I'd also argue for permanent open season on roaming cats.
I haven't helped with hog control in 5+ years, but I'm interested to see how it's changed with the proliferation of NVDs and thermal optics. It would have made our jobs a lot easier, but the equipment was much more expensive back then - no one I knew at the time had better than gen2 technology.
They're considered dangerous to pets (mostly dogs, which probably started the fight) and I wouldn't get too close to them. But deadly encounters are extremely rare; way less than 1/year in a population of 80m humans and 2m pigs.
The ecological need is easy to understand, but turning it into a "sport" tells you a lot about the caliber of people we're living with. The people engaging in this activity are worse than poachers; at least poachers kill to earn a living.
There is a responsible way to manage a population. Shooting pigs to get a kick ain't it.
Which states would those be?
I can't decide if doing the same thing with pedophiles and CP moderation is terrible or not. My gut reaction is terrible but after hearing about how traumatizing it is for the people who do it maybe it's some kind of fucked up win win. Because I could straight up not do that job, but that job being done prevents real life abuse.
Sausage is yummy, and pigs do ecological damage.
Depends on a lot of things. Relative cruelty of poisoning vs. shooting the pigs; utility of hunters enjoying pig meat; costs & effectiveness of both strategies; etc.
I suspect you'd probably end up doing both.
On the other hand, it's a bit moot, because I don't think we know how to effectively poison pigs without greater harms. Texas was using specialty-warfarin in addition to the hunting efforts. It's arguably crueler than shooting them.
We definitely do trap wild pigs in many jurisdictions, but this is much less effective than shooting them, IMO.
From what I can recall, it's been tried, but had problems. The USDA has cyanide traps that are meant to kill boars (along with wolves and coyotes). In 2017, one of them killed a dog and injured a boy when the dog went after the trap. They're meant to shoot the cyanide into the animals mouth, but there's an area of effect apparently.
Laying out poisoned food tends to kill near everything in the forest.
The problem with most methods that don't involve humans is the inability to discriminate between problem species and normal species. It's hard to build a device that will kill boars but not deer or squirrels or whatever. Boars are big and hard to kill; most things in the forest are far more fragile.
Better have a chest freezer.
I've not actually done this myself, mind you, but I've enjoyed the hand-me-downs from this process.
If you enjoy undoing environmental damage, you're a psychopath!
A lot of people are drawn to it because it involves shooting semi automatics at fleeing pigs from a helicopter, without even gathering the meat.
Killing an animal for meat/hide/oil or as part of a cull is in a different universe from gleefully shooting at them as a form of entertainment.
>Yeah hunting is not in the same moral landscape as some of the Texas wild hog "hunts".
A hunt is a hunt.
>A lot of people are drawn to it because it involves shooting semi automatics at fleeing pigs from a helicopter, without even gathering the meat.
I don't know anyone loaded enough to dedicate a vehicle that can require up to 10 hours maintenance per flight hour to hog hunting on the regular, but I suppose with all the Cali money heading Texas' way that might be a thing. Fewer still who can even pull off a shot reliably/safely from that platform. That semi-automatics are used isn't even controversial. When you're dealing with a pest that isn't guaranteed to go down in one shot, you don't hanstring yourself with unnecessary handicaps. I also assure you, the maintenance and loading just for the firearm for the expedition is no small investment of time or resources.
Most land owners I know have a rifle and a truck, and even then, it's ususlly a dedicated field truck, because you do not want to get stuck out in bumf Texas. We still have areas you can effectively get lost in.
Stop romanticizing hunting (which is exactly what you're doing when kavetching about how people hunt). It's a fact of life, and an important part of ecological stewardship. If you don't handle hogs on your property when they become a problem, they just stick around and become someone else's.
If you'd like to share the address of your property, I'm fairly sure it would be no trouble at all to wrangle up a few specimens and ship em out to you so you can get hands on experience. Might want to warn your local gov and neighbors though. It can rapudly get out of hand...
You're right, but in the wrong direction. TX hog hunts are strictly necessary for the protection of agriculture.
> A lot of people are drawn to it because it involves shooting semi automatics at fleeing pigs from a helicopter
A) almost no one does it this way - too expensive. B) this does sound incredibly fun.
> without even gathering the meat.
This is not true. In many cases the meat is inedible (e.g. if they've eaten some kinds of fertilizer the fat turns blueish), but when it is edible, local farmhands will typically cook it. I've been to several mexican style barbecues with this meat.
> gleefully shooting at them as a form of entertainment
It's because they're incredibly destructive to agriculture (plants and animals). Where are you getting this from?
You don't need to be any of the things you mentioned to understand the problem with killing for entertainment.
Tend a garden.
You too will soon realize it's all a part of doing what comes naturally. Nature, as it turns out, laughs in the face of anything unwilling to speak the language of death.
Death wish, and its management is all a weird part of being alive, and in fact, it's channeling into productive active activity instead of straight up warfare is crucial to peaceful coexistence. It's one of the few things Freud may have actually kind of gotten right, tbqh. Heidigger calls it angst, and it's central to the concept of care, and by extension, to the act of Being.
It takes time to become comfortable with.