Screen capture by Boch. Via YouTube.
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If it’s not one crisis, it’s another. This latest emergency, descending on us from Canada and slowly moving across the Northern Plains, isn’t another Chinese balloon. This one offers American gun owners a chance to ride to the rescue, using their skills to fight an invasion of new race of feral “super-pigs.” And unlike zombies, you don’t have to shoot them in the head to put them down.

You thought coyote drives and varmint hunts were fun? These “incredibly intelligent, highly elusive” super-pigs aren’t friendly or suitable for domestication as pets, but they make great reactive targets as the good guys attempt to thin their numbers

From Field & Stream:

The U.S. may soon have a new wild pig problem. Until now, the invasive species has largely proliferated in warm places like the southeast, Texas, and California. But in recent years, invasive pigs have started thriving in Canada and may spread into North Dakota, Montana, Michigan, and Minnesota.

According to Dr. Ryan Brook, who leads the University of Saskatchewan’s Canadian Wild Pig Research Project, Canada’s wild pig problem is relatively new. “The U.S. has a 400-plus year history with invasive wild pigs, but we didn’t have any here until the early 1980s,” he says. “There was a big push to diversify agriculture with species like wild boards and ostriches. Wild boars were brought in from Europe to be raised on farms across Canada.”

Most of those pigs were kept on meat farms, but some were used on high-fence hunting preserves. Many farmers and ranchers soon crossbred the wild boars with domestic pigs. According to Brook, the hybridization resulted in bigger “super pigs” that could survive in cold climates. “For surviving in cold winters, one of the rules of ecology is: the bigger the better,” he says. “Larger body animals survive the cold better and have better reproduction in those conditions.”

In the early 2000s, the market for farmed boars dropped out in Canada. Some escaped from their enclosures and others were let free without anyone to sell them to. In less than 20 years, the wild—or feral—population exploded, in part due to the species’ extraordinarily high reproductive rate. Wild boars now roam approximately 620,000 square miles in Canada, primarily in the Prairie Provinces of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Alberta.

Courtesy USDA and Texas A&M University

Now, thanks to Canada, northern states will be able to get in on the never-ending attempt to stop the spread of these destructive feral critters. They may be hard to get rid of, but trying seems like a whole lot of fun.

Just be careful out there.

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97 COMMENTS

  1. This is pretty serious, these things devastate crops. Only upside is maybe I can get a job as a full time hog hunter.

    • That means the Chi-coms and Bill Gates will lose money on all their farmland!!

      Better establish a Federal program to reimburse them…and to protect these new undocumented immigrants that are destructive and incredibly damaging to our country.

  2. There is nothing fun about a wild pig. They are vermin. I’ve killed every one I could all of my life. Not sure how many that is, but more than a few.

    • And they’re serious business. My late grandfather was a no-nonsense “Greatest Generation” type of man. B-17 bomber pilot during WWII, NASA engineer, master hunter and reloader, etc. He always kept a gun on his hip. One of our family’s biggest stories was of him taking my grandma and their family (my young father and his sister) camping. While unpacking at a campsite, my aunt (under 10 yrs old at the time) was exploring the nearby perimeter. Suddenly a boar burst out of the bushes a short distance away and charged at her hard. She screamed, my grandma screamed, and my father froze, but my grandpa had his bolt-action rifle within reach. He loaded it, aimed, and hit the boar center mass to bring it down, just in time before it reached his daughter. That story has been told over and over again for decades.

      Each time, it ends with “don’t ever underestimate any wild animal”.

      • Side note. Don’t fuck with an old man. He might just stamp ‘The End’ on your medical records.

      • Haz, that was a bully story! More detail please. The NASA reference makes me think “Space Coast”. The Spanish released cattle and swine here so their expeditions could have fresh meat. We’ve been dealing with them since. What rifle and caliber? These are the stories that make firearms interesting. And necessary.

        • I think the rifle/caliber details were lost over time (he passed away years ago), but he was a fan of the venerable .308 Win. As it happened around the early ’60s, it was likely his lever action Winchester Model 88. That seems to be the most likely candidate. In his later years, he added .243 Win (deer) and 7mm Mag (elk) to his arsenal, but those were Browning rifles.

