Feral Pigs Spread Across Britain

a reply to: Kester

I couldn't pass this up. Got to admit this is the first I have heard of the porcine age - when pigs ruled the world.

It was a lot of fun searching around and reading about this. From your link

The animals, known as lystrosaurs, were among the only survivors of the greatest mass extinction event the world has ever seen - around 251 million years ago. Around 95 per cent of all living species were wiped out by a series of volcanic eruptions but the lystrosaurs, which were similar a size as modern pigs, with snouts and small tusks for rooting around in vegetation, survived.

They were like the cockroaches of their time. It wouldn't surprise me to see this happen again.

Enjoy hunting wild boar. When they overrun the earth, they will be hunting you.

I've seen a broad-head arrow fired from a bow with 90 pounds of draw ricochet off a 500 pound boar.
He was pissed off pretty good and charged my brother and I.
I put a .44 magnum slug between its eyes.

a reply to: TheRedneck

You know we're goin' pig huntin' when, or if, we ever get there... Damned house.

I've hunted pig once, and it was one of the scariest moments in my life...he surely did taste good though.

I'll never hunt with a handgun, again.

a reply to: toms54

At least we'll have pork, and bacon!!

a reply to: seagull

I dunno, the right handgun maybe... as in a TC 30-30.

With the .444 as backup.

TheRedneck

a reply to: seagull

The perfect time for a saddle gun, a lever action Winchester 94 short rifle. I don't own one anymore, but in the brush or on horseback that's the gun I'd want in hand. Two or three rounds in short order and easy to handle.

a reply to: TheRedneck

Yes. The right gun being the operative word.

I didn't...

It was a .357 desert eagle. Lovely gun. I've thought many times of buying one...

But it just doesn't work on pig, especially big, very angry ones. One mistake, other than the gun, and that pig would have been all over me--I'd have been badly hurt, assuming I walked away at all.

I remember when I first heard they were introducing the pigs to the woods... my first thought is those do gooder idiots.

You cannot introduce a species that breeds that quickly without having a natural predator or a robust hunting season.

a reply to: Irishhaf

Like year 'round.

Where they introduce 'em deliberately?? How stupid are these people?

a reply to: seagull

A .357 is good for dogs, coyotes, cats, even a black bear (won't kill it but it'll make it want to go away very badly)... but not a hog. For that you need serious firepower.

I talked to a guy one time that was treed by a pack of those hogs in the next valley. He shot the first one, but as soon as it fell he saw about twenty more charging him. He quickly scaled a tree and sat and watched as they ate the shot hog and screamed up at him. He was there for almost 24 hours before he got the nerve to come down and run back to his truck.

TheRedneck

a reply to: Irishhaf

I think we need a new regulation... anyone who wants to relocate a species must first spend the night in a cage with them, tied to a tree trunk. If they survive, they can do the relocation.

TheRedneck

Had dreams once about having to find meat in a world where big huge 1200lb= Pigs with massive tusks ruled the roost....had no weapons and hungry people....learned to dig narrow pits then bait them...stupid Pigs...don't believe everything you read Pigs are generally stupid....they go in and eat the bait and then have a hard time backing out because there is not enough room to turn around in.....all you do is block their egress....and dispatch using easiest method...rocks...sharp things...I graduated to a wire cable snare combined with the modified pit.

You have to shoot hog just so, in order to drop it. Their skull is extremely tough, since it's built for boar-on-boar dueling.

I was out whitetail hunting 2 years ago with my oldest son. We were hunting from the top of a little cliff, like 4 stories above a bend in a "river" ( or creek, outside of Texas). A single black boar came trotting from right to left across our shooting lane, about 80 yards out. He was grunting and huffing and generally raising hell as heh trotted. My son was using 7.62x39. He shot the pig low behind the shoulder, where you would drop a deer. The hog never broke stride. We know it was a hit because after he hit him, the hog's tone went up an octave. But we didn't find blood, and certainly never found a hog carcass in the following days while were tracking down deer.

I've been told by guys who hunt them as pros that you have to hit them right behind the ear, to drop em.

originally posted by: RAY1990
a reply to: Lysergic


The issue is a bow is seen as inhumane, hell even shooting vermin should be done humanely in the eyes of the law. The weapon should be of sufficient power, have enough shots to the competence of the shooter and ideally the shooter should have an alternative way of dispatching the critter at close range as to not prolong suffering.


It's a pickle really, most people (city dwellers) don't care except when animal cruelty happens.

I hear you.

I will say that I've seen a lot more deer wounded and running from a bad rifle shot than from a bad bowshot. Most pavement-dwellers think you ought to shoot with a gun big enough to "drop it where it stands." But that is an obscene waste of meat. Any gun .45 cal or smaller will not reliably drop a human with 1 bullet. The stats from police gun-battles and from home invasions show you should always double tap with .45 and under, waiting 1 second between shots for the perp to register in his brain-stem that he has just been hit.

The fact is that living animals, prey animals, were not born to be killed. They were born to survive any injury, to keep on struggling, regardless of how long the odds are against them. Death is a process, and it's only instantaneous on TV. So unless you use a cannon, unless you completely remove the contest from hunting, there is always a chance that an animal will survive your attack, or at least crawl away and hole up.

More and more city slickers are hunting southern whitetails with a 7mm Mag. The whole shoulder just turns to meat jelly--an inedible mush. They use bigger caliber, thinking it will make up for a lack of skill. Many hunters do not target shoot except the month before the season starts. If they miss a deer, or merely wound it, they assume their gun "isn't big enough" (apologies to Sigmund Freud!) and try to use technology to overcome lack of ability.

