What Wild Animal Does Texas Have A Problem

Wild hogs running — These pigs are used for baying, which is how hunters train their dogs to bring the pigs down. Wyatt McSpadden

About l miles east of Waco, Texas, a 70-acre field is cratered with holes upward to five feet wide and three feet deep. The roots below a huge oak tree shading a creek have been dug out and exposed. Grass has been trampled into paths. Where the grass has been stripped, saplings crowd out the pecan trees that provide food for deer, opossums and other wildlife. A farmer wanting to cut his hay could barely run a tractor through here. In that location'due south no mistaking what has happened—this field has gone to the hogs.

"I've trapped 61 of 'em downwardly here in the last month," says Tom Quaca, whose in-laws have owned this land for nigh a century. "But at to the lowest degree we got some hay out of here this twelvemonth. First time in half dozen years." Quaca hopes to flatten the earth and crush the saplings with a bulldozer. Then possibly—maybe—the hogs volition move onto adjacent hunting grounds and he can one time again apply his family's country.

Wild hogs are among the nearly subversive invasive species in the United States today. Ii million to six million of the animals are wreaking havoc in at least 39 states and four Canadian provinces; half are in Texas, where they practice some $400 million in damages annually. They tear up recreational areas, occasionally fifty-fifty terrorizing tourists in state and national parks, and squeeze out other wildlife.

Texas allows hunters to impale wild hogs twelvemonth-round without limits or capture them live to take to slaughterhouses to be processed and sold to restaurants as exotic meat. Thousands more are shot from helicopters. The goal is not eradication, which few believe possible, but control.

The wily hogs seem to thrive in near any weather, climate or ecosystem in the state—the Pineywoods of due east Texas; the southern and western brush state; the lush, rolling central Hill Country. They are surprisingly intelligent mammals and evade the best efforts to trap or impale them (and those that have been unsuccessfully hunted are fifty-fifty smarter). They have no natural predators, and there are no legal poisons to use confronting them. Sows begin breeding at six to 8 months of age and have two litters of four to 8 piglets—a dozen is not unheard of—every 12 to xv months during a life bridge of iv to 8 years. Fifty-fifty porcine populations reduced past seventy percentage render to full strength within 2 or three years.

Wild hogs are "opportunistic omnivores," meaning they'll swallow most anything. Using their extra-long snouts, flattened and strengthened on the end by a plate of cartilage, they can root equally deep as three feet. They'll devour or destroy whole fields—of sorghum, rice, wheat, soybeans, potatoes, melons and other fruits, nuts, grass and hay. Farmers planting corn have discovered that the hogs go methodically down the rows during the night, extracting seeds one past one.

Hogs erode the soil and muddy streams and other h2o sources, possibly causing fish kills. They disrupt native vegetation and make it easier for invasive plants to accept concur. The hogs claim any nutrient set out for livestock, and occasionally eat the livestock as well, especially lambs, kids and calves. They also consume such wildlife as deer and quail and banquet on the eggs of endangered bounding main turtles.

Because of their susceptibility to parasites and infections, wild hogs are potential carriers of affliction. Swine brucellosis and pseudorabies are the nigh problematic because of the ease with which they can exist transmitted to domestic pigs and the threat they pose to the pork industry.

And those are simply the problems wild hogs crusade in rural areas. In suburban and even urban parts of Texas, they're making themselves at home in parks, on golf courses and on athletic fields. They treat lawns and gardens like a salad bar and tangle with household pets.

Hogs, wild or otherwise, are not native to the United States. Christopher Columbus introduced them to the Caribbean, and Hernando De Soto brought them to Florida. Texas' early settlers allow pigs roam free until needed; some were never recovered. During wars or economic downturns, many settlers abandoned their homesteads and the pigs were left to fend for themselves. In the 1930s, Eurasian wild boars were brought to Texas and released for hunting. They bred with free-ranging domestic animals and escapees that had adapted to the wild.

And all the same wild hogs were barely more than than a marvel in the Lone Star State until the 1980s. It's only since then that the population has exploded, and non entirely because of the animals' intelligence, adjustability and fertility. Hunters found them challenging prey, and then wild squealer populations were nurtured on ranches that sold hunting leases; some captured hogs were released in other parts of the state. Game ranchers gear up out feed to attract deer, but wild hogs pilfered it, growing more fecund. Finally, improved animate being husbandry reduced disease among domestic pigs, thereby reducing the incidence among wild hogs.

Few purebred Eurasian wild boars are left today, but they take hybridized with feral domestic hogs and continue to spread. All are interchangeably chosen wild or feral hogs, pigs or boars; in this context, "boar" tin can refer to a male person or female. (Technically, "feral" refers to animals that can be traced dorsum to escaped domestic pigs, while the more all-encompassing "wild" refers to whatsoever non-domestic animals.) Escaped domestic hogs adapt to the wild in just months, and within a couple of generations they transform into scary-looking beasts as mean as tin can be.

