What's the deal with feral pigs?

You mean like Police Department Inspector Harold Francis "Dirty Harry" Callahan?

student of nature wrote:

They are omnivores and have been known to kill and eat mammals.

So, like, is Ted Nugent one?

well humans have domesticated pigs by artificially selecting for traits which they like, such as decreased aggressiveness, no tusks, increased meat and so on...if you put a pig into the wild it will not magically become a wild boar

they're big, mean ,nasty and hate everything to do with Christmas.

student of nature wrote:

These boars are genetically the same as domesticated pigs but once they get in the wild hormones and the environment causes them to grow tusks and become hairy?

They are omnivores and have been known to kill and eat mammals. Their territory is spreading and they have become a nuisance for farmers.

They get up to 500 pounds.

Shoot them. Dept of conservation in MO allows open season year round

It is true that in a very short time they become hairy and the tusks grow in the wild because their teeth aren't clipped at birth as they are in a farm environment.

It is well documented that a pig has a unique physiology that allows it to revert to wild type almost immediately on exposure to a natural environment.

Certainly within one generation of crossing with stock that has fully reverted or contains genuine wild boar genes, the offspring catch up pretty quickly.

Wild boars can live in severe cold conditions, as they do in Russia and northern Europe.

sounds like the dreaded manbearpig

Check it!

Hogzilla 2.

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.bfeedme.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/hogzilla-6-1-07.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.bfeedme.com/did-11-year-old-boy-kill-hogzilla/&h=338&w=500&sz=104&hl=en&start=3&um=1&tbnid=n4CNJOEsGinooM:&tbnh=88&tbnw=130&prev=

cat scratch fever wrote:

student of nature wrote:

They are omnivores and have been known to kill and eat mammals.

So, like, is Ted Nugent one?

Probably. It is how Will Feral started out.

wait 'til one of these black beasts kills a runner.

darwin wrote:

if you put a pig into the wild it will not magically become a wild boar

Not true at all. They do start to grow hair and tusks when they are released in the wild, and the shape of their skull changes.

SMJO wrote:

It is true that in a very short time they become hairy and the tusks grow in the wild because their teeth aren't clipped at birth as they are in a farm environment.

It is well documented that a pig has a unique physiology that allows it to revert to wild type almost immediately on exposure to a natural environment.

Certainly within one generation of crossing with stock that has fully reverted or contains genuine wild boar genes, the offspring catch up pretty quickly.

Wild boars can live in severe cold conditions, as they do in Russia and northern Europe.

Yes that is quite amazing

Has anybody ever seen one while running?

All I can remember in the scene in "Old Yeller" where ther kid falls from the tree and old yeller fights off the boars

Weren't they Javelina in Old Yeller?

So that's what they call them. I've had a blind date or two, which ended REALLY early, with them...my ex-friends had awful taste.

Just last week in Lapeer Michigan, I read about some young guys who were out duck hunting and ran across a 500 lb feral sow.

One guy shoots it with a 10 gauge with #2 steel shot at 30 yards. This angers the pig and it charges.

Shot #2 is to the head, the pig is still charging.

A third shot finally stopped the charging pig. They dragged it out with considerable effort and had a picture of the skull in the local paper (sort of a euro-mount) with half a dozen holes visible in the skull around the eyes from the #2 shot.

I watched a documentary on feral pigs on National Geographic the other day. The whole piece was centered around uncovering the truth about the size of fabled Hogzilla. The men that killed Hogzilla and buried the pig claimed that the pig was 12 feet long and weighed about 1000 lbs. Some scientists dug the pig up and found that it was about 7.5 feet long and probably weighed around 700-800 lbs. Still a huge pig, but far from 12 feet. The two men who killed the pig offered the following commentary:

Man 1: He was the one who measured it. I just helped bury it.

Man 2: I took a ruler to it and I swear it was 12 feet. I'm not lying.

They look like am UW LaCrosse coeds

Texas Parks and Wildlife Dept. has a saying: "There are two kinds of counties in Texas: Those infested with feral hogs, and those that will be infested with feral hogs."

I've seen them on runs in forests rather close to heavily populated areas, usually in groups. One time I was taking a dump in a small meadow on the middle of a run and got caught with my pants down as two of them came out to the other side and sniffed around. They came within 10 meters of me, stopped, and turned back. Didn't see me (they have poor eyesight unless you're moving), but it was scary enough to be that close.