I love to bow hunt. I will use a rifle to fill my freezer; but the real hunting is with a bow. And I am getting more and more into primitive archery. I don't use a lens, or even a sight. But I love stalking, and stalk to within 25 yards, my own personal requirement before loosing an arrow at something. I've never hit one with an arrow that I didn't recover it within 18 hours, the animal probably expiring within the first hour of impact.

I respect the pavement-dwellers and their right to their opinions, even when I cannot respect the opinion itself. Most of them have never thought about it for more than 5 minutes. Usually, the worse their opinions, the less time they spend in the wild. They are unaware of the web of an ecosystem they are witnessing--they just like the "cute" furry mammals at the top of the pyramid. They object to humans participating in the web, because "it's cruel." They have no idea of how cruel nature is.

No deer dies of old age. There are no old-folks homes for mountain goats, or elk. No senior care facilities for rabbits and squirrels.

The fact is, every prey animal dies from pretty much 1 of four causes: freezing to death, starving to death, dying of infection, or being torn limb from limb while still breathing by some predator, usually canine. (but could be feline or porcine for that matter.). When I compare those fates, versus being shot in the heart with a broadhead arrow or a rifle bullet, I can tell you the human -caused death seems almost like a mercy killing.

a reply to: Strate8

We've plenty of experience culling, screwing up culling and we've plenty of invasive species.

It's the law and courts that's mainly the issue, without taking sides in the issue I'll just say it's a historic fact that hunting has always been an issue.

Historically well kept lands too, hunting was usually a privilege not a right.

Typically today, if a species is considered invasive, a pest or vermin it'll be down to the land owner to cull. Within the confines of law. Their needs to be reasonable grounds... Or considered game.

But yeah tricky beasts hogs/pigs. Given half a chance they'll take over, early settlers of America found that out the hard way. So did the natives.

a reply to: tovenar

I'd been thinking about hunting for the last few weeks tbh, I fully agree with your points of view.

Hitting a person or a deer in a sweet spot that'll make them bleed out in seconds or become instantly incapacitated requires extreme skill or pot luck, I've never even hunted and I know that tracking and stalking is 99% of the hunt.

A firearm makes things a lot easier, gives you range and a more predictable trajectory but even then a hunter should only shoot when they feel comfortable, confident and competent.

Otherwise you will end up chasing a deer for 18 hours.

A bow requires you to be a lot closer, to you're just not going to be as successful and nobody wants to be chasing down a deer for 2 days.

Only fire in confidence, plan for things going awry.

I tend to keep my own opinions out of these discussions being from the UK, our laws are restrictive but at the same time I can't exactly argue against the reasoning. Just my opinion but they're seemingly designed to support the whole ethos of hunting. I can't not support them.

Or it could be my government being draconian and keeping hunting out of the hands of those incapable of practicing hunting...

a reply to: TheRedneck

It sounds to me that the UK ban on firearms is about to get a substantial part of the population dead.

Wild Hog Apocalypse?

While I recognize wild hogs are darned dangerous critters, I dunno if they will kill a substantial part of the British population.

a reply to: SofaKing

Without being well-armed and actively culling them out? We'll see. I'll watch.

Bear cubs are fun to play with, too. Mama won't mind.

TheRedneck

a reply to: TheRedneck

Hey, why not? I've seen grown adults, in Alaska, walk up to wild deer and attempt to pet them...with predictable results.

Or, in Yellowstone Park, before the rules were changed, people feeding the bears. I've always been amazed at the idiocy of people where wild, sometimes dangerous, animals are concerned. Actually, they're always dangerous, and should be treated with the utmost caution and respect.

The Disneyfication of the world. All deer are Bambi--forgetting what Bambi did to those dogs at the end of the movie...etc.

Then, of course, there was the moron who was "living with the bears", until they ate him. I can't remember how many bears ended up being destroyed because of that idiot...can't recall his name, either.

a reply to: TheRedneck

TheRedneck,

You mentioned them being smart, I'll share a run in outside my house I had with one.

It was after the first rain we had coming out of a drought. Hogs aren't normally ever up on my property except we had one of the few remaining stock tanks (ponds) with water in it so they started coming around.

We had a good rain finally and that night it created this low ground hugging fog, was cool watching it roll in. Was dense and probably only about 20-30 feet high before it dissipated. Went out for a smoke and I smelled the hog before I ever heard him. They can have a strong stench. So I went back in and grabbed my 12 gauge and tucked my glock in my waistband as well.

Thing was probably only about 40-50 feet away, but I couldn't see a damn thing. Flipped my taclight on and it just washed out in the fog, could see out 15 or 20 feet at most. Well, hog sees my light and gets REAL agitated. Grunting and hoofing ground getting more and more agitated.

Grunts and hooving ground going back and forth in front of me, I'm panning light back and forth and still can't make anything out for a shot. The I realize he wasn't going back and forth afterall, he was zigzagging towards me. He's probably twice as close to me now than he was and I realize I'm probably only going to get one quick shot before he is on me.

I realize he is coming to my light and is pissed off by it. He's closer to me than I am to the house or anything else. So this part was what was hard... I turned off my light so he would stop coming towards it. In the foggy dark alone with this hog, man that was nerve racking.

I called it a bunch of names in a gruff voice and backed the heck off. I did not get that hog that night. But he didn't get me either!