The deviation between domestic and wild hogs is a matter of genetics, experience and environment. The animals are "plastic in their physical and behavioral makeup," says wild hog adept John Mayer of the Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina. Most domestic pigs take sparse coats, but descendants of escapees abound thick bristly hair in cold environments. Dark-skinned pigs are more than likely than pale ones to survive in the wild and laissez passer forth their genes. Wild hogs develop curved "tusks" as long equally 7 inches that are really teeth (which are cut from domestics when they're built-in). The two teeth on top are called whetters or grinders, and the 2 on the lesser are called cutters; continual grinding keeps the latter deadly sharp. Males that reach sexual maturity develop "shields" of dumbo tissue on their shoulders that grow harder and thicker (upwards to two inches) with age; these protect them during fights.

Wild hogs are rarely as large as pen-bound domestics; they average 150 to 200 pounds as adults, although a few attain more than 400 pounds. Well-fed pigs develop large, wide skulls; those with a express diet, as in the wild, grow smaller, narrower skulls with longer snouts useful for rooting. Wild pigs have poor eyesight just good hearing and an acute sense of aroma; they tin detect odors upwards to seven miles abroad or 25 anxiety underground. They can run 30 miles an hour in bursts.

Adult males are solitary, keeping to themselves except when they breed or feed from a common source. Females travel in groups, called sounders, usually of two to 20 but up to l individuals, including i or more sows, their piglets and perhaps a few adoptees. Since the only thing (likewise food) they cannot do without is h2o, they brand their homes in bottomlands most rivers, creeks, lakes or ponds. They prefer areas of dense vegetation where they can hide and find shade. Considering they have no sweat glands, they wallow in mudholes during the hot months; this non only cools them off just as well coats them with mud that keeps insects and the worst of the sun's rays off their bodies. They are mostly nocturnal, one more than reason they're difficult to hunt.

"Wait up there," exclaims Brad Porter, a natural resources specialist with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, every bit he points up a dirt road cutting across Cow Creek Ranch in south Texas. "That's hog-hunting 101 correct there." As he speaks, his hunting partner's 3 dogs, who'd been trotting alongside Porter's pickup truck, streak through the twilight toward vii or 8 wild hogs breaking for the castor. Porter stops to allow his own 2 dogs out of their pens in the bed of the pickup and they, likewise, are off in a flash. When the truck reaches the area where the pigs had been, Porter, his partner Andy Garcia and I hear frantic barking and a low-pitched sighing sound. Running into the brush, nosotros find the dogs have surrounded a red and black wild sus scrofa in a clearing. 2 dogs have clamped onto its ears. Porter jabs his knife just behind the sus scrofa'due south shoulder, dispatching it instantly. The dogs back off and quiet downward as he grabs its rear legs and drags it dorsum to his truck.

"He'southward gonna brand practiced eatin'," Garcia says of the dead animal, which weighs about 40 pounds.

The 3,000-acre ranch, in McMullen County, has been in the family of Lloyd Stewart's married woman, Susan, since the mid-1900s. Stewart and his hunting and wild animals director, Craig Oakes, began noticing wild hogs on the land in the 1980s, and the animals have become more of a problem every year. In 2002, Stewart began selling pig-hunting leases, charging $150 to $200 for a daylong hunt and $300 for weekends. Simply wild hogs take become and then mutual effectually the state that information technology's getting hard to attract hunters. "Deer hunters tell us they have a lot of hogs at habitation," Oakes says, "then they don't want to pay to come up shoot them hither." The exception is trophy boars, defined every bit whatsoever wild hog with tusks longer than three inches. These bring effectually $700 for a weekend hunt.

"Most of the hogs that are killed here are killed by hunters, people who volition eat them," Stewart says. He'll wing over the ranch to attempt to count the hogs, but different some landowners who are overrun, he has yet to shoot them from the air. "We're non that mad at 'em yet," Oakes chuckles. "I hate to kill something and non use it."

Many hunters prefer working with dogs. Ii types of dogs are used in the hunt. Bay dogs—commonly curs such equally the Rhodesian Ridgeback, black-oral cavity cur or Catahoula or odour hounds such as the foxhound or Plott Hound—sniff out and pursue the animals. A hog will endeavour to abscond, merely if cornered or wounded volition likely attack, battering the bay dogs with its snout or goring them with its tusks. (Some hunters outfit their dogs in Kevlar vests.) But if the dog gets right up in the hog's face up while barking sharply, information technology can hold the hog "at bay." One time the bay dogs bound into action, catch dogs—typically bulldogs or pit bulls—are released. Take hold of dogs grab the bayed squealer, normally at the base of operations of the ear, and wrestle it to the ground, holding it until the hunter arrives to finish it off.