          The very first time he told me that story when I was a youth, he took no glory for himself regarding his prowess (very humble man), but used it to spotlight the danger of a boar’s speed and tusks.

      • Hmm, I’m picturing a campsite that has a hog on a spit, dripping fat onto the campfire…fitting end to a harrowing beginning.

        Not many men of action around any more, and it’s a shame. Also, the beasts of old have been replaced by gang punks at convenience stores.

  3. Been wondering when the sounders from the south were gonna get, the Canadian pigs will get here a lot quicker! Long time between seasons!!

  4. “species like wild boards….”

    gotta watch out for those.. those 2×4 types can sneak up on ya and get ya before you know it.

      • “Night can’t see, 2×4 don’t talk” is what the delinquents used to say where l came up.

        Modern tech ruined that idea, tho.

    • it ain’t them tubafoes. The REAL daynjrus ones are the tuba twelves, twennyfo’ foot long. Get hit by one of those at speed and you’ll never worry bout another thing…….

      What baffles me is that WHY do some “smart” folks get some “brullyunt idea to bring in some critter to a place where he don’t really belong, then wonder WHY things get crazy not long after.

      Meanwhile the enviroweenees are all knicker-be-knotted about putting a little nitrogen fertiliser on the crops to improve their mass and quality. These pigs “emit” carbon dioxide.Should be able to hornswoggle some nitwit pawl a TISH un to provide some feral grant dollars for folks to go out and hunt them. Shoulda done that with the feral cows down Texas way, too, stead of blowong millions of tax dollars to fly some guys around in choppers to kill them and leave them llay. Maybe use the meat to feed some of the hungry border jumpers as they ride the busses back into “ol Méjico.

  5. How come when I put out there in Alabama that I’d be more than happy to eradicate hogs on farms in Alabama, the farmers wanted to charge me, not pay me mind you, charge me a minimum of $300 per weekend whether I bagged anything or not? Not one farmer was interested in a share of meat. I fail to see where the problem is when I have to pay to hunt hogs where, at minimum, I’d expect no charge just to rid of the vermin?

    • The state of CA called them an invasive species. They wanted them eradicated. But you had to buy a tag at 25 bucks per pig.

      The farmers wrung their hands and cried alligator tears at the destruction these pigs were doing. Offer to kill them and they wanted 3-6 hundred bucks per pig.

      Phuck them all. I hope the pigs win.

      • Ask them what is the value of the crops they are losing to the pigs?

        It mustn’t be that much of a problem if they want to charge for the pig’s eradication.

      • I had a customer who complained about the pigs on his farm. When I offered to have my brother and me hunt them he shut up and didn’t answer me. sThe hogs will ruin a field of lettuce in three ways, eating it and rooting up plants they don’t eat and finally crapping and pissing on the plants they don’t eat which makes the crapped on plant unsuitable for human consumption due to salmonellosis. I don’t know how much of a biologists the quoted “scientist” is if he refers to all pigs as “boars.” I am not a pigologist, but there are two kinds of pigs in my lexicon, boars and sows. I would expect someone knowledgable about pigs to know the difference.

      • In PA, feral hogs are considered an invasive species and all that is needed to hunt them is a generic hunting license. There is no bag limit and they can be hunted 365 days of the year. The official policy of the PA fish & Game Dept is eradication. I did see that private land owners do charge for hog hunts, so plan accordingly

    • When we farmed and varmint hunters wanted to shoot ground squirrels, I set them up with a piece of the ground, told them which direction to shoot, where the restroom was in the shop, and set them loose, warning them to not shoot up stuff that didn’t move, or they’d be off the outfit post-haste. There was no charge; if someone wanted to drive hours to get to our valley, and bring a rifle and ammo out to turn ground squirrels into pink mist, hey, thanks for helping.

