A question for those advocating hog control

[Ol' Gobblero]

I try my best to never drag a hog any further than out of sight of the road.

Buzzards, bald eagles, and all types of scavengers enjoy their flesh (all native wildlife -- except maybe for red foxes and coyotes).

Squirrels eat their bones and leave deer sheds for people to find.

Yes Virginia, killing feral hogs and leaving them to rot is perfectly ethical and is a good thing. If you took the time to drag every one, you would never kill enough to have a positive impact.

I agree 100%.

 

[sghoghunter]

I try my best to never drag a hog any further than out of sight of the road.

Buzzards, bald eagles, and all types of scavengers enjoy their flesh (all native wildlife -- except maybe for red foxes and coyotes).

Squirrels eat their bones and leave deer sheds for people to find.

Yes Virginia, killing feral hogs and leaving them to rot is perfectly ethical and is a good thing. If you took the time to drag every one, you would never kill enough to have a positive impact.

How many have you killed in the past week?We got 4 and yes we drug out everyone out.Who had the most postive impact.

 

[JAGER]

I was also really hoping that JAGER would respond to this thread...

This was such a good thread I did not want to post earlier and let the anti-JAGERs spin it off topic.

The hog population would be under control if all doggers would kill every hog they catch, if all trappers would kill every hog they trap and if all other hunters would harvest a hog at every available opportunity. It is impossible to eradicate feral hogs via hunting and trapping, but we can better control their numbers.

Our challenge is to effectively control them to the point where agricultural damage is minimal before a politician, USDA office or state law negatively affects hog hunting in Georgia.

We have killed 258 in the past five months to contribute our part of the solution. Still waiting on 100% participation from the rest of you.

---JAGER

 

[olcowman]

Tiger Rag must be some kind of wildlife biologists or something? You aint from up north are you?

Let me see here, your logic was "shoot the hogs and let em lay where they fall" or "maybe just wound em and watch em run off in the woods" wait..."I reckon you could drag em somewhere, but not too far, where they could be predated by native species only."(Lord, watch them sneaky fire ants, I think they might be foriegners & sure will eat your dead hogs up)
"Armadillos, hold up"... you aint made up your mind yet whether they are allowed around here or not. "Pheasants, definantly they gotta stay for sure, can't never be too many ringnecks around these parts." Is this really how you feel about Ga wildlife?

Were you raised to believe that leaving a trail of rotting carcasses in the woods behind you is cool or acceptable behaviour?

I hate to wade in on a fight I aint had my dog in, but this type of thinking is why we all 'vote' new members into our hunting club only after we spend a couple weekends getting to know them.

 

[Tiger Rag]

This was such a good thread I did not want to post earlier and let the anti-JAGERs spin it off topic.

The hog population would be under control if all doggers would kill every hog they catch, if all trappers would kill every hog they trap and if all other hunters would harvest a hog at every available opportunity. It is impossible to eradicate feral hogs via hunting and trapping, but we can better control their numbers.

Our challenge is to effectively control them to the point where agricultural damage is minimal before a politician, USDA office or state law negatively affects hog hunting in Georgia.

We have killed 258 in the past five months to contribute our part of the solution. Still waiting on 100% participation from the rest of you.

---JAGER

That is a reasonable and logical view of the situation in my view.

 

[Tiger Rag]

[You aint from up north are you?

NEGATIVE

Is this really how you feel about Ga wildlife?

YES

Were you raised to believe that leaving a trail of rotting carcasses in the woods behind you is cool or acceptable behaviour?

I surely wasn't raised to believe that hogs were a game animal worth managing FOR.

but this type of thinking is why we all 'vote' new members into our hunting club only after we spend a couple weekends getting to know them.

I would never endeavor to hunt with a club that protected hogs in any manner, so that would not be an issue.

Thanks for playing.

 

[Tiger Rag]

How many have you killed in the past week?We got 4 and yes we drug out everyone out.Who had the most postive impact.

I don't spend a lot of time in the woods pursuing hogs these days because I am not managing a piece of land at this very moment.

I assure you that as a land manager, I have facilitated the removal of more hogs over the past 10 years than you would ever imagine. I also assure you that this management strategy is still being pursued.

 

[SULLI]

i don't think you'll have to worry to much about getting in any club with the attitude you have. some of the statements you mad are absolutly rediculious, people like you are the reason hunters have such a bad reputation. i just hope that you never get the oppurtunity to spread these idiotic ideas to anybody else.....i would hate to see you start a kid out with these ideas you have come up with .

 

[Tiger Rag]

Sulli
It is all a matter of perspective. Hogs are not compatible with my land management objectives and are not even classified as wildlife in the state of GA, so any way that I choose to remove them is appropriate.

What if you were managing for hogs and determined that coyotes were having a severe negative impact on all of your efforts to grow hogs.

