year to kill overgrown cockroaches.

Good points being made all around!

Double Naught Spy - thanks for the references to publications, I will read through those - tell me though if you would;

Lack of food sources and economic development (Americas) in the 18th - early 20th century would have spurned the need to free range hogs as a food supply. Correct?

In my opinion:

Nowadays - You have 1000's of food joints in big cities and more than enough in small cities and society is developed to the point that we needn't rely on livestock (personal livestock) to feed our family(ies) hence the population of feral pigs is now perceived by many as "surplus" and "bothersome" AND as many have mentioned they don't rate like deer (even though the TIME article says there are 80 million of them) so they are expendable by State regulation.

I think that hogs are a natural renewable resource, and certain practices of hunters here and there just have me shaking my head in disgust. Now don't get me wrong, I am all for a rancher or farmer keeping the damage to his fields down. I know the cost involved when it comes to replanting fields that hogs have rooted through and destroyed overnight. I got my hunting chops while in stationed in Germany, and killed hogs from the packs of true wild boar that roam the countryside. Heck, the boar have even invaded Berlin and its surrounding suburbs. You think that the Germans get pissed when they are late for something? That's nothing compared to a Oma who has had her beloved flower garden destroyed by rooting boar or rabid German soccer fans who have lost their field to a pack of boar.

Since I think of them like a renewable resource, I personally observe their mating cycles, their habits and tendencies. It makes me more effective when hunting in a known area that they frequent. Rule number one for me is NEVER shoot the leading female. The reason is simple. The lead sow keeps all of her offspring from mating while they are in her group. Female pigs are capable of bearing litters at a very young age, and if you shoot a lead sow and scatter her offspring, well you now have a ticking time bomb on your hands.

I get the argument that the hog problem we have is that of a non-native, invasive species. Well, we can thank Cortez for that. They are here, and here to stay. As such, I think that we get wrapped around the wrong end of the argument. We will never be able to kill them all. I feel that we shouldn't even try to. What I do feel we should do is manage this resource like we would any other. I think that with a little more research, and probably with the knowledge that hunters have we as a community of hunters could help bring about some change when it comes to how we can dispose of wild boar. Why not petition the state legislature to allow the sale of veterinary inspected feral hog meat? It makes sense to me. Think of all the game meat that could be processed and given to help the hungry, or at least allow the pigs to be disposed of properly by private sale rather than to leave their carcases rotting under the sun.

This is not about food supply... Your hobby as a hunter can be questioned by the same points you are brining up.... This is even more important this is about peoples jobs... People's way off life.. I would be out of business if it wasn't for personal farming and ranching.. Do you welcome negative affects on your business with open arms also?

This thread isn't meant to get personal, I understand there are people with significant livelihood impacts related to the feral pigs.

I am putting this out there broadly to cover the topic of what drives the motives that hogs are detrimental to the point of being classified as nuisance/pests/shot on sight animals and basically does everyone buy it (media/hype/articles/ etc), and if so why. Do we hunt them to extinction, do we stop when the numbers say they're in check, are we giving full thought to what we see in the field vs what is published?

I've yet to read all of DNS's referenced material above but my original question still stands as to what previously published articles (pre-1990's) exist which cover feral hogs in the way they are portrayed today?

BTW - I'm not sure the majority of hunter's are fully represented on an internet forum so I doubt we can address all points fully

It wasn't written about back then because it wasn't popular. I think its recently that everyone figured out how to make money off of them.

It seems to me, that you are trying to justify pigs as being a game animal. If that's then way you view them that's ok. However to others they tear up fences, crops, and run deer off. To them they are a pest. I never knew them as anything but a pest, until some off my family began to view them as game animals. They don't understand why I shoot them and drag them off. We just agree to disagree. They shot one out of a group. I shoot as many as I can.

Some folks have more invested in farming / ranching than others. No question at all. But think for yourself- If we have such a devastating hog problem, then why are folks charging others big bucks to come in and hunt the land? If they were truly a nuisance, people would either invite hunters out and not charge them to shoot or would build better fences to keep them out.

Navasot, who was the comment about "questionable hunter" directed to?

Its simple they can make more selling hog hunts then what the hogs tear up. Think for yourself. To build a hog proof fence you could double or triple the cost of a fence. You would also have to go back and replace all your perimeter fence. The farmers and ranchers are in it to make money, the hunts are just another source of revenue. A lot of them don't want anyone they don't know on their land so they don't invite just anyone.

Like I already said if you want to treat them as a game animal go for it. Just don't try get everyone to go along with it. You didn't like my opinion so you told me to think for myself when you meant I should think like you.

Bo I think you've got gotten another impression than what I was intending to give.

You bring up fences and what it costs to replace. How long have the fences been on the land? Maybe this is a spend a little now save a lot later scenario. If its about profits then fine, but don't tell me that if this was truly your livelihood, that a better fence wouldn't help. Maybe divest the funds and build that new fence.

I am not trying to change your point of view. I know there are folks with steadfast opinions on hogs. Just giving my opinion as to contribute to the conversation.

I don't own land so I can't speak of that. I have leased land for 25 years now. The place I hunt now I have been on for 4 yrs and has a good population of pigs. I have not seen any visible damage to the land but it is not a farm. What it has meant to me is year round hunting and exploration into the night vision world. I had to wait for seasons the first 21 years and now I can hunt any time that I want. I still prefer the taste of venison but I will tell you a pig is pretty tasty too.

A maintained fence will last along time. I'm not saying a better fence will not help but fencing pigs out is very expensive and there is still a good chance they will go under. The best method of control is trapping, not hunting. So far the people trapping around me have kept them under control. The problem is hunting them is too much fun. If they didn't run the deer off, I wouldn't lay waste to them every chance I get.

They have been vilified. I don't believe it is all because of the damage they do(they do alot of crop damage). The media has alot of people believing they are very "dangerous". Hunters add to this myth also. Don't get me wrong they are like any animal and will attack of cornered or to protect their young.