      By contrast, the last time I inquired about shooting hogs in Texas, the rancher wanted to charge me big bucks for access over the weekend, plus more money for each hog shot. The two amounts added together made me wonder why I didn’t just buy a domestic hog at the farm gate and slaughter it myself.

      It was at that point I decided that feral swine/hogs/pigs/whatever were not that big of a problem to be my problem. Since then, I’ve become ever more cynical when I see the prices farmers/ranchers in Texas are charging for access.

      • DG,

        Once again, you nail it.

        When I was a kid, farmers were more than happy to have my friends and I eradicate the feral hogs that were ravishing their crops (Brazos River bottom, near Thomson, Fort Bend County, Texas). They knew us personally and knew we wouldn’t mess up their gates, shoot their cattle, etc., and that if we did anything remotely untoward our fathers would skin us living. (Of course, that was at a time when we routinely had long guns in our trunks / truck racks in the parking lots of our high school, especially during dove, duck, goose, or deer season, and nobody freaked out about it.)

        These days, the hog infestation in Texas is far, far worse. And while I certainly understand the reluctance of landowners to just let unknown folks of unknown character on their land with weapons (see JWT’s perceptive observations in this regard), there *are* ways to vet people to make sure they are responsible. Instead, most landowners view the hog problem as just another potential source of income, rather than a responsibility to eradicate a pest that will affect both them and their neighbors. (Think rats. Would a building owner with a rat infestation view it as an opportunity to charge people to kill them?)

        Until Texas landowners recognize (or are legally required to recognize) that the hog infestation is a public problem that needs to be solved by all means necessary, as opposed to a cash crop, the problem is only gonna get worse.

        • Isn’t just Texas landowners greed, that’s a prevalent issue everywhere there’s an invasive species.

        • WW3d:

          As JWT has pointed out before, even if a group of landowners got serious about eradicating all the hogs in an area (traps, hunts, dogs, etc.), it just takes a couple of holdouts to provide the pigs a place to reproduce, and you’re back to square one within a fairly short period.

          And there are plenty of landowners who DON’T want to eradicate the piggies, because they are makings $ from hog hunts. That’s a big part of the reason the problem is getting worse.

          If I have a building in an urban area that has a rat infestation, the city will cite me and demand that I, as the property owner, deal with the issue. The same should be true for landowners and feral pigs.

        • Maybe not, but that building owner’s neighbor might see dollar signs.

          Rats are a perfect example, I’m not sure if it qualifies as an analogy, because the direct details are different, but the bottom line is money.

          1. Pest creates problem.
          2. Someone makes a profit removing pests.
          3. Suddenly there are more pests.

          This has happened with rat bounties around the world, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Hanoi_Rat_Massacre.

          If your hypothetical building owner paid $2.00 per rat, and you were an enterprising 12 year old that lived down the street would you kill all his rats in May, make a tidy $60.00 to stretch the rest of the year? Or would you make sure that golden goose stayed healthy, maybe even introducing more rats if the picking became scarce?

        • No disagreement on that, at all.

          Typically, I’m a strong small government advocate with little power over the people, for reasons that have manifested themselves hugely apparent in the transition to our current state. And here’s the opposing point to my own position, but there are some particular instances like this where intervention as you’ve said is necessary, because nothing will get done otherwise.

          But how?

          Sitting on a piece of property allowing propagation therein of a species that is the causation of a vast mass economic loss, should by all rights make you liable for that decision, and responsible for said losses. Start accessing actual damages against those creating the situation, and you’ll see some movement right quick, fast, and in a hurry.

          Insurance Co.’s would definitely support not having to pay out themselves. Increasing their admittedly giant margins wouldn’t hurt their feelings a bit.

          You’d also get even greater public support, if those monies from, go straight to the victims in recompense. Not being pocketed (stolen) by the local, state, or federales (dot)guv, as they are wont to do oh so frequently.

          A tall order, I know.

      • I have a simple policy, in that I work, i get paid. Not the other way around. I certainly won’t pay to do anyone other than friends & family in need a service. Aren’t either? Forgetda’boutit.