Would it be unethical to kill a coyote and leave him in the woods.

What if you had to kill 150 coyotes a week to be effective at mitigating the negative impacts. Should you find some way to utilize all 150 coyotes in order for it to be ethical.

It is all about the perspective.

I would like to see my children and your children be hunter-managers and have the health of the ecosystem and the habitat first and foremost in their mind when making any decision about changing the landscape or pulling the trigger.

 

[ejs1980]

Tiger what does a 150 dead hogs laying on the ground rotting do for the health of the ecosystem?

Every hog we killed last year got cleaned and either froze for later use given away to some friends or someone having a wild game dinner.

If we were ever truly down to the last hog why would you gut shoot it so it could run off and die a slow painful death. One hog can't do much damage you might as well let it die of old age since there's no way for it to reproduce.

Could at least let us hog doggers take turns running it. I don't think they are ever going to be eradicated. They are found in 38 states and growing.

 

[olcowman]

i don't think you'll have to worry to much about getting in any club with the attitude you have. some of the statements you mad are absolutly rediculious, people like you are the reason hunters have such a bad reputation. i just hope that you never get the oppurtunity to spread these idiotic ideas to anybody else.....i would hate to see you start a kid out with these ideas you have come up with .

I wouldn't worry to much about anyone hiring him to do any land management either.

It wasn't just the over the top, overly dramatized statements about killing every last feral hog in the state and letting 'em rot (as I know some folks that are real passionate about removing them from our eco-system myself), but the more he offers up his inane and illogical ideas concerning controlling certain other animal species...well it's pretty obvious we are dealing with someone who's either out here to stir the pot or is not carrying a full clip?

I do not belong to a club that is 100% against hog killing by no means, but the clubs I hunt and my own property is 100% off limits to anyone who has no regards for acceptable ethics and reasonable harvest practices. I doubt if any club in the state would welcome an individual who personally thinks he can snub generations of sportsmanship and the stewardship of our fellow creatures simply because he harbors extreme prejudice toward certain creatures of non-native origins.

There is a heap of other plants and animals out there that don't belong in Ga, and costs farmers and consumers alot more than hogs. Why don't you focus all this energy on fire ants or china berry trees or something. That way when you popped up on a forum spouting your hatred for these invading devils and your intentions of squashing the guts out of them or chopping them down and leaving 'em laying in a pile of their own sawdust.....you'll look like some kind of eco-hero, instead of creeping folks out and making them nervous about sharing the woods with you.

 

[Ol' Gobblero]

I agree with Tiger 100 %. I believe that the reason we both agree is that we both appear to be educated in the wildlife field. We are taught to look at things from a management perspective. Sometimes a management point of view forces you to overlook "ethics" every now and then, although not perferred. True land managers will guard native wildlife to the full extent, even if it means compromising an exotic species every now and then. With all the time any money spent by our grandfathers and fathers to restore native WT deer and turkey populations, I would hate to see it go to waste because of an introduced species, regardless of how they got here. Nothing personal against non college grads, just that we are all looking at this feral hog issue from two different perspectives. I agree that they are fun to hunt and would love for my future children to be able to hunt them, but I feel that my kids will have just as much fun hunting the natives, i.e. deer, turkey, dove, and squirrel. We are all in no position to cause a divide between the hunting community, especially on the subject of hog control. Those wanting hogs to stick around can do their thing and us advocating their erradication will do ours, and the population will balance itself out.

 

[Eddy M.]

Sticker, you have the right to think that hogs should not be eradicated but I think you should realize just why it is that others think that they should be eradicated. The reason they want them eradicated is because in the real world they are costing them thousands and thousands of dollars. You don’t want them eradicated because you like to chase them around for amusement. Ok now who has a more compelling argument?

Just how much money do you think that hogs cost a farmer? Hogs can easily cost a large row crop farmer upwards of $30,000+/year. If something was taking $30,000+/year from you, would you not eradicate it if you had the chance? IMO the hog hunters that want to get so defensive about this thread are being a bit childish and bullheaded by their unwillingness to understand where the other side is coming from.

WELL STATED

 

[JAGER]

I posted my response to a new thread titled, "The Future of Georgia Hog Hunting".

---JAGER

 

[gigem]

Yall got to be kidding me! All of all act like hogs are taking over the world. Yall probabaly get up in the morning and eat bacon with your eggs. I manage land too. 3,000 acres in fortvalley georgia. I have dedicated my life to managing wild life all over north flordia and south georgia and now in fortvalley. And yes i am a hog dogger at heart. But our main objective is deer, turkey and quail. Some people on this thread act like hogs are the only ones that cause crop damage. And yes i have caught and released hogs but only in our 1,400 acre high fence encloser. There are about 126 trophy boars in this encloser. We spend 1,000's of dollars planting food plots to grow world class bucks in this high fenced operation.
There are 7 of us that live and work on this property 7 days a week. On paper we have about 246 white tail deer in this operation. Now do yall think that if hogs were as bad as some people on this thread make them out to be, we would jeoperdize our jobs and family over a hog. I am not saying they do not cause any damage because they do. But not near as much as yall are making it out to be while yall are probabaly walking outside to check the coals that is under the hog that yall are cooking for the 4th of July.

