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Feral hogs?


Farrar
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No matter what you think of gun control, that tweet about the feral hogs was really funny, as were the ensuing memes. But definitely not a gun control debate thread.

I guess feral hogs are an actual problem that is growing in many areas? Have folks here seen actual hogs in the wild? Do they cause nuisance problems for you? Have you actually been threatened by them on your property or... I don't know? Out hiking or camping? I mean, I'm aware that they exist, and I'm not entirely unfamiliar with rural life - I grew up very rural when I was young... but I've literally never seen one in the wild. Are they more common than I'm realizing? There were a few articles that claimed their numbers are dramatically up. Basically, they're an invasive species that's growing.

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They are a real problem here in Texas. Our past neighborhood had a problem with them ruining several people's yards. When you think you have to sod your yard (at great expense) and then water it continually (depending up on the season/heat), the cost can be high. It is worse for people further out. 

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1 minute ago, Farrar said:

Huh. So they're like deer in the places that they're really in... they don't stay in the forest - they come in your yard and mess with your landscaping. Only, more threateningly?

I live in a more rural area and the bigger concern is the farmland and woodland they destroy and taking food from our native wildlife. And those things are scary dangerous, they get to be HUGE, I had to turn around my walk so my beagle wouldn't go after them, he'd be killed.

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My sil used to raise hogs as livestock.  Yes, they can escape. Where multiples escape, they will start increasing.

Someone had a boar escape, became feral, and while it was spotted periodically,  it appeared very well fed.  Understand boars can be mean, and dangerous.   They can kill.

 

My dsil will hunt feral hogs.  They are a problem and can do a lot of damage. 

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26 minutes ago, Farrar said:

Huh. So they're like deer in the places that they're really in... they don't stay in the forest - they come in your yard and mess with your landscaping. Only, more threateningly?

They do a lot more damage than deer. A lot more.

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10 minutes ago, Thatboyofmine said:

I have no clue, Farrar, but dh has tried it and liked it.  I think they smoke it.   I would suspect it tastes ‘gamey’ but maybe you have to season it right?  Idk.  I’m kinda sick thinking about it. 🤣  I’m not big on pork.  

If you enjoy meat in a general sense, but aren't that big on pork, may I recommend eating pork abroad. Seriously. It's a different animal.

Too bad the feral hogs need to be overdone.

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32 minutes ago, Thatboyofmine said:

Not long after we moved into our last house out in the country, I pulled up after running errands and stopped in our driveway to check the mail.  Our mailbox was on the other side of the road.  So there I was hanging out by the mailbox when I heard the lady across the street screaming.  I looked up and there was a massive boar running across her yard right at me.   I had to run across the road and jump in my car.  It followed my car down the long driveway and I jumped out screaming and trying to grab my dog so she wouldn’t get eaten.  My dh came running out, got us inside, and ran back in for a gun.  When the hog saw him, about 10 feet away, he started kicking his paws in the dirt and snorting.  Dh yelled at him and he ran off.  Scared the shiitake out of me. 😱  Dh is 6ft and even he said that thing was a giant.  They are ruthless and mean and horribly destructive to animals, farms, yards, everything.  Around here, people (not us) hunt them for food.  

 

That seems terrifying.

So it sounds like they're like the worst nuisance elements of black bears and deer combined into one horrible animal.

Last summer, a black bear opened my car while it was unlocked in my step-mom's driveway. I had been loading back up and hadn't relocked. The bear ate my gum and some trash I hadn't taken out. We had to get someone else to drive up and chase it away with a car. So... at least they can't open doors, I guess. But still.

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1 minute ago, Æthelthryth the Texan said:

One morning, four or five years ago, I get a text from dh at 6am. He’s at work, but something tripped the surveillance cameras on our front porch, so he gets a text (I did too but dismissed it because I was sleeping!). He texts me and says “I think there’s a pig on the front porch!” I look at the cameras and can’t see anything. The image is blurry and I’m like “it’s a dog! No hog is going to come up to our front door at 6 in the morning.” I Go back to sleep. 10 minutes- happens again. Dh texting- PLEASE go see if it’s a hog. I think it’s a hog. “ I peek my head out the door- ready to slam it.  Nothing. Alarm goes off again. This time I see- it’s a pig!! I grab a rifle, tell the kids to stay in and my Annie Oakley self shuffles our the door to confront this thing. It’s a POT BELLIED PIG! An enormous one! Right on my porch, LOL. So no only do we have feral hogs- we have wayward pot bellies, LOL. And no I didn’t shoot her. We petted her until animal control came and got her and the kids cried because we didn’t keep her. 