        Running a dozen dogs is quite pricey all on it’s own, & mine eat a ton. Hounds and catch dogs don’t come free either, and are at risk every time they’re loosed. Neither are the trucks, doggo gps systems, thermals, or anything in between.

        Don’t get it twisted, it is not all about the Benjamin’s. I take quite a lot on public land as a civic duty. Getting rewarded for the efforts is reinvested and underwrites all of that. Money’s gotta come from somewhere, and it will never be extricated from my own, my families, or my dogs quality of life.

        Those that think their going to profiteer off of that are always shocked in getting an earful in reply. About half reverse course when I crank up the truck to leave them to their problems after shutting their pitch down. Others… well my sympathy only extends so far.

      • If I was a farmer in that situation, I would want any hunters to have liability insurance in case they get hurt on my land. Also I would make sure my own insurance would cover me in case a hunter decides to sue me if they got hurt hunting on my property. Everyone is sue happy anymore.

    • You have a legit point. On the other hand would YOU want some average joe to showing up and shooting stuff on YOUR land? Killing a couple of pigs isn’t effective at controlling them, they breed like welfare rats.

      • but to charge you so much to get rid of their problem then turn it into a cottage industry that makes you pay coming and going is a bit much when they cry for people to come take care of their problem.

      • When we farmed, I used to refer to shooting ground squirrels as a “productive waste of time” for just the reason you mention: shooting isn’t effective at controlling the population, it merely suppressed the population. To control the population took poison and traps – with the phosgene fumigant poisons, I could clear a 20 to 40-acre piece of ground per day of all squirrels.

        Texas (and other states, as well as the feds) have been dragging their feet in approving a poison to control hogs.

        • In Florida, there is no tag and no season to pop a piggie, if you see one where you are legally allowed to be, kill them all.

          I’m envious of one guy, he has permission of a local golf course, and his tool of choice is a suppressed AR in .300 blk with a can…

    • Max, I understand your question. I have one. We’re these guys row crop farmers, or land owners? Most land owners will do what they have to, to make money on their land. Those property taxes come around real regular. On the other hand, if he’s a row crop farmers, corn, soybean beans, peanuts…A $300 hog costs a farmer a lot more than that. Almost every night. We got over ran with hogs a few years ago. Under control now. Between trapping, shooting and dogs I quit counting at 300. That’s on 1000 +/- acres in one year. The dogs were the most effective means of hog removal. Even those not caught could not stand the harassment. They moved on. Don’t give them anything to eat, Kill every pig you see. If you can stand the smell when you clean one, they ain’t bad eating.

    • Same in Texas. I’d kill as many as I could and keep my freezer stocked up for free but the farmers and ranchers want to charge a fee. All while their land is being torn up by hogs. Guess I’ll have to buy my own land…

    • What he said. $300 bucks? More like $3000 including room and board. I was looking at a web page for a ranch in Mexico that wants $3000 to take a cull buck. If people are stupid enuff to pay that kinda money for a cull buck, I’m going to get in the deer hunting business.

    • “Same as the worms”. Good movie. Better book. Too bad Clint Eastwood never exercised the movie rights to the Vengeance Trail of Jose Wales. BTW, the book was titled Gone To Texas. After the war of northern aggression, people in that area. frequently carved GTT on their home. Damn yankees. Even then.

      • After the Southern Rebellion it was necessary to enforce LAW upon the former confederates and slave holders and integrate the former slaves into free society. Pigs is pigs. Hence Reconstruction. Damned rebels.

  6. Look at downunder. Pig season is 24x7x365. And nationwide. From the mountains in the southeast to the tropical north, and the deserts and farmland in between.

    They are smart and adaptable. Breed like crazy, eat almost anything, and spread into almost every habitat. They’ve even been spotted in urban industrial estates.

    • And I guarantee they’ll make it difficult/impossible to hunt these porcine pests in ILLANNOY. Funny there’s no mention Boch…because we’d mistake Prickster for a hog 🙄?!?

    • “Look at downunder. Pig season is 24x7x365. And nationwide.”

      The exact same in Florida.