 

[Eddy M.]

Yall got to be kidding me! All of all act like hogs are taking over the world. Yall probabaly get up in the morning and eat bacon with your eggs. I manage land too. 3,000 acres in fortvalley georgia. I have dedicated my life to managing wild life all over north flordia and south georgia and now in fortvalley. And yes i am a hog dogger at heart. But our main objective is deer, turkey and quail. Some people on this thread act like hogs are the only ones that cause crop damage. And yes i have caught and released hogs but only in our 1,400 acre high fence encloser. There are about 126 trophy boars in this encloser. We spend 1,000's of dollars planting food plots to grow world class bucks in this high fenced operation.
There are 7 of us that live and work on this property 7 days a week. On paper we have about 246 white tail deer in this operation. Now do yall think that if hogs were as bad as some people on this thread make them out to be, we would jeoperdize our jobs and family over a hog. I am not saying they do not cause any damage because they do. But not near as much as yall are making it out to be while yall are probabaly walking outside to check the coals that is under the hog that yall are cooking for the 4th of July.

managing land for hunting / managing land for farmingbig difference in my opinion-- managing for hunting hogs are great-- destroying farm land / crops -- hogs are bad news I understand why any farmer could want them eliminated

 

[gigem]

So you have misunderstood me, we farm as well as manage, corn soy beans and pecans, to off set alot of our cost. How much land do you farm or anybody else that is on here talking about doing away with all hogs? What i am saying if the hogs were taking away from the deer, which is how we make our living they would be done away with but that is not the case. Alot of these people on this forum hunt on the weekends and see the evidence of the hogs because there is no mistaken where hogs feed, they make a mess when they feed. It dont take rocket science to figure out where a hog feeds but that is all people see. We hunt with night vision three times a week when we are not running track dogs on the weekends. We take care of 1,000s of arces of land the area i live in. I see 10 times of more deer than i do hogs. I come from a farming back ground, if the hogs were that bad i would probably agree with you people. But 80 percent of yall are not out there in the fields everyday, you go by what you hear and read which is not always the case. Managing for wildlife and for food is the same thing, if the hogs mess it up we want have trophy deer and we want eat. That is not the case in any of the land that i take care of! We caught more hogs 12 years ago then we ever thought about catching today.

 

[olcowman]

we farm as well as manage, corn soy beans and pecans, to off set alot of our cost. Alot of these people on this forum hunt on the weekends and see the evidence of the hogs because there is no mistaken where hogs feed, they make a mess when they feed. It dont take rocket science to figure out where a hog feeds but that is all people see. I see 10 times of more deer than i do hogs. I come from a farming back ground, if the hogs were that bad i would probably agree with you people. But 80 percent of yall are not out there in the fields everyday, you go by what you hear and read which is not always the case. Managing for wildlife and for food is the same thing, if the hogs mess it up we want have trophy deer and we want eat. That is not the case in any of the land that i take care of! We caught more hogs 12 years ago then we ever thought about catching today.

Up until 5 years ago I had spent my entire life involved with farming and never in 30+ years have I had any sort of significant problems involving hogs or deer. Nor have I ever solicitated any government agency for funds to replace income lost due to wildlife depradation.

I would venture to guess that much of the talk on the web about hogs totally destroying the lives of farmers everywhere is like alot of other stuff on here, either very inflated or someone's personal opinion that has been spread as a scientific fact.And I have to heartily agree with Gigem on the fact that there has been a noticable decline in hogs both where I have farmed and hunted, esp on our acreages along the Flint following the floods of 1994.

 

[SULLI]

well said gigem. all you keep talking about managing wildlife, well doe management is a big part of that,tiger if you had 50 does that needed to be taken off of your property for management purposes would you gut shoot them too? i'm acutually kinda scared to hear your anwser.... and as for your coyote quistion i would shoot or have a trapper come in who would skin then and utilize every part they could..... i mean get real you can't acutully belieave that shooting something and leaving it to rot is the ethical thing ti do ,game animal or not.....

 

[Jack Ryan]

Thank you for proving my point. If an animal is eating up money, you would want him DEAD. No more of them.

Hogs eat crops that generate money. I'd like to shoot the last one to take care of the problem.

I've always wondered why people who want to be rid of hogs don't kill them with those clay pigeons? Hogs eat them like crazy.

If I want to kill hogs, I'd be having a trap shoot all the time.