Whoa. Pets gone wrong.

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Just now, Æthelthryth the Texan said:

Holy snikeys Batman. I’d rather deal with pigs than bears in my car! That’s terrifying!

I was way more scared for my car than for myself. I beat a hasty retreat inside and called for help since it was in a gated community where people can help with things like that. But that bear was all the way in my front seat. I snapped a photo of the muddy print he left inside on my door.

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3 hours ago, SusanC said:

Yikes! Has anyone else read Oryx & Crake? The wild his on that book were pretty smart too. And scary.

I know his can be big and scary, but I didn't realize there was an issue with fetal hogs. 

And don't forgot it was wild boar that caused King Robert's demise in Game of Thrones. 😁 I loved Oryx and Crake.

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We have a lot of feral hogs in my area of East Central Florida. They're even out on the Kennedy Space Center, which is across the river from me. We had a minor problem with them at our old house. 

March of this year, in a not rural neighborhood  - https://www.mynews13.com/fl/orlando/news/2019/03/19/group-of-wild-hogs-destroying-cocoa-yards

Hogs at KSC - https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-hogs-kennedy-space-center

It's legal to hunt them year round, with land owner's permission. No license required. Only in wildlife management areas is there a specific season - https://myfwc.com/hunting/wild-hog/

Edited by Lady Florida.
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We have bears in neighborhoods too. Most people probably think of snakes and alligators when they think of Florida wildlife. We have it all. Plus mosquitoes the size of drones. 😂

They're rare in my county though are plentiful in neighboring counties. We've only seen a few in the 50 years my family lived here. One was earlier this year.

http://interactive.orlandosentinel.com/bears/index.html

Edited by Lady Florida.
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4 hours ago, alisoncooks said:

Idk but on our way home from Disney World a few years ago, there was a pig/boar thing walking around on the side of the interstate, somewhere in northern FL. DH and I just looked at each other and were like "was that a...pig?"

They're near Disney too, along with bears and deer and wild turkeys. We regularly see turkeys on the side of the highway on our route to dss' house, and we often see deer or hogs on the way home from Orlando.

Edited by Lady Florida.
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8 minutes ago, Lady Florida. said:

We have bears in neighborhoods too. Most people probably think of snakes and alligators when they think of Florida wildlife. We have it all. Plus mosquitoes the size of drones. 😂

They're rare in my county though are plentiful in neighboring counties. We've only seen a few in the 50 years my family lived here. One was earlier this year.

http://interactive.orlandosentinel.com/bears/index.html

Florida is trying to kill us all.

A little like Australia.

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Yeah, and they make babies fast. Years ago somewhere in my state a farmer died and he had what? Four pigs - maybe a few more - and his family didn't deal w/ them and they went wild and multiplied and destroyed farms in that county and in neighboring counties. Nothing to mess around with!

I haven't seen the meme tweet. I'll look for it. 

Edited by Angie in VA
Correction
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21 minutes ago, Angie in VA said:

Yeah, and they make babies fast. Years ago somewhere in my state a farmer died and he had what? Four pigs - maybe a few more - and his family didn't deal w/ them and they went wild and multiplied and destroyed farms in that county and in neighboring counties. Nothing to mess around with!

I haven't seen the meme. I'll look for it. 

the average litter is 10 piglets.  a sow can have two to three litters a year.  feral pigs are roughly half of that.

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5 hours ago, Farrar said:

Important follow up question. Are they delicious?

I've had wild boar from Big Sur. Cooked properly, it is delicious.

The ones there eat a lot of acorns. I believe that's a big positive in making them tasty.

IMS one needs to assume they have trichinosis like the farm-raised pork of yore.

Bill

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46 minutes ago, MaBelle said:

Really?  They are a huge problem.  And dangerous.