      We have coyotes right here in my town of about 60,000 south of Orlando. They have grown quite fond of the taste of house cats, much to the distress of the yuppies… 🙂

    • Same in MS. Including night. Bring thermal scope. We have somewhere around 500,000 in the State. We kill 10’s of thousands every year, but they breed faster than we can kill ’em.

  7. Well, they played out covid as long as possible, so why an invasion from the North by pigs as Canadians are far too polite to invade the US.

  8. The media “These are devastating to crops and habitats!” The ranchers “They are terrible! Btw that will be $1,000 and you can hunt on my land for them.”

  9. Javelinas (as they’re known along the Southern Border) are good eating if dressed and prepared properly. The leather is pretty good too if you have skills in that direction. Footballs were made of Javelina leather in California back in the early days.

    • Javelinas are not feral hogs. Completely different species, and unlike feral hogs Javelinas are part of the natural ecosystem.

  10. I contacted Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks a couple of years ago with this concern. I asked that if I was hunting in an area and saw feral hogs can I legally put them down. The official answer was a resounding NO! I then asked why. Their response was along the lines of: Well, we have to wait until they become a serious nuisance before drafting legislation and rules concerning them. I asked the Warden if ignoring the vast experience available from US southern States and the Provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan was the best action plan Montucky could come up with. His final words on the subject “Report any sightings to us and DO NOT kill feral hogs in Montana!”

    Apparently the State of Montana is in the DILLIGAF operations mode.

    It appears that the State and the ranchers are hoping to generate revenue from tags, permits and guided hunts.

    • I live in western MT and yes, it’s illegal to shoot a feral hog. MT doesn’t have a “small game” season like most states. You don’t need any permit or license to shoot varmints, rabbits, hares, squirrels, gophers, prairie dogs, badgers, foxes, skunks. You can shoot coyotes at night with a thermal sighted registered suppressed machine gun if you have one. No hunting license required. Fish Wildlife and Parks told me they made feral hog hunting illegal to prevent people from illegally introducing feral hogs for hunting purposes. By the way I have never seen a feral hog in MT.

      • “I live in western MT and yes, it’s illegal to shoot a feral hog.”

        Subsonic load in .308 or similar and keep your mouth shut… 🙂

    • Y’all are gonna have a serious problem in a few years. A sow can produce up to a dozen piglets twice a year, and the females in the litter will start breeding by the time they’re 8 months old. Good luck.

      • @Gunny

        Yes Sir, that’s why I preemptively asked Fish Wildlife and Parks about the impending invasion of feral swine. Making it illegal to shoot them as a means of controlling the introduction as an illegal “sport” animal is counter-productive…there are always selfish buffoons who want a private hunting preserve (besides, what could possibly go wrong?!?). Instead, let’s just fine the F**k out of any rancher, farmer, guide or schmoe who imports or introduces destructive non-native wildlife. A lifetime revocation of their hunting rights and serious fines are just a couple of ways to penalize their illegal, irresponsible behavior.

  11. Even though I have not personally seen them around here yet, Pictures have been taken of then just two red lights away from me. This in itself is a very good reason to have an AR.

  12. How the hell did they get into the Marquette, MI area and ONLY there?

    Sure, there are some pig farms in that area but there are others in the U.P. (ya der, eh?) but why would the feral pigs be concentrated in just that area? I mean, other than the fact that a little to the West they’d all be made into bacon at first sight?

    • Wondered that myself. Maybe the group that turned KI Sawdust into a tourist area, looking for some extra action?

      • “KI Sawdust”

        LOL! This has me rolling.

        All I can say is that I still know quite a number people ~two hours ENE who find meat hard to come by in the winter months but have their main hunting cabins down in Ontonagon.

        Get them over there and they’ll clean those pigs out in no time, and they’ll get clever about it out of desperation.

