Feral hogs becoming a nuisance for landowners

Jean Ann and Jack Pate stop to observe one of many feral hog feeding sites on their farm south of Newbern. The hogs apparently prefer to eat in areas where the soil has not been disturbed for a while. This part of the farm, covered in native warm-season grasses, is in a 10-year conservation reserve program. [Click to enlarge]

When Jack Pate tours his farmland these days, he always takes a rifle.

He never knows when he'll have to use it.

Vandals have been rooting up his fields, damaging his crops and even disconnecting his satellite television service. Why, they're absolute pigs.

Umm, make that feral hogs.

Jack and Jean Ann Pate, who live on Newbern-RoEllen Road about two miles south of Newbern, said as many as 40 boars, sows and pigs were seen in their field early one morning. Another evening, the Pates found about 20 hogs within a hundred yards of their home. Jack Pate killed one of them and he could have killed two more if only he'd been able to load his rifle fast enough in the dark.

The hogs, which are most active at night, snuck onto the farm in the summer of 2006 and began rooting through the corn crops. They knocked down the corn stalks and ate the corn. Because the damage couldn't be seen from the edge of the field, the farmers renting the Pates' land didn't realize there was a problem -- not until the harvest.

Since then, the Pates and their neighbors keep finding areas where the hogs have scratched the surface of the soil in search of food. The hogs have even been known to root through yards and unearthed the pole holding the Pates' satellite dish in position.

"The Feral Hog in Texas," a publication by Wildlife Biologist Rick Taylor of Texas Parks and Wildlife, reported feral hogs are omnivorous, eating grasses, forbs, roots and tubers, browse, acorns, fruits, bulbs and mushrooms, insects, snails, earthworms, reptiles, amphibians, carrion and live mammals and birds, if they have an opportunity to do so. Taylor noted that feral hogs are particularly fond of acorns, corn, milo, rice, wheat, soybeans, peanuts, potatoes, watermelons and cantaloupe.

Pate said he's noticed that the hogs tend to root in areas where the soil has not been disturbed. "When the soil has been freshly worked, they don't seem to bother it like they do with soil that has not been prepared," he said.

"At first," Jean Ann Pate said, "we thought, 'Oh, they'll go away.'" But, they haven't; they've become a bigger problem.

Jerry Pate said he's not sure where the hogs came from originally, but they are domestic hogs that either escaped or were let loose. Now, they apparently roam a home territory of 3,000-4,000 acres between Newbern-RoEllen Road and Old Jones Road.

"It seems they just get in one area and they'll feed here for a few days and then move on," Jerry Pate said. The hogs disappear for a few weeks and then return, cycling through several farms.

Farmers in the area have begun carrying guns on their combines, and one deer hunter has harvested at least five feral hogs. One man hunting on Jimmy Jones' family farm reportedly killed a sow that weighed about 250 pounds and boar that was bigger than that. Several of the harvested hogs have been pregnant. Hogs can produce two to three litters of pigs each year.

"See, that's a big problem," Jean Ann Pate said. "The sows can reproduce so many, so fast."

Jerry Pate created a large trap and baited it with corn, but the feral hogs have avoided stepping inside the contraption. They leave hoof prints all around it.

"When you're making a trap, you have to be smarter than the animal, but evidently I'm not," he said.

The Pates sought help from the Dyer County Extension Service and the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, but he was told that neither one has a program to help landowners with feral hogs. "Shooting is the only alternative that I know," he said.

To read the publication, "The Feral Hog in Texas," go online to: http://wildlife.tamu.edu/ publications/FeralHog_ inTexas4.pdf.