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Wild hogs are taking over

Steven Tucker with the MSU Extension Service said wild hogs are a “nuisance species” and explained how it will take a massive, coordinated effort to get the constantly growing population under control.

Tucker was the guest speaker at Monday’s annual Wildlife Tasting Dinner in Pittsboro where Billie Hitt earned top prize for the best wild hog dish, but Tucker explained you can’t eat them fast enough to prevent them from wreaking havoc on Mississippi agriculture and wildlife habitats.

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“They’ll eat anything – toads, a rat, snake, baby deer, anything on the ground, pine seedlings. They’re like a living vacuum cleaner,” Tucker said.
A wild hog will eat approximately 10 pounds of food a day, Tucker said. That’s nearly twice as much as white tail deer.
He showed slides where wild hogs had rooted up crops in machine-like fashion, destroyed the stability of levees along the Mississippi River, taken down trees, and were dangerous spreaders of disease to people, pets and livestock.

Tucker said in 1998 less than 4% of Mississippi had wild hogs. Today, nearly 50% of the state, from pine thickets in North Mississippi to the Gulf Coast beaches, is populated with the beasts that reproduce faster than they can be killed.
“They become sexually mature at 6-7 months and can have two litters per year, each with 4-6 piglets,” Tucker said. “The population can double each year.”
Tucker explained that once the hogs reach the 40 pound mark they have no real predators but man.

“Last year they harvested more pigs than deer in Louisiana,” Tucker said. “We don’t want to reach that point in Mississippi. We have to get these hogs under control.”
More than 50,000 wild hogs were killed in Mississippi in 2011 and that number continues to grow, but not enough. Tucker presented a chart on the growth of the hog population that showed 70% of all wild hogs must be killed every year to manage the population or it will increase at too fast a rate.
Tucker said there are currently no toxicants approved for controlling wild hogs. The only legal methods are “shooting, catch dogs and trapping.”

He demonstrated a number of traps that he finds effective, mostly corral-type traps, and invited everyone to visit the website wildpiginfo.com for more information.
The Extension Service provided the following five step process for trapping the very intelligent wild hog.

Step 1: Before ever building a trap, establish bait sites using whole-kernel, shelled corn every 100 to 200 acres across the property. Check the bait sites daily — late morning to mid-afternoon is best — to see if wild pigs have found the bait. Monitor each bait site with a game camera to determine when pigs have found the bait.

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Step 2: Once pigs have found one or more bait sites, remove all corn from any sites that pigs have not yet visited. Continue to bait and monitor the active sites for several days until you identify how many groups of pigs are using each site and how many pigs are in each group. Now you will know how many pigs you need to trap and remove, as well as what size of trap to build.

Step 3: Now it’s time to build the trap and begin conditioning the pigs to enter the enclosure. Tie open the trapdoor so that pigs are free to come and go. Do not place any corn outside the enclosure. Require pigs to go inside and get it. Continue monitoring the trap with the game camera. Patience is very important. Only when the entire group of pigs is readily entering and leaving the trap should you set it to catch. This may take several days, or it may take as long as a week.

Step 4: When preparing to set the trap, do not place corn just inside the door. Spread it in a shallow pile about 2 to 3 feet long along the sides of the enclosure. Place a half-gallon of corn over the root stick or behind the trip wire. The object is to buy some time for all of the pigs to enter the trap and draw them away from the door before it’s triggered. The trap door is triggered when feeding and rooting pigs push the root stick out from behind the set stakes. Continue trapping until you capture all of the pigs.

Step 5: Follow up by monitoring the property closely for pig activity. If you discover new groups of pigs, begin the five-step process all over again. You have to stay alert, or the problem can get out of hand again quickly.

Mississippi has specific laws regarding baiting and trapping wild pigs. Contact the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, & Parks or visit their website, www.mdwfp.com, to view wild pig trapping regulations and to obtain the necessary permits.


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