… you need to read this forum thread.
It’s an engaging account of one man’s fight against feral hogs on his East Texas ranch. It’s a thread on a forum called The High Road, and the thread has been active for over 2 years. That alone should tell you something about his fight.
What I found so engaging about the thread however was the man’s willingness to recount as much as possible and answer all the questions he can. You gain a great insight into these creatures. It’s a mixture of a lot of respect, but also a lot of hate for the damage and hell they cause. Plus, reading his “play-by-play” you can see what is dealt with over time and just how smart and difficult the hogs are to control.
If you’re not here and living within the feral hog problem, you just can’t truly fathom what it’s like. But I will say, if you read this account all the way through, it’s just like you’re there in the thick of it and you will gain a deeper understanding of what’s involved and why this is a problem we have to work to remedy.
Stuff From Hsoi 
Month or so ago a local news channel did a piece on the problems of feral hogs (seems they’re a problem up here too), and included in the piece was a clip from someone’s hunt, showed couple guys shooting a hog, only to watch it keep coming and completely barrel over one of the hunters before tumbling down the steep slope they were on.
I thought the piece was well done, and the only thing missing was the info on feral hog hunting (which there IS in NY state, but its REALLY hard to find the information unless you seriously dig, I don’t understand why), and so I left a message on their Facebook page telling them that they needed to talk about the rules for hunting the feral hogs if it was really that much of a problem. Got done typing, hit post, and discovered that while I was typing, someone else had left a message about the same news piece on the page, except her’s was “Don’t you know KIDS are WATCHING the NEWS TOO?! How COULD you SHOW HUNTING, and a pig being SHOT on the NEWS!!!!”
*headdesk*
*headdesk* is right. Yesterday we dropped off 3 deer at the butcher shop. All 3 deer were merely field dressed, so they still looked like full deer, but with a nice big cut down the length of their body. The back of the truck was facing the drive in and out of the shopping center and one of the owners was out back having a smoke and talking to us while the guys were doing some work to initially prep the deer for their cooler…. knife out, cutting the legs off. While talking, someone drove by… I had my back to them but the owner saw and started laughing because she apparently saw the driver’s face with shock on it. Gee people, no idea where your food comes from, eh?
She did say tho that some years ago there was a “small kid” place in the building behind their shop (I guess a day care or something). Back then they did pull down a curtain to shield the deer processing away from the kids because they didn’t want the kids to think Santa’s reindeer were getting killed. 🙂
The difference? See, we’re in Austin. No, a lot of people don’t have a clue. But the town over by the hunting lease? Small rural Texas town. As soon as you drove into town, a big banner over the road saying “WELCOME HUNTERS!” I do like living in Austin, but times like this make me think moving elsewhere in this state might be less annoying.
Anyways yes… hogs can be tough and difficult. They are wicked problem and well, most people just don’t understand it because it doesn’t impact them on a daily basis. I can’t fault people for that because it’s how we all are. But it is one of those things that is good to educate people on because ultimately it will affect them… if not hogs directly moving in (as did happen to some suburbs here this past summer due to the drought, hogs wandering further to find food and water and subdivisions have both), then it’s going to affect farmers and ranchers and ultimately everyone’s food supply. Lots of people in Texas already get it because it’s just a larger issue here. Up there well… people will come around. Hopefully.
Thing was you couldn’t even tell the pig had been hit in the video, no blood or anything, just a couple guys shooting then getting run down.
It may not have been hit. Any idea if the video is online anywhere I could see it?
The news bit is here: http://www.9wsyr.com/news/local/story/Wild-boars-damaging-CNY-landscape/KybXQHZ5m0ueDQiyHe69cw.cspx video bit on the left is the news piece as scene on TV and includes the bit from the hunt. Watching it again, ok, yes I guess you can tell it was hit (it gets knocked off its feet), but considering some of the other news bits that end up on prime time news….I have to admit that until I saw the news piece I hadn’t realized that feral hogs were an issue here, but in retrospect it didn’t surprise me either.
I got to watch some of the later portions of a butcher job (on a cow) once (once the blood and guts are gone it doesn’t bother me), and yes its not pretty, but it could be ever so much worse. So I’d say good job on putting down a curtain to keep the little kids in the day care from freaking out, but if I drove by a deer processor and they had a deer out front that they were working on it wouldn’t bother me (actually I might stop to see if I could buy some meat lol). My parents would have a fit, but it doesn’t bother me. Now the meat market in Thailand turned me into a vegetarian for the rest of that trip, but THAT was a different problem!
Wow. Annoying website. I had to disable all my blockers and Ghostery reported 31 beacons on that site. GEEZ… that’s a record.
Anyways I see, yes, it was hit and just took a wicked tumble. Thing is, I bet the boar wasn’t actually charging them to attack, just to scare and get by… would have run by. Nevertheless, it’s enough to scare the dickens out of you and yes, you shoot. I will say, the use of that footage did seem a bit arbitrary to the reporting of the story and the flow of it. But oh well.
As for the story, it seems that you don’t have much of a problem — yet. If only 1000 that’s nothing. But what makes them so horrible is they reproduce worse than rabbits. So yes, NY State needs to do something NOW to try to help manage and deal with this. They’re already on the wrong side of the curve and it will only worsen if they don’t take steps now. Aggressive trapping (and don’t relocate them, they must be killed; donate the meat), allowing hunting of them 24/7/365, and massive public education program. Take a cue from Texas and Florida and the programs here. The sooner they get on this, the better.
As for butchering… it’s a matter of exposure. If you were born and raised on a farm and this was part of daily life, it wouldn’t be a big deal. But, people tend to believe meat comes from the freezer case at the grocery store, already neatly wrapped on styrofoam trays… because you know, that’s how they exist in the wild! But I think many people tend to not even consider where their food comes from. Oh sure, maybe the abstract notion of “this steak came from a cow” but to connect those two dots… people don’t do it.
I see no reason to be overt and gross… like Halloween and horror movie gore just turns me off. But butchering an animal? That’s life. Heck, watch some nature documentaries and you’ll see more “blood and gore”. Or just watch the evening news and all the stories of murders and killings…. you tell me which is worse to expose our children to. *sigh*
It is an annoying site, sorry.
Thing is, anyone in NY with a valid NY large animal license can hunt feral pigs year round as long as all other hunting rules are abided by (and you cant hunt pig with a gun during deer bow season), but FINDING that information was several minutes of searching on my part and I have a reasonable skill at tickling a search engine. The affected area has a large hunter population, if they pushed that information a bit better I’d bet the hunters would be thrilled to help contol the population. Especially since they just approved rifle use for hunting this year.
The site isn’t your fault. 🙂
Well, it’s cool that you CAN hunt them fairly openly. Hopefully they’ll realize that educating hunters about the situation is one of the better things they can do about it. Heck, hog hunting is rather a nice business here in Texas. Thar be money to make! Learn from those that have gone before you.