Uh..... I'm in the midwest.  Huge problem here.

Well, not in my corner of the midwest, anyway. Never heard of a hog problem in my state or the surrounding ones, only in states to the south of us.

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I haven't personally seen them. I have personally seen evidence of them. 

My sister lived in (and my mom still lives in) a town south of San Antonio -- not a completely rural area; the town is small, but not tiny. But even "in town" -- residential streets, blocks away from the main drag through town, and not too far from the highway -- they had, often, "ruts" in the yard caused by the feral hogs. They saw them sometimes, heard them a lot at night, and of course saw the evidence in the morning. Their town has a "Wild Hog Festival" every year. The ranchers outside of town do hunt them. 

My uncle lives in a very large college town in Texas, in what we used to dub "the boonies" but is less so these days. They have a lot of problems with them, on his land, and around him. (and, by "land", I mean....maybe I think 5 acres, not like 40). They are everywhere. 

Similar stories abound all over our lovely state. In fact, there was a story in the news recently about a suburb near me -- we're talking fancy neighborhood, homes in the many hundreds of thousands of dollars, in the largest metroplex in the state -- and they were seeing feral hogs in their front yards and fighting with the HOA over what to do about it. Not in a rural area, at all. 

I am sure we have them near me (we have coyotes, alligators, someone said they saw a bobcat....) but I've not personally seen them or evidence of them. That in no way means we don't have them, though; I know they're "around" I'm just not sure how close. Lots of folks I know hunt them. 

They are, indeed, a massive problem. 

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Thus I’m educated. That map. It doesn’t look like they’ll be near me that soon, and I think the bits of Georgia where my step-mom lives are exempted, but apparently they’re in my ancestral village in central Georgia - I’ve just never seen them.

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16 hours ago, StellaM said:

My kid showed me the meme yesterday, and I told him that while it seems ridiculous to us, I knew from my forums that some people in the US really did have issues with feral animals being close to homes, and that probably included hogs. Which spoiled the joke, of course. Bad mama. But I knew it wasn't just 'silly gun loving Americans say sh*t'.

Blame the Spanish. They brought them here in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. Some escaped, some were intentionally let loose to provide food for future expeditions. 

 

12 minutes ago, Farrar said:

Thus I’m educated. That map. It doesn’t look like they’ll be near me that soon, and I think the bits of Georgia where my step-mom lives are exempted, but apparently they’re in my ancestral village in central Georgia - I’ve just never seen them.

That map is from 2016. I know I saw a later one but couldn't find it in a quick search

Edited by Lady Florida.
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it's interesting the non-native animals that become adept at surviving the conditions. 

the parrot colonies in NYC, (and more temperate areas) and manage to survive the winters.  used to only be one colony, now there are more.

monkey/morgan island sc.  someone introduced some rhesus monkeys as a tourist attraction... now, they monkeys have taken over the island and there have been reports of attacks on humans who were just walking nearby.  it's interesting that they broke up the social groups when they were moved there, but the monkies reestablished the same social groups.

and most people are familiar with the carp.  and the boa constrictors in florida.

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16 hours ago, StellaM said:

My kid showed me the meme yesterday, and I told him that while it seems ridiculous to us, I knew from my forums that some people in the US really did have issues with feral animals being close to homes, and that probably included hogs. Which spoiled the joke, of course. Bad mama. But I knew it wasn't just 'silly gun loving Americans say sh*t'.

I think the odd specificity of 30-50 feral hogs and the memes that spun off it are pretty amusing, even if they’re a big problem. Again, totally apart from the gun debate. 

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2 minutes ago, gardenmom5 said:

it's interesting the non-native animals that become adept at surviving the conditions. 

 

Nutria. European songbirds. Kudzu.

Pretty much everything in Australia...

Invasive species are definitely interesting and destructive.

Anyone see that some tardigrades are now stuck on the moon? So it begins... in space!

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21 minutes ago, Farrar said:

Nutria. European songbirds.

Anyone see that some tardigrades are now stuck on the moon? So it begins... in space!

My first teaching job after college was in South Georgia near Americus and that was the first time I saw kudzu. I was amazed at how it covered entire abandoned buildings. That was 1977. Of course now kudzu is as far south as South Florida. 