  13. I have to admit, hunting hogs looks like a lot of fun.

    excellent reason to have a .30 caliber, semiautomatic rifle or better yet a shotgun with standard capacity magazines.

    shotgun slugs might provide more immediate gratification, but heavy buckshot would yield a better lethality rate for helicopter hunting.

    finally, just for sh1ts and giggles, Governor Perry could have a bunch hogs tranquilized, loaded up in cattle trucks, then hauled to democrat cities. imagine a hundred semis with a hundred hogs each pulling into New York City or Chicago to unleash ten thousand hogs upon the local denizens.

  14. After watching those attack videos, I’m thinking .30 cal. miniguns. Take out a whole sounder in one pass.
    You know, they are now having these same problems in Italy, where boar have taken over towns and are very aggressive. I don’t understand why there are so few tags issued to kill them.
    I understand they have a fair number of hogs up here in Northern California, but the only person I know who has eaten one said that because they eat mostly acorns (isn’t much else in this arid climate) they taste terrible.

    • Killed many hogs with a 22 caliber rifle from as far as 50 feet back on the farm. 1 well placed shot behind the ear kills them stone dead.

    • hogs show up around here from time to time, haven’t had any problem taking them out with a standard MSR and 5.56. Give ’em to a local butcher shop for the butchering and we donate the meat to the needy. Here, outside city limits, you can shoot them where you find them any time and no hunting license needed.

  15. Now how weird is that. Just the other day I was on the Northeast side of the Nations when I’ saw the first wild hog that I’ve seen in Ks. He(I think, might have been a transpig?) was moving right along, my car scarred it. .357 loaded with 124gr hp.38spl wouldn’t have done much good at 40 yards and counting. I can hunt pigs singly but I just cant do the kill the whole heard thing,wife kids and children, if we could discover the rice stores we could poison them too.
    Anyway I’m taking up hog hunting and it appears to be a unique hunting activity. Wish emu was cheaper.

        • I tried to get turned around and lost once (had a map and compass in my pack in case I was successful). I spent the whole day wandering around a big chunk of hilly forest chasing grouse and cottontails, and ended up back on the trail within a hundred yards of my truck at the end of the day. Haven’t worried about that since, although I’ve never traversed one of those southern gator swamps…

          Now as for confused, well, I’m married to a hysterical Hispanic woman, so that happens pretty regular.

        • I’ve been in brush so thick I couldn’t see more than a few feet in any direction. Once I found a clear patch I got myself back on track.

          My first wife was a white girl that was hysterical. They seem to come in all flavors. My keeper wife is white and the calmest person I’ve ever known. Kinda scary sometimes.

  16. Couple of things I learned hunting in Texas….

    A triangle between the base of the hog’s ear, the eye and the front of the shoulder is where I aim, and everyone I hit there drops and dies on the spot.

    The super pig thing is funny, those are normal feral pigs in Texas. Even if the Canadian education system is actually better the hogs don’t go to school here or there. They are the same animal except we crossbred ours a LONG time ago.

    Finally, Javelins are not hogs. They are distant cousins, a lot smaller and behave somewhat differently, and they stink way different.

    One more thing I pay for access to a deer lease in Texas, but am allowed on year round, hogs are fair game any time, as well as coyotes, bobcats and feral dogs. The hogs are smart animals but easier to hunt than east texas whitetails.

  17. Years ago someone thought it would be a good idea to go south, capture some wild hogs and turn them loose in the Great Smoky Mountains of western North Carolina and sell hunting tags for them. Of course they breed like pigs so now they are a serious pest, and tearing up the mountains. The last time I checked you cannot hunt them, instead the park hires “professional hunters” and pay them to hunt hogs. Needless to say this is doing nothing to reduce the population.
    The wonders of government worker logic.

  18. Say, where’s Rider Shooter been? I expected to see him chime in on this one. Maybe still snowed in and the wire’s down?

  19. Feral hogs aren’t nearly the problem it’s made out to be online. If it was, all the owners of all this supposed farmland that’s being destroyed wouldn’t charge a premium for you to come do their legwork.

    I’ll give the farmers credit though, it’s one hell of a grift. Like a dude ranch. You pay them to come do all their work. Heh.

    Now, do you know what is a real problem? The federal hogs. Make feral hogs look like kittens.

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