Big Pig

[Bedrock Bob 4,179]

Check out this wild pig my nephew shot last night.

He's about a 400 pounder. The pig not my nephew.

[Stillweaver hillbelli 346]

Looks about 300 pound...just can't get the right perspective  without  a quarter in the picture for scale. 

[Stillweaver hillbelli 346]

Just now, Stillweaver hillbelli said:

Looks about 300 pound...just can't get the right perspective  without  a quarter in the picture for scale. 

Wowser!400

 

[Bedrock Bob 4,179]

He didn't weigh him. He is somewhere between 350 and 400 lbs. 

He can be as big or as small as you want him to be depending on how completely out of whack your perspective is and how well it supports your ideological constructs.

If you simply can't accept that it is a pig then the animal can be whatever you want it to be. Or it can all be a conspiracy designed to make you believe it is a pig.

For those who are not quite so complicated my nephew shot a big pig last night and here is a photo of him.

[DarkSilicate 24]

In which state did your nephew take the pig?  New Mexico?  

[Bedrock Bob 4,179]

The pig was taken on his ranch in central Texas. Very near La Grange.

We have feral hogs here but the numbers went way down after the big freeze of 2011 and the subsequent drought. You rarely see them anymore. It's just too cold and dry for them.

In central Texas there can be many hundreds of hogs in a single pasture. They are a huge problem there.

[nugget108 1,781]

Dang, hes taking on the look of a full wild boar instead of a feral hog. It doesn't take long to breed the 'domesticated' critter out of pigs. They definitely are talking over!!

The hog not your nephew lol.

[Bedrock Bob 4,179]

Those are Russian Boars. Only rarely will you see piggie colors or flat footed pigs.

They really aren't feral pigs there. They started out as wild european boars and the occasional feral pig bred with them. So the european boar look is really dominant.

Here in New Mexico they are feral pigs. They are lard hogs from the old miner days. They preserved the elk meat with salt and lard. They raised pigs for the lard and not so much meat. Lots of pigs got loose and went feral. So there is hardly any meat on them and they look more like pigs than satanic werewolf monsters.

The Texas hogs show way more european boar genetics for sure. They are bigger, smarter and a bunch meaner. If you get a bad shot on one you don't go into the brush to finish him. He will mess you up real good and then his family will eat everything but the soles of your boots.

[Stillweaver hillbelli 346]

4 hours ago, Bedrock Bob said:

He didn't weigh him. He is somewhere between 350 and 400 lbs. 

He can be as big or as small as you want him to be depending on how completely out of whack your perspective is and how well it supports your ideological constructs.

If you simply can't accept that it is a pig then the animal can be whatever you want it to be. Or it can all be a conspiracy designed to make....

.

 

I simply  think you are just bonkers until I see the streak on the toilet.

[Stillweaver hillbelli 346]

2 hours ago, Bedrock Bob said:

Those are Russian Boars.

Streak'll be red.

[Bedrock Bob 4,179]

The story is that just before WW2 a group of ranchers in East Texas imported European wild boar to hunt.

After the war a few west Texas ranchers put them out in spots. Some of those hogs came from the east Texas ranches and some were imported. They were hunted for sport and profit.

The population grew but they were only on certain ranches. They were valuable to sportsmen so their numbers were (almost) kept in check.

In the 80's everyone in the cities wanted to hunt big game. So lots of ranchers got them some pig. Many didn't have the acreage or the fences to handle animals like that. So the pigs suddenly were everywhere.

They thought it was so wonderful they brought them to their resort properties in New Mexico mountains too. Dozens of them. Just ran them out of horse trailers into the national forest.

Within about 5 years it was a huge problem. Lots of big black werewolves rooting up everything like a big rototiller. They were everywhere. 

They were fairly contained to certain areas in New Mexico. But the entire state of Texas was hip deep in them.

We had a couple eradication programs here in New Mexico. And they got HEAVY hunting pressure. