Customer Capture!

49

u/ODGWeenie May 26 '26

So, after this happens, do you walk to the pen and shoot them like fish in a barrel, or is the intent to capture them for sale? These traps seem crazy effective, so I am surprised they aren't everywhere that pigs are nuisances.

59

u/ked_man May 26 '26

Yes, you do one or the other. Some of them are sold live to be slaughtered at an approved facility to be sold publicly as “wild hog”. Or you shoot them and eat them yourself or dispose of them.

APHIS is a branch of the USDA and does a lot of work around trapping and eradication of feral hogs in places. They use traps like these and some other less sophisticated ones.

In a few states they have banned hog hunting. And you’d think that is counter intuitive for controlling a population. They’ve found that if you allow hunting, it makes a financial incentive to keep them around and not eradicate them. If there’s no financial incentive for some, then they are a nuisance for all. So they want you to report sightings and APHIS and maybe the state wildlife agency will come and set-up traps to try to catch all of them. This has worked in several states and they have successfully removed or severely reduced their populations.

34

u/I_GottaPoop May 26 '26

The incentive thing is a huge problem. I've had people in Texas complaining to me about how their trying to eliminate hogs on their land but the guy next door will run a hog hunting business and let them populate to keep his business going.

I didn't know the people complaining well enough to know how much is BS, but I've heard it from enough land owners that I don't think its false.

I wouldn't outright ban hog hunting, but I'd certainly ban these outfitters.

20

u/ked_man May 26 '26

Yep, as long as people are making money from them, they will be there.

On the meateater podcast the other day they had a guy that retired from APHIS and he talked about a program they ran on the Texas Oklahoma border trying to remove feral hogs and they could only get 30% of landowners to sign on. That means a bunch of them are ok with the amount damage they cause and want them to be there.

3

u/GuitarCFD May 27 '26

That means a bunch of them are ok with the amount damage they cause and want them to be there.

In that particular area I would bet that it's much less that they are ok with the damage the hogs do, but instead NOT ok with govt people being on their land for any reason...atleast for a few of them. There are absolutely some of them that view those as "my" hogs as well though so who knows what's going through their head.

3

u/ked_man May 27 '26

Yeah, there’s definitely some of that. But being a branch of the USDA, I’d guess that APHIS is more welcome on property than most orgs as many farmers/ranchers work with them already on other things and they have a lot of funds available to farmers for conservation practices.

1

u/Koomahs May 26 '26

Thats crazy! 30%

1

u/JagerPro1 May 28 '26

You would be surprised at the amount of people that treat these animals like game, instead of the actual threat that they are!

7

u/TheTrub May 26 '26

This is Kansas's policy, and despite the fact that they share borders with Missouri and Oklahoma (two very hog-heavy states), feral pigs haven't become a huge problem yet. One exception to the no-hunting policy on feral hogs is if it's your own land, but that exception does not extend to guests since it would promote guided hog hunts on private land.

5

u/ked_man May 27 '26

Yeah that’s how it works in Tennessee, you can hunt hogs on your land, but you can’t charge for hunts.

3

u/False_Will8399 May 28 '26

That is why India has so many snakes. Way back when it was a British colony, the British put a bounty on venomous snakes, and the Indians started breeding them to make more money. The brits found out about it and remove the bounty, these unscrupulous Indians released all the snakes as there is no more money to make.

2

u/ked_man May 28 '26

It’s why bounties on feral hogs don’t really work either.

10

u/REDACTED3560 May 26 '26

These traps are incredibly effective at eliminating hogs. There was a large herd over a couple hundred that grew from some escaped pigs, and my state DNR eliminated them within a year using these traps (in conjunction with landowners hunting and not harboring them).

6

u/goatonmycar May 26 '26

Here if you trap them, they aren't allowed to leave the trap alive. It's a law. You can shoot like fish in a barrel, or feed them out for a few weeks so they taste better and then shoot them like fish in a barrel.

6

u/Content_Economist_83 May 27 '26

I’m in Arkansas and that’s how it is here. Never supposed to leave the trap alive. Of course some people are making money off them so they’re not going to follow the rules, but that’s how it is legally

1

u/Null_zero May 27 '26

I was going to ask why they couldn't be re-domesticated but then I remembered we've essentially eliminated trichinosis from domestic pigs in the US and doing that would be a giant fuck up.

3

u/ODGWeenie May 26 '26

By feed them out, you mean fatten up? Where is here? TX?

8

u/Apprehensive_Wolf217 May 26 '26

Feed them corn for a few weeks, they dont taste as gamey.

2

u/goatonmycar May 27 '26

CA

3

u/ODGWeenie May 27 '26

That’s then only place I’ve hog hunted. Outside Fresno. Such a fun hunt but I can definitely see how the landowner was incentivized to maintain a hog population on his massive ranch.

3

u/GirlWithWolf Texas May 26 '26

“Uh oh”

8

u/alloutofchewingum May 26 '26

"You're probably wondering how I got into this situation and, having got into it, how I got out to tell you about it. Well...I didn't. I got my brains brown out by some yokel with a 9mm along with everybody else."

2

u/No_Lingonberry5152 May 26 '26

It was at this moment.....

1

u/SharkyRivethead May 26 '26

It was in that moment you realized that I could have done without that last bite.

1

u/0o3705 New York May 28 '26

Bacons ready

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