Dogs testify off their wild-hog skills at bayings, too known every bit bay trials, which are held about weekends in rural towns across Texas. A wild hog is released in a large pen and one or two dogs endeavour to bay it, while spectators cheer. Trophies are awarded in numerous categories; gambling takes the grade of paying to "sponsor" a particular domestic dog and so splitting the pot with cosponsors if it wins. Occasionally bayings serve as fund-raisers for community members in need.

Ervin Callaway holds a baying on the third weekend of every month. His pen is down a rutted dirt road off U.Due south. Route 59 betwixt the east Texas towns of Lufkin and Nacogdoches, and he'due south been doing this for 12 years. His son Mike is one of the judges.

"Hither's how it works," Mike says equally a redheaded preteenager preps a red dog. "The dog has two minutes in the pen with a hog and starts with a perfect score of 10. We count off whatsoever distractions, a tenth of a point for each. If a dog controls the hog completely with his herding instincts, and stares him down, it'southward a perfect bay. If a domestic dog catches a grunter, it's disqualified—we don't want any of our dogs or hogs tore upward."

"Hog out," someone shouts, and a black and white hog (its tusks removed) emerges from a chute as ii barking dogs are released to accuse it. When it tries to move abroad, a young homo uses a plywood shield to funnel it toward the dogs. They cease less than a foot away from the grunter and make heart contact, barking until the animal shoots between them toward the other side of the pen. As the dogs close dorsum in, the hog swerves difficult into a fence, then bounces off. The smaller dog grabs its tail but is spun around until it lets go. The grunter runs into a wallow and sits at that place. The yellow dog bays and barks, but from maybe three feet abroad, too far to be constructive, and so it loses concentration and backs off. The sus scrofa exits through the chute. Neither dog scores well.

Several states, including Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina and Due north Carolina, have outlawed bayings in response to protests from creature rights groups. Louisiana bars them except for Uncle Earl's Pig Dog Trials in Winnfield, the nation's largest. That 5-24-hour interval result began in 1995 and draws about x,000 people annually. (The 2010 issue was canceled because of disputes among the organizers.)

But bayings continue to take place on a smaller scale elsewhere, as practise bloodier pig-catch trials in which dogs assault penned-in wild hogs and wrestle them to the basis. The legality of both events is in dispute, simply local authorities tend not to prosecute. "The constabulary in Texas is that it's illegal for a person to cause one brute to fight another previously wild animal that has been captured," says Stephan Otto, director of legislative affairs and staff attorney for the Animal Legal Defense force Fund, a national group based in northern California. "But the legal definition of words like 'captured' and 'fight' has never been established. A local prosecutor would have to argue these things, and and so far nobody has."

Brian "Squealer Man" Quaca (Tom Quaca's son) paces the flooring of his hunting lodge, waving his arms and free-associating near hogs he has known. At that place's the one that rammed his pickup truck; the bluish hog with record-length tusks that he bagged in New Zealand; and the "big 'united nations" he blew clean off its anxiety with a rifle only to see the beast get up and run away. "They're just so smart, that's why I love them," he says. "You tin fool deer fifty percent of the time, but hogs'll win xc per centum of the fourth dimension."

Quaca, 38, began rifle hunting when he was 4 years sometime but switched to bowhunting at age eleven. He likes the silence after the shot. "It's just more primitive to utilise a bow, manner more than exciting," he says. As a teen, he eagerly helped neighbors clear out unwanted hogs. Now he guides hunts at Triple Q Outfitters, a fenced-in section of the belongings his wife's family unit owns. A customer dubbed him Pig Homo, and it stuck. His reputation grew with the launch last year of "Sus scrofa Man, the Series," a Sportsman Aqueduct TV program for which he travels the world hunting wild hogs and other exotic animals.

Nearly an hour earlier sunset, Quaca takes me to a blind most a feeding station in the woods. Just as he's getting his high-powered bow ready, a cadet walks into the clearing and begins eating corn; two more are close behind. "The deer volition come early to get as much food as they can before the pigs," he says. "Information technology'due south getting shut to prime fourth dimension now."

A slight breeze eases through the bullheaded. "That's gonna allow those pigs smell us now. They probably won't come near." He rubs an odor-neutralizing cream into his skin and hands me the tube. The feeding station is at to the lowest degree 50 yards away, and it'due south difficult to believe our scents can carry that far, let alone that there'due south a olfactory organ sharp enough to smell them. But every bit it gets darker, there are notwithstanding no hogs.

"It sounds like a hog might be over effectually those trees," Pig Man whispers, pointing to our left. "Information technology sounded like he popped his teeth once or twice. I can promise y'all there's pigs close by, even if they don't show themselves. Those deer will stay all the same long they tin can and never find us. But the pigs are smart."

