According to Larry Rieken, Missouri Department of Conservation wildlife supervisor for the Ozark Region, they MDC has been in the feral hog control business for quite a while.
“Feral hogs are something that we want to control, especially on our state land, just to protect the environment, and the same thing for landowners,” Rieken told Ozarks Farm & Neighbor. “When landowners encounter feral hogs they’re usually being pretty disruptive, especially as far as tearing up their fields. They’re searching for food and out there rooting; a lot of our landowners are grass farmers and have cattle, and they just can’t afford to have their fields torn up.”
They’re also a problem nationwide. The herd is thought to number about 5 million head. A conservative nationwide damage estimate from USDA is $1.5 billion a year, $300 million to agriculture. Rieken said the scale of the problem is probably getting worse. “When we first encountered them 10 or 15 years ago we were hoping that recreation hunting would help us control them, and we encouraged that. But it’s turned out that the feral hogs are a worthy adversary; they get wary very quickly, and we found that ‘just’ recreational hunting makes them harder to control later – it makes them go nocturnal,” he said.
According to Missouri Department of Conservation Wildlife Biologist Scott McWilliams the feral hog population in Missouri is difficult to track. McWilliams said, “In 2000 we estimated hog populations were in 12 counties in Missouri. By 2012 we estimated established hog populations in 20 plus counties with smaller populations in several other counties, scattered mostly in southern Missouri.”
J.P Fairhead, feral hog biologist with the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission, told OFN, “They can breed up to three times in 13 months; the average litter size is between six and eight per litter.”
There are two big problems with the pigs from a wildlife perspective. First, they competitively exclude deer and other wildlife from needed food and other resources. Second, they predate vulnerable animals like fawns, turkeys and eggs of ground nesting birds. “Pigs are omnivorous,” said Fairhead. “Basically if you’ve got pigs and you’ve had them for a long time it’s going to be a moonscape, and there’s absolutely nothing left for your native wildlife on the ground level.”
How best to trap the beasts? Rieken of MDC said their main tool is a corral trap; it consists of several 5’ by 16’ panels arranged in a circle, with entry provided by what’s called a rooter gate; it sits at an angle back toward the pen and is sprung by a trip wire. The wire is tripped when one pig enters to eat the bait; others can push up the gate to enter, but can’t get back out.”
While landowners have to get their own panels, MDC makes available rooter gates for lease. Rieken cautions, “You can probably catch 70 percent of the pigs in an area with corral traps, but that last group’s a little harder to catch. Sometimes it’s just because they’ve moved on with their feeding patterns, but I do think they get educated after a time, and it’s hard to catch the last group with the corral traps.”
According to “Managing Wild Pigs, a Technical Guide,” authored by Ben C. West, Andrea L. Cooper and James B. Armstrong, other means of controlling feral hogs includes fencing. “Excluding wild pigs with wire mesh fencing, electric fencing, or a combination of both can be an effective control measure. While few fence designs completely exclude pigs from an area, many fences can restrict pig movements. However, they can be expensive to install and managers must ultimately consider the value of the commodity and cost of the fence before committing to this avenue of control. Sturdy wire mesh fencing, particularly with the addition of an electrified wire about 6 to 8 inches off the ground, seems to be the most effective fence design to exclude wild pigs. Nonelectric fences should be of net wire or diamond mesh construction with a maximum of 6-inch spacing…
“Although probably not an effective strategy on a large scale, the article also states, “harassment of pigs through hunting and pursuit may be a very effective technique for reducing pig populations and damage on small areas… On a larger scale, though, harassment has limited value and likely just shifts pig problems from one area to another. Some have even speculated that harassment leads to a greater risk of disease transmission within the larger wild pig population…”
Fairhead cautioned landowners when utilizing guard animals for protecting their farm from feral hogs. He warned, “Guard animals could be utilized to protect livestock and property with limited to moderate effectiveness. Landowners utilizing guard dogs should be aware of the many disease risks that feral hogs carry and are transmissible to those pets. Pseudorabies is a form of herpes virus that is lethal to dogs if contracted.”
