New Way To Control Damage From Wild Pigs? Not Really!

Feral pigs cause billions of damage to agricultural crops and to the environment every year. In the United States Texas endures the brunt of it. No wonder, they have the highest number of wild pigs of any state despite heroic efforts to get at the root of the problem.
Though intensive hunting is the best method of controlling wild pigs, it is not as successful as it could be. The reason are access restrictions to private land, State Parks and Nature Preserves that essentially provide safe havens for boar.

Wisconsin is experimenting with a “new” approach to wild pig control. Actually, it is not a new idea at all but rather an improved version of traditional ways of hunting on private land.
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources just published an updated version of the Wisconsin Damage and Abatement Claims Program (WDACP).

It provides two types of hunting opportunities for deer and wild pigs: Access during open season for a species and the Agricultural Deer Damage Shooting Permit.

Farmers can enroll in either of the programs. If they do, a “farmer must provide hunting access to the public for the species they are enrolled for (generally deer) during the regular open hunting season(s) for that species.”
They can choose from two options:

“Managed Access: The farmer can limit access to 2 hunters per 40 acres of land suitable for hunting. (The county damage specialist determines the amount of land suitable for hunting. Open fields are not considered land suitable for hunting). All hunters must ask permission of the farmer prior to hunting and must sign in on the farmer's log book. This is the most common option chosen by farmers.”

Ninety five percent of all farmers enrolled in the program participate under this option.

“Open Access: Any number of hunters may hunt on the farmer's land during the open season. All hunters must notify the farmer of their intent to hunt on the farmer's land.”

Farmer holding an Agricultural Damage Shooting Permit also have the option to provide some of their predation tags to hunters. The permit allows hunting inside and outside of the actual season for the game hunted.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources sums it up like this:

“Remember . . .
During the regular season - Farmers must allow a certain number of hunters access to their property to hunt.
Outside of the regular season - Farmers may allow you to help them fill their damage tags.
Farmers in either program cannot charge any fees for hunting.
Please be courteous to farmers! Call ahead to plan your hunt, and please refrain from calling them after 8 p.m.”

Sounds to me very much like it used to be in California in the good old times. Except that we did not have compulsory access numbers and regulations.
In theory California still has the liberal access regulations for hunting on private land. In practice, however, they do not exist any longer. Hunting has become big business for the State, landowners, private hunting clubs and guide services who have monopolized hunting access to private land almost completely. This is not likely to change soon.

All we can do is hearken back in nostalgia to times long past . . .

PJJ

Details are here: http://www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/land/wildlife/damage/