Texas has been fighting a war against wild hogs for decades. And the hogs appear to be winning.
As wideopenspaces.com reports,the Lone Star State has looked to a number of tactics to stem the tide of hogs. There are no regulations on how many hogs you can hunt, or when you can hunt them. You can do it at night, or from an airplane. You can even shoot them from a hot air balloon.
But all this pig killing hasn’t been enough. The feral pig population has dramatically increased since Texas Wildlife Services first began removing wild boars in 1982. There are now more than 10 times as many hogs in the state as there were 37 years ago.
The problem is, a single wild boar can produce as many as 24 piglets in a single year. And they’re smart, so they tend to leave an area when the going gets tough.
To simply keep wild pig populations at their current levels, Texans must kill seven out of every 10 pigs.