The darkness grows, and Quaca starts packing to leave. "They won again," he says with a sigh. I tell him I still can't believe such a mild breeze carried our scents all the mode to the feed. "That'southward why I similar pigs and so much," Quaca replies. "If the slightest thing is wrong—whatsoever tiny picayune thing—they'll become you every time. The sumbitches will get you every time."

The side by side morn, Tom shows me some flash photographs of the feeding station taken past a sensor photographic camera most a half-hr after we left. In the pictures, a dozen feral pigs of all sizes are chowing down on corn.

To be sold commercially as meat, wild hogs must be taken alive to one of nearly 100 statewide buying stations. One canonical technique for capturing hogs is snaring them with a noose-similar device hanging from a fence or tree; because other wild fauna can get captured, the method has fewer advocates than trapping, the other approved technique. Trappers bait a cage with nutrient meant to attract wild hogs but not other animals (fermented corn, for case). The trapdoor is left open for several days, until the hogs are comfortable with information technology. Then it's rigged to close on them. Trapped pigs are and then taken to a ownership station and from there to a processing establish overseen by U.Southward. Department of Agriculture inspectors. According to Billy Higginbotham, a wildlife and fisheries specialist with the Texas AgriLife Extension Service, 461,000 Texas wild hogs were processed between 2004 and 2009. Nigh of that meat ends upwards in Europe and Southeast Asia, where wild boar is considered a delicacy, but the American market is growing, too, though slowly.

Wild sus scrofa is neither gamy nor greasy, simply it doesn't taste like domestic pork, either. It'south a bit sweeter, with a hint of nuttiness, and is noticeably leaner and firmer. Boasting i-tertiary less fat, it has fewer calories and less cholesterol than domestic pork. At the LaSalle Canton Fair and Wild Squealer Cook-Off held each March in Cotulla, lx miles northeast of the Mexican border, last yr's winning entry in the exotic category was wild hog egg rolls—pulled pork and chopped bell peppers encased in a wonton. But at that place were far more than entries in the barbecue partition; this is Texas, after all.

"There's not much secret to it," insists Gary Hillje, whose squad won the 2010 barbecue sectionalisation. "Become a young female pig—males accept besides strong a flavor—fifty or 60 pounds, before she'southward had a litter, earlier she's vi months old. Bank check to make certain it's healthy; it should exist shiny and yous tin can't see the ribs. And then you put the hot coals nether it and melt it depression and boring."

The LaSalle County Fair also includes wild hog events in its rodeo. Five-human being teams from viii local ranches compete in tests of cowboy skills, though cowboys are rarely required to rope and necktie hogs in the wild. "But we might chase one downward, rope information technology and put information technology in a cage to fatten it a couple months for a meal," says a grinning Jesse Avila, helm of the winning 2010 La Calia Cattle Company Ranch team.

As the wild hog population continues to abound, Texas' love-hate human relationship with the beasts veers toward hate. Michael Bodenchuk, manager of the Texas Wildlife Services Plan, notes that in 2009 the state killed 24,648 wild hogs, near half of them from the air (a technique well-nigh constructive in areas where trees and brush provide little cover). "Just that doesn't really bear on the total population much," he adds. "We go into specific areas where they've gotten out of control and endeavor to bring that local population down to where the landowners can hopefully maintain it."

In the by five years Texas AgriLife Extension has sponsored some 100 programs teaching landowners and others how to identify and command wild hog infestations. "If yous don't know how to outsmart these pigs, you lot're just farther educating them," says Higginbotham, who points to a two-year program that reduced the economical impact of wild hogs in several regions by 66 percent. "Can we hope to eradicate feral hogs with the resources nosotros take at present? Admittedly non," he says. "Only we're much further along than we were 5 years ago; we have some skilful research being done and we're moving in the right management."

For example, Duane Kraemer, a professor of veterinary physiology and pharmacology at Texas A&M Academy, and his squad have discovered a promising birth control compound. Now all they take to do is figure out a fashion to become wild hogs, and only wild hogs, to ingest it. "Nobody believes that tin be washed," he says. Tyler Campbell, a wildlife biologist with the USDA'southward National Wildlife Enquiry Heart at Texas A&One thousand-Kingsville, and Justin Foster, a research coordinator for Texas Parks and Wildlife, are confident there must exist a workable poisonous substance to impale wild hogs—though, one time again, the delivery system is the more vexing issue. Campbell says the apply of toxicant is at least v to 10 years away.

Until then, in that location'south a maxim common to hunters and academics, landowners and government officials—only about anyone in the Southwest: "There's two kinds of people: those that have wild pigs and those that will take wild pigs."

John Morthland writes almost the food, music and regional civilisation of Texas and the South. He lives in Austin. Photographer Wyatt McSpadden also lives in Austin.