When do we call it?

population of ZERO should be the goal!

As soon as I see evidence of hogs on my place I will start worrying about it. There is nothing I as an individual can do anyways. :wave1:

When you start seeing them in your backyard ? shoulders shrugging !! Thats just it They dont know how many there are ..so how do they know they are growing from one year to the next with or without gun hunters ?

I’m not sure I’m up to date on the current situation:

—How widespread are they?
—Isn’t it currently legal to kill them however you want on private land but illegal to hunt them on public land?

I understand their logic in not allowing hunting on public land....I’d think it would be a good idea to offer private landowners assistance with trapping them if trapping is indeed a better way to eliminate large numbers of them. are they already doing that?

Save the money and instead of trapping, promote a 12 month season with nominal bounty.

Henry in 1... 2... 3......

Shouldn't this be in the "ASK the MDC" section?

archer66 said:

I'm not sure I'm up to date on the current situation:

-How widespread are they?
-Isn't it currently legal to kill them however you want on private land but illegal to hunt them on public land?

I understand their logic in not allowing hunting on public land....I'd think it would be a good idea to offer private landowners assistance with trapping them if trapping is indeed a better way to eliminate large numbers of them. are they already doing that?

Click to expand...

The point is, at what population level do we decide that weve lost and trapping and hunting will make virtually no difference? Texas, Oklahoma, Ark, Lousiana, etc have and now rely on hunting and trapping both to control them. We need to trap 70% per year to keep them just stable. If we get to say 50,000 hogs we need to trap 35,000 to stay at a 50k population a year. Is that realistic?

archer66 said:

I'm not sure I'm up to date on the current situation:

-How widespread are they?
-Isn't it currently legal to kill them however you want on private land but illegal to hunt them on public land?

I understand their logic in not allowing hunting on public land....I'd think it would be a good idea to offer private landowners assistance with trapping them if trapping is indeed a better way to eliminate large numbers of them. are they already doing that?

Click to expand...

Yes.. MDC is contracting out "trappers" that are staging areas on landowners. The type of traps, how they are monitored and the success rates obviously fluctuate depending on who you talk to. A common thread that I've witnessed and talked to other LO's about is the delay in the time that the pigs are trapped and then terminated. The idea scenario is with a LO that is actually living on the property that is being trapped or has someone in close proximity that can respond and dispatch the pigs once they are captured. Unfortunately there seems to be a significant number of pigs that break out of the enclosure before anyone is able to respond .

Hawk said:

The point is, at what population level do we decide that weve lost and trapping and hunting will make virtually no difference? Texas, Oklahoma, Ark, Lousiana, etc have and now rely on hunting and trapping both to control them. We need to trap 70% per year to keep them just stable. If we get to say 50,000 hogs we need to trap 35,000 to stay at a 50k population a year. Is that realistic?

Click to expand...

No...that's not realistic. How widespread are they now?

I liken it to dealing with terrorists ... we all know what needs to be done... just having the intestinal fortitude to DO IT seems to be forever lacking......