Feral hogs came to the US with European settlers, and have been on the landscape ever since. They鈥檙e the exact same species that humans keep in captivity for meat consumption. But NC Wildlife Biologist Falyn Owens says they鈥檝e spread in the wild a lot more since the 1950s.
"A big part of it is also the intentional transportation and release of pigs for hunting purposes. Pigs being brought from one place to a completely different place so that people have an opportunity to recreationally hunt feral swine," Owens said.
And that鈥檚 a big problem, they say, because hogs are terrible for the environment and farmers alike. They eat everything, chase off other animals, and carry diseases that infect livestock and humans.
"Feral pigs, cause a lot of ecological damage and monetary damage for farmers," Owens said. "But at the same time, in order to hunt pigs, there have to be pigs there to begin with. So there's an incentive to have pigs on the landscape in order to hunt them."
And once they鈥檙e on the landscape, it鈥檚 challenging to remove them. The Federal government started a USDA program to control feral swine in 2014: Randy Pulley is one of its employees, and he is, more or less, at war with feral hogs in rural North Carolina.
"Hog trapping is it takes a lot of patience, because we don't want to educate them," he explained. "Don't want to catch half the group and educate the other half.鈥�
Educate them, as in unintentionally teach the remaining hogs how to avoid capture. Yes, hogs are that smart.
Pulley uses corral traps on farmers鈥� properties: big circular cages with guillotine doors. There鈥檚 a camera watching them and his phone alerts him whenever something comes near 鈥� and he has a dozen or more he monitors each night.
"Say you got 10 pigs, seven go in, but three won't go won't go in. They're just hanging around the outside. You don't want to drop the door then," he explained. "What you want to do is keep re-baiting. Keep re-baiting. Maybe put a little bit of corn outside the door, because your goal is to get all 10 in one swipe. So none are educated. Because once you drop that door and a pig outside sees that 鈥� they're very smart. He's gonna, he's gonna learn that 鈥� it's ingrained in his mind. You'll never catch him in a trap again.鈥�
When that door falls, the entire sounder 鈥� that's what a family group of pigs is called 鈥� starts sprinting around the corral. Some are even strong enough to lift an edge of the cage, though Pulley said he鈥檇 never seen one escape from a trap that way.
Biologists say trapping is the most effective way to take out feral hogs: you can kill the entire group in one go. But Pulley said you need a lot of tools in your toolbox to do the job, particularly because hogs don鈥檛 care about the bait in traps during the growing season. Not to mention the educated hogs.
"I have some properties where corral traps, I know they don't work anymore. I can't even use a corral trap on that property, because they 鈥� the hogs leave. Pigs leave. So you have to adjust some properties. They're harassed so much using traps. It's not even a question. It's just, you know, take them out via firearm," he said.
That can be dangerous, though Pulley hasn鈥檛 been injured yet. He's seen the photos online, though 鈥� hogs have sharp tusks they can use to lacerate a hunter's legs, and the beasts are over 200 pounds, so they can knock a person over and trample them.
Still, Pulley and his colleagues have figured out how to hunt them as safely as possible.
"Going in a corn field, standing corn, when you can't see. You're going row to row. You're trying to get downwind of the pigs. You can hear them breaking. You got to you know you're trying to get to them without them knowing you're there. You can only see down one row at a time," he said.
Jammie Pearson is a farmer in Sampson County who almost gave up on row crops when hogs invaded his farm several years ago. He said it was like a hurricane hit his farm.
"Most of the bottom land was just, I gave up. You know, don't even mess with it. I mean, that sounds crazy, but I ain't talking about but 150 acres versus 1000 acres. You know, it don't take them long go across 250 acres," he said.
When the farmers plant in spring, the hogs will turn over an entire field to root out the corn seeds. Pearson sais they'll go at it like it's their job 鈥� ruining a planting. When it happened to him, he was desperate. And then he found out the USDA鈥檚 eradication program could help. Randy Pulley and his colleagues hunted hogs up and down all the creeks and waterways in the area, including all the neighboring properties. Pearson isn鈥檛 one to gas people up, but he couldn't help himself talking about Pulley.
"My hog problem has been over with for three years because of Randy," Pearson said. "I keep on saying that, because of Randy, yeah, not because man sat behind a desk, because of Randy.鈥�
By themselves, the best an individual farmer can try to do is push hogs off of their property -- knowing they're likely to come back. They can't eradicate the swine completely unless their neighbors get on board; but that's unlikely to happen if those neighbors are keen on maintaining a hog population for recreational hunting.
That's the situation Sampson County farmer Chris Matthis finds himself in.
"Some folks want to hunt them, and I understand that, but if everybody would agree to it, they could be eradicated," he said.
Matthis says the hogs aren鈥檛 just a threat to crops, either 鈥� they can harm livestock too.
鈥淭he disease that they carry, it could devastate the hog industry in this area, so that is a very, very big concern. And they also carry diseases that harm the cattle," he said.
Unfortunately, that are transmissible to humans as well, including Brucellosis, Leptospirosis, Tuberculosis, and more, according to biologist Falyn Owens.
"Anybody who knows enough about wildlife diseases and pig diseases is usually very reticent to consume feral swine meat because they really do carry a lot of nasty parasites and nasty diseases that human beings can get," Owens said.
That means these farmers don鈥檛 even get the benefit of meat for consumption from the work to eradicate the pests 鈥� though some do take the risk. It is pork, after all.
And feral hogs scare off other desirable game animals, . Deer and turkeys flee areas where feral hogs are prevalent, Matthis said.
"They hurt hunting of all other animals, because they do away with the food source for deer and turkey and other things that people like to hunt, other animals that people like to hunt," he said.
North Carolina, unlike at least seven other states, hasn鈥檛 banned recreational hog hunting. But a hunting ban would be the best way to prevent hogs from spreading, Owens said, because it would remove a prime incentive for keeping them around 鈥� or introducing them to areas where they don鈥檛 already exist.
"It really depends on the motivations of the land owner. if they if they like the hunting opportunity more than the negative impacts, then, you know, they might be less interested in actual eradication," Owens said.
But getting that ban in place in North Carolina has proved almost impossible so far.
"In a state like North Carolina, we have a pretty large population of feral swine and a pretty old, established culture of feral swine hunting," Owens said. "So it's challenging to institute the same methods that some other states are using, such as feral swine hunting bans, because of the cultural and socio-economic sort of benefits that some people have for having feral swine on the landscape."
Here in North Carolina, though, farmers are getting ready for planting season. And Pulley is getting ready for his busiest time of year: harrying feral hogs that are laying waste to North Carolina farmland.
"During the planting season is our busiest time, you know, I'm out four, sometimes five nights a week, weekends, according how many phone calls I get. So it's very, very busy, tiring for me as well,鈥� Pulley said.
He鈥檒l be waking up every time his phone goes off, late into the night, telling him hogs have entered his traps. Ready to help the farmers of North Carolina 鈥� though he knows it鈥檚 just a stopgap until true eradication is possible.
