Wild Pigs on the Move - Coming Soon To A Front Yard Near You
Wild pigs love the oak lands of Central California and the foothills of the north. There they find cover, water, ample food and good shelter. Yet, they are leaving their home range in ever greater numbers for nearby agricultural lands and the manicured front lawns of small towns.
At least if one believes recent reports in several local newspapers. Farmers, ranchers and now also residents of Fresno County and around the Shasta-Tehama county line experience wild pig visitations in their yards more frequently than ever before.
In an article published in Redding Record Searchlight, Dylan Darling recounts the experience of Launi Bunnell, a resident of the small community of Cottonwood, California. (Dylan Darling, Published 9/16/2009 at 6:44 p.m, Redding Record Searchlight)
The barking family dog made Bunnell and her husband look outside. There they “found hogs on both their front and back lawns - digging as deep as a foot into the dirt . . . "They just rampaged," remarked Bunnell.
“She said there were 20 to 30 pigs in her front yard and about as many in the back. They were spooked off by the barks of the family’s dogs and gunshots fired by her husband, who killed one of the pigs.”
Residents of the small Cottonwood neighborhood estimate the herd of wild pigs to be up to 100 animals strong. Five or six residential lots were damaged by the hungry pigs tearing up lawns and turning once well kept front and back yards into a muddy mess for the first time in seven or eight years, neighbors say.
Frightening as the experience may be, it is not limited to Cottonwood. Jason Smith, a resident of Merced, California, relates a similar experience, according to an article by Carol Reiter published in late August 2009 in the Sacramento Bee. Smith hunts doves and pheasants with his dogs. He also hunts deer with bow and arrow. Just like many other hunters who have hunted deer and other big game as well as boar, he considers wild pigs the toughest to harvest because they are smart, quick and very cautious.
“I've seen groups of 40 pigs, you take one shot and that's the last you'll see of those pigs that day," writes Reiter quoting Jason Smith.
Many boar hunters can confirm the accuracy of this statement from own experience. It takes not much more than a clumsy, failed attempt at stalking or a missed shot and your desired prey is gone. For days, sometimes for weeks. Wild pigs have an uncanny ability to detect areas that are dangerous because of hunting. They stay away from them or turn more nocturnal than they normally are.
I remember hunting a private club ranch with wild pigs. Well, the pigs were either all harvested or had moved on to better and safer grounds. There was only one wily, old boar left. Many hunters spotted him from afar, but could not get close enough to have a fair chance at shooting him before he melted into the brush in the background. This boar used to come out only long after official shooting hours and retreat back into his sheltered home after only a few hours of cautious feeding and long before sunrise.
He eventually met his demise when some hunters waited him out or for some other reason caught him outside of his well protected home thicket.
But lawns in residential areas are not the only targets of raids by wild pigs. Agricultural areas suffer even more.
According to Carol Reiter, David Robinson, the agricultural commissioner for the County of Merced, related that “he's seen newly planted lawns completely destroyed by wild pigs. "They can also destroy an irrigation system overnight". And Harry Morse, information officer for the California Department of Fish and Game, is quoted by Reiter in the same article as lamenting:
“"The pigs are starting to come into orchards and vineyards and eating the leaves and the fruit . . . And they can actually root up the smaller trees, along with ruining the irrigation system."
Not to be outdone, wild pigs in Fresno County are also expanding their range by descending from the foothills into greener areas near human population centers. Under normal circumstances wild boar would rather stay up in the foothills and away from humans and their activities. Most of the damage inflicted by wild pigs is to rangeland and sources of water or water storage facilities. Nowadays, boar are leaving their home ranges and make themselves at home in eastern and western Fresno County where they raid vegetable farms, orange and almond groves. They also 'harvest' grapes in vineyards located in the valleys below the foothills.
Writing for the The Fresno Bee, Robert Rodriguez, quotes Rod Radtke, ranch manager at Harris Farms River Ranch near Sanger:
“We are one of the first green things they see when they come out of the foothills . . . And they have really taken advantage out here . . . "A big 300-pound pig will rub up against an almond tree and put a 30-degree lean on that tree . . . "
More than 200 wild pigs were killed on the farm in the past few years. But not before they could inflict heavy damage to crops. They ripped grapes off vines and oranges off low-hanging tree branches, broke sprinkler equipment by trampling on it. Ever so smart and creative boar also found their way into feeders and water troughs for horses bred on the ranch.
The result of the vigorous wild pig control program on the ranch?
“We have knocked them back quite a bit, but we know they are not gone completely,” says Radtke.
Why that? Why do traditional wild pig control methods not work so well?
I have discussed the answer to this question in several of my writings in the boar book and in the blog.
