Wild Pigs in America

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Packs of wild pigs can tear up your lawn and garden. Nate Owens

Spec, Blake and I had gone to a barbecue joint in El Campo, Texas, where a good-sized crowd had gathered for the lunch buffet. Spec, who runs a local crop-dusting service, spotted an acquaintance standing in line and went up to say howdy.

The feller looked like he’d been in some sort of terrible accident, with deep scratches and puncture wounds all over his face and arms, and one eye swollen up. When Spec asked what on earth had happened, the man sheepishly admitted that he’d gone out hunting wild boars the night before. It seems he’d seen a TV show where hunters stalked and killed wild pigs in America with nothing more than a bowie knife, and he’d decided that would be an interesting thing to try.

Bobby Lee, we’ll call him, had come across a narrow burrow leading through a dense thicket of cactus and cholla. Just ahead, he could hear the boar snorting and snuffling. With his flashlight in one hand and bowie knife in the other, Bobby Lee began crawling through the thorny tunnel on his hands and knees. He’d progressed a few feet into the burrow when the narrow beam of the flashlight revealed a highly agitated 250-pound wild boar with tusks every bit as long as his knife. It was then that Bobby Lee realized he’d made an error in judgment. At the precise moment that the boar charged, our intrepid hunter hurled his body into the spiny walls of the burrow, leaving him more or less impaled on prickly pear and cholla spines.

Wild pigs in America: swine statistics

Fish and wildlife authorities say the wild pig population is literally out of control in many parts of the country. Texas is now home to an estimated two million wild or feral pigs, about half of the total U.S. population. Another half-million or more are found in Florida. And while the feral swine mainly live in rural areas and rough backcountry, homeowners in the Dallas suburbs of Arlington and Irvine have recently found packs of pigs tearing up their lawns and gardens, wallowing along riverbanks and streams, and even rooting for grubs on local golf courses. And the good folks are not amused.

Feral hogs are now found in 40 states, from Florida and Georgia north as far as Connecticut and New Hampshire. They thrive in much of California, as well as in Oregon, Idaho and Hawaii. They’ve also moved into Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and Wisconsin. Prolific breeders, wild boars can produce as many as three litters a year, with up to 10 piglets per litter. And they will kill and eat anything, including field crops, gardens, birds, chickens, turkeys, turtles, lambs and fawns. Researchers at Cornell University estimate they cause at least $800 million in annual losses.

The rooting behavior of the pigs causes ecological damage to streams, creek beds and ponds. They damage orchards, destroy saplings, and uproot native vegetation. In California, feral pigs were linked to an outbreak of E. coli in spinach crops that killed three people and sickened 200 others. And because they can carry diseases such as hog cholera, pseudorabies and brucellosis, the porkers can pose a health threat to domestic swine.