I saw an article about the tardigrades on the moon. 

7 minutes ago, Farrar said:

I can’t believe I didn’t list my favorite horrible invasive species right off the bat. Did you know that hippos are an invasive problem in the Amazon thanks to a drug kingpin?

Wow! I had no idea. I just looked it up. 

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22 minutes ago, Farrar said:

Nutria. European songbirds. Kudzu.

Pretty much everything in Australia...

Invasive species are definitely interesting and destructive.

Anyone see that some tardigrades are now stuck on the moon? So it begins... in space!

earthworms were introduced to the US.  while there were some areas with them, they are no in areas where there were never natives, and it is harming the ecosystem.

 

they have been doing "goat lifts" out of the Olympic national park.  they were introduced, so they have been trying to get them all.  

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13 minutes ago, Lady Florida. said:

My first teaching job after college was in South Georgia near Americus and that was the first time I saw kudzu. I was amazed at how it covered entire abandoned buildings. That was 1977. Of course now kudzu is as far south as South Florida. 

 

we have Himalayan blackberries.  they'll swallow abandoned buildings with canes as big around as your thumb, and grow 30+ft in one season.  a hoarder neighbor had a school bus and grayhound bus on his property - and the were eaten by blackberries.  (all gone now.)  but the berries are good - and one reason why you want a freeway between your house and blackberry stands.  crossbow will kill them.  nothing else will.   digging them up will only slow them down as they'll grow back from the root you didn't get.

 

eta: when we go pick berries - we wear leather gloves with a finger tip and thumb tip cut off. we bring loppers and secauters to cut a path as well as cut off clumps of berries so we can actually harvest them. a friend used a machete and would lay down pieces of plywood.  the thorns are very nasty.

Edited by gardenmom5
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8 minutes ago, gardenmom5 said:

we have Himalayan blackberries.  they'll swallow abandoned buildings with canes as big around as your thumb, and grow 30+ft in one season.  a hoarder neighbor had a school bus and grayhound bus on his property - and the were eaten by blackberries.  (all gone now.)  but the berries are good - and one reason why you want a freeway between your house and blackberry stands.  crossbow will kill them.  nothing else will.   digging them up will only slow them down as they'll grow back from the root you didn't get.

 

eta: when we go pick berries - we wear leather gloves with a finger tip and thumb tip cut off. we bring loppers and secauters to cut a path as well as cut off clumps of berries so we can actually harvest them. a friend used a machete and would lay down pieces of plywood.  the thorns are very nasty.

I bet Himalayan blackberries could make a nice glaze for roasted feral hog. 

Mmmm.

Bill

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Armadillos do a lot of damage to suburban yards here. They're invasive. 

Hurricanes helped rid the Everglades of some pythons but apparently they've made a comeback. The 2004 hurricanes also helped destroy some invasive Australian pines in my area. I used to see them everywhere and haven't seen them in years so hopefully they aren't coming back. 

Hurricanes can destroy invasives but they can also bring them. Matthew brought us a weed called Florida snow that was previously mostly found in South Florida. Irma gave us balsam pear, which I've been trying to pull down off our fences ever since its seeds arrived on the wind. It's hard to remove without dropping seeds so I try to get it when it's dormant. It's a losing battle.

Air potato vine was once a big problem but it's being eliminated by a beetle that apparently likes it. I just hope the beetle doesn't like other, native plants as well. That happens often when trying to eliminate an invasive - the natives suffer too. 

One of our biggest problems is Brazilian pepper, which is everywhere on the side of highways and has been found in yards as well. We've been fighting it in our yard for years. There are people who call themselves "pepper busters" who try to get rid of it. Ds always wanted to be a pepper buster and had a chance one summer with Campfire USA, when they spent a few weeks removing it from a state park near Tampa. He said it's extremely hard work. You can't just spray it because what kills that plant also kills native plants and harms wildlife.

It's illegal to plant or sell invasive species in Florida. The pythons and hogs are newsworthy because they're more interesting but it's invasive plants that are doing most of the destruction. They choke out native species that wildlife depend on. 

Edited by Lady Florida.
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