Fencing works for a while, but is expensive and needs the cooperation of all property owners in the area. Boar will eventually find a way through the fences and expand to new areas anyway. Trapping is another costly method with limited results. Wild pigs are too smart to fall for traps for very long. Once you got rid of the 'slow thinkers' among the pigs, traps will become ineffective as a means of controlling wild pig populations.
Hunting is the only method of controlling wild pig populations that has proven effective, short term and in the long run. I will talk about the disadvantages of hunting at the end of this post.
In preparation for his article Rodriguez interviewed Clu Cotter, a California Department of Fish and Game wildlife biologist in Fresno. Quote:
“They are great survivors . . . A farmer may be able to chase them away from coming around in the evening, but then they will just wait a while and start coming around at 2 a.m. They are very smart."
Fred Rinder, Fresno County Department of Agriculture's wildlife and weed management supervisor, told Rodriguez that pigs need three things "to survive .. food, water and shelter, and right now they can come into an orchard at night and by morning they will be gone . . . But you will know they have been there, because they tear things up."
Rinder also claims that over the past years wild pigs in California have become more and more like their original wild ancestors from Europe, the Middle East and Asia. European true boar characteristics, such as a long snout, raised hair along the back (the razorback) and greater aggression, are now represented in the hybrid wild pigs of California more than in the past.
Just exactly how many wild pigs live in California is any one's guess. Estimates go from a few hundred thousand to more than a million.
Most of them live in the wild pig belt of California in Central and Northern California where they prefer oak lands and oak-studded foothills. As long as the boar find enough food in their preferred habitat, they will happily remain there. Damage to agriculture and suburban areas thus is limited.
However, California has experienced drought conditions for several years. As a result food supplies in preferred pig habitat are limited. In fact, they are getting worse as the drought persists. Water shortage reduces acorn production in the oak belt.
Wild pigs fatten up for the winter by gorging on mast, mainly acorn. At times, acorn make up close to 90 percent of a boar's diet. A wild pig sow that is well fed on acorns will produce more offspring per litter in the spring. She also will most likely produce two litters per years. Higher numbers of piglets per litter and more litters mean more wild pigs the following year. That is good for hunters, hunting guides and hunting ranches but despised by about everyone else.
On the other hand, in the course of a few years fewer litters and less piglets will reduce the wild pig population considerably. Then the trend reverses. Boar will become less numerous, damage caused by wild pigs will become less severe. That's good new for ranchers and farmers, but bad news for hunting guides, hunting ranches and hunters.
We have seen cycles like this before in California. Right now we are going through the end of the phase of wild boar abundance. We are inexorably headed towards the other extreme when wild pigs will be few and far between.
Why can we not benefit from the current abundance of wild pigs and at the same time provide relief from pig damage for ranchers and farmers? In other words, why do ranchers not invite hunters to harvest as many boar on their property as possible thereby reducing damage to crops, the environment and to equipment? Why in the world would someone rather pay thousands of dollars to the operators of a helicopter with a 'shooter' (maybe with a machine gun) instead of just letting the friendly neighborhood hunter do the job?
I have written about this before. You can find my musings among my blog posts. So, please don't get me started on this subject. In a nutshell and without discussing the pro and con, we can say that a lethal combination of property laws and hunter conduct are at work. And I hasten to add that the latter is contributing as much to the issues as are income considerations by landowners.
In California landowners have an undisputed right to allow or deny the public access to their property . This provides the legal basis for access fees and their derivative, the guide fee, which is both an access fee and a fee for a service.
Their price for denial of access is damage to the land, the crops and to facilities unless they bring in the black helicopters and professional killers.
Hunters have an equally undisputed right to take wild pigs as long as they have a valid hunting license and the required pig tags. But they can do so only on public land or on land for which they hold a written access permit from the landowner.
They are paying for the transgressions of a few irresponsible, reckless and inconsiderate hunters with guide and trophy fees.
The vicious cycle starts right here: Fewer hunters, more wild pigs.
More wild boar, more damage to pay for.
The higher the wild pig predation, the more the black helicopters will cost.
While careless and untrustworthy hunters on one side, profit oriented guides and cautious landowners on the other prevent each other from breaking the vicious cycle, wild pigs are gobbling grapes, digging on dikes, plowing barley and vegetable fields and smashing their way through orchards and golf courses with equal ease.
Until the next good acorn drop. Then the survivors will return to the foothills to make the next wave of wild pigs to raid farms, ranches and urban front yards.
"They are just looking for food," said Bunnell in the article quoted above.
"These wild pigs are really hard to get rid of," Morse said to his interviewer.
"You're lucky if you get one pig a day," Morse laughed.
PJJ
PS: And you are lucky if you can watch the video on this website: Wild Pigs on a Rampage
