Late winter provides best shot at feral hogs
The crackle of breaking ice gave away the wild pigs’ location even before the sounder shouldered out of the dark stand of flooded cattails and onto the bare, muddy levee.
In the low-angle light of this freezing January dawn, the group — three adult sows with their half-grown broods — fairly glistened, hairy bodies coated with a thin sheen of white as the water on their sides, faces and legs hardened.
I watched from maybe 20 yards away as one frost-faced sow greedily munched a cattail stalk, the thin sustenance gained from shoving her head through the frozen surface of a half-foot of ice-covered water and using her stout, warty snout to root the plant’s base loose from the soil so she could devour the corms around its base.
The pigs were hungry and looked it. No other reason to be wallowing in an ice-coated marsh on a frigid winter day when the only reward to be gained was the small, minimally nutritious cattail corms and rhizomes that the hogs could never consume in enough quantity to offset the energy expended in their pursuit.
But there was little else for them. The crop of acorns from the live oaks that grew on the narrow cheniers veining the coastal marsh, and the water oaks and southern red oaks upland farther inland, were gone. So, too, were the tiny hackberries, persimmons, wolfberries and just about every other form of hard and soft mast on which the feral hogs had feasted during autumn. The choicest tubers and roots have been hit hard, and now it’s down to cattails and whatever else they can find.
Times were tough. Fall’s abundance had turned to winter’s poverty, as it always does. The landscape was as bare of forage as it was of foliage, stripped by the cruelest season. And for the coming couple of months, until March and April bring a flush of new life, both plant and animal, the pigs would have to hustle for every mouthful. Most vulnerable time
Feral hogs may be the ultimate omnivore, able to survive on just about anything or seemingly nothing under any weather conditions. But even these porcine versions of cockroaches have to deal with winter.
This, as harsh as it might sound, is good news. Winter leaves Texas’ wild hogs at their most vulnerable. And Texas hunters who pursue these invasive swine — these non-native hogs that are a pestilence on the landscape — can use winter’s effects on the pigs and the land on which they live to greatly increase their odds of successfully removing many of them. And, in the bargain, the hunters get to extend their hunting season, spend time afield and collect the makings of some of the best pork to ever grace a plate.
There is no shortage in Texas of feral hogs or opportunity to hunt them. Texas holds two million to three million feral hogs, the most of any state. They are classified as non-native invasives and as such can be hunted any time, day or night, with no bag limits and no restrictions other than a requirement that hunters possess a valid hunting licence. Costly damage
The economic and environmental reasons to smite them — as many of them as possible — with no quarter are well-documented and known to most Texans. The pigs are annually responsible for an estimated minimum of $52 million dollars in damage to agriculture and real property in Texas. Texas landowners spend at least $7 million a year trying to repair hog damage. Nationwide, collisions with feral hogs annually cause an estimated $36 million in motor vehicle damage.
The pigs are environmentally and ecologically devastating. They compete directly with native wildlife such as white-tailed deer, damage watersheds and the life in them, and carry and transmit diseases that affect wildlife, livestock and humans.
The pigs also take a significant direct toll on native wildlife. Although only 10 percent of their diet is animal matter, that constitutes a staggering total. One study found a population of 3,000 wild pigs annually consumes 3.16 million reptiles and amphibians — snakes, lizards, salamanders, frogs, turtle eggs. In another study, one Texas feral hog was found with 49 eastern spadefoot toads in its stomach.
Feral hogs are opportunistic predators, and they will plunder nests of quail, turkey, meadowlark and other ground-nesting birds. Research involving remote-camera monitoring indicated as much as 10-25 percent of quail nests are lost to hog predation in some areas holding high pig populations. A correlation between high feral hog population and low or no turkey nesting success has been documented in several studies.
Removing feral hogs — shooting or trapping them, currently the only legal methods of reducing the wild hog population — is a benefit across the board. And no time of year is more amenable to helping hunters and trappers do just that than the coming couple of months.
During late winter, landscape conditions and the hogs’ behavior work in hunters’ favor.
The lack of vegetative cover from January into March gives hunters the advantage of making feral hogs easier to see and more visible at longer distances. Benefits for pig hunters are obvious.
It’s likely those pigs will be moving more during late winter than other times of the year, too. The pigs are having to hustle to find food, and that leads them to spent more time travelling across the landscape and moving farther distances that during other times of the year. That increases a hunter’s odds of seeing the animals.
Also, the dearth of a dependable food supply and feral hogs’ piggishness when they find a rich foraging area can be exploited by hunters and trappers. Feral hogs can attracted and held (kind of ) to a particular area — in front of a hunting stand, into a hog trap — through baiting.
While baiting — providing an artificial food source such as shelled corn — is a commonly used, year-round tactic for hunting and trapping feral hogs, it can be especially effective during late winter when natural forage is scarce.
One of the most effective late-season tactics for pig hunters is to set up automatic feeders in areas hogs are known to frequent, set the feeders to distribute corn or other feed two times a day, usually around or just after sunrise and again one or two hours before sunset. Then use remote-sensing cameras to monitor the feeder for a week or so.
Almost invariably, once feral hogs find the free food — and they will find it — they will continue to visit the location as long as it’s providing that forage. More often than not, the pigs will make their visit to the feeder at or around the same time each day. Monitoring a remote sensing camera set to record wildlife visits to the feeder can inform a hunter when the pigs typically arrive. That information can be crucial to planning when to be in the stand to have the highest odds of encountering hogs.
The same works with live-trapping set-ups. To improve odds of catching the largest number of hogs in a single trap, it’s best to “pre-bait” the trap, leaving the trap’s door or gate open or otherwise disabling the device. Refresh the bait every day or every few days, using the remote-sensing camera to reveal if feral hogs are using the trap/ pen and if it’s being visited by solitary boars or multipig sounders of adult sows with their offspring. That information is crucial to deciding when to arm the trap for best odds of catching targeted pigs.
Information — understanding pig behavior and proven methods and tactics for dealing with them — is a key to successfully taking advantage of the opportunities late winter provides. There’s no better, more comprehensive source for this information than Texas A&M University’s AgriLife Extension Service. AgriLife staff have more hands-on experience with feral hogs than any other group in the state, and their insights are a treasure throve of hog-related information for Texas hunters and landowners. Texas AgriLife’s Wild Pig Management Series of videos is outstanding. The videos and other information can be access through agrilifeextension.tamu. edu/solutions/feral-hogs/ Good timing
Feral hogs’ increased vulnerability comes at an opportune time for Texas hunters. The general white-tailed deer hunting season in South Texas closed Jan. 21, two weeks after the general season close in the rest of the state.
Feral hogs give those hunters an excuse — a reason, really — to extend their time afield for another couple of months. Their chances of success are better between now and spring “green up” than any other time of year.
And, more important, any feral hog they take off the Texas landscape now will be one that doesn’t drop a liter of a half-dozen piglets this spring, dig up and devour box turtle eggs, prey on a quail or turkey nest or compete with whitetail fawns for food this summer or root up a pasture and cause a landowner thousands of dollars in damage to haying equipment come haying time.
The next two months or so mark the hardest season for Texas’ feral hogs. Texas hunters should take advantage of the opportunity to make it even harder.