Bringin’ home the bacon

America has a hog problem. A very big hog problem. You could literally call it a plague upon our soil.

Texas carries the brunt of the hog dilemma with approximately 2.6 million feral hogs occupying 79 percent of Texas’ landscape.

In fact Texas has the largest estimated population of feral hogs existing in 253 of its 254 counties.

Feral hogs are an invasive, exotic species that cause approximately $52 million in damages to Texas agriculture producers annually. This estimate does not include damage to habitat used by native wildlife or suburban areas.

There are also additional annual expenditures of $7 million for repairing damage and/or controlling pigs.

A report from the USDA back in June of this year states that feral swine have been reported in at least 35 states and estimates that the total population is “more than six million and is rapidly expanding.”

The hog issue is not a recent problem. Trapping and hunting of hogs has been going on at an increasing level for more than 10 years.

Wild hogs are “opportunistic omnivores,” meaning they’ll eat most anything. Using their extra-long snouts, flattened and strengthened on the end by a plate of cartilage, they can root as deep as three feet.

Hogs have no real natural predators and to make things worse, a single sow can have two litters of four to eight piglets in 12-15 months, which compounds the population problem.

Feral pigs have incredible senses of smell and can be very aggressive. They can be extremely dangerous to people, particularly when the pigs travel in herds with their young, and should be avoided when possible.

Feral pigs living in the United States have been known to attack without provocation and fatally injure human beings.

Hogs also pass on diseases and parasites and can disrupt entire ecosystems.

Nationwide, all forms of damage are estimated to exceed 1 to 1.5 billion dollars annually.

Extension education directed at landowners focuses on the adoption of best management practices in order to abate wild pig damage.

To accomplish this goal, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension utilized one-on-one contacts, group educational meetings, method and result demonstrations, mass media and websites in order to disseminate research-based information to landowners in particular with a secondary audience of the general public.

Cass County AgriLife Extension Agent Jessica Rymel has been knee deep in hog talk since she arrived in May of 2018.

In her early research concerning feral hogs she learned about a $100,000 grant on pig abatement from Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service.

The next move by the extension office was to purchase a BoarBuster trap.

The BoarBuster is a research-based, cutting-edge trapping system developed as a solution for managing the nation’s exploding feral hog population.

Scientific research conducted over a four-year period by The Noble Research Institute demonstrates that the BoarBuster feral hog trapping system captures 88 percent of the animals in a given area, effectively reducing the overall population.

With that in the works Rymel included a bounty program dubbed the Wild Pig Abatement Program which took off in January of this year.

There is a rental fee that pays for the bounty program and helps with the associated costs such as a monthly cell phone plan in addition to casual maintenance and repairs.

In this manner, the pig abatement and education program will proceed without having to depend upon the county for support.

Rymel encourages landowners to sign up with their intention to participate with the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service and Cass County’s wild pig abatement program.

She also reached out to volunteers to help curb the growth of these pests here in Cass County by taking the BoarBuster to landowners.

In addition for each snout you bring in you receive a ticket which goes towards earning various outdoor equipment prizes such as tents, firearms, game cameras and more.

Eligible hogs will be sold to a live hog buyer. The money from the sale of these hogs will be added to the pool of money to support the bounty fund.

To use the trap, you have to be a Cass County property owner. To participate in the bounty, you must lease or own land in Cass County.

For any questions concerning the Cass County Wild Pig Abatement Program, contact Jessica at 903-756-5391.

You can also contact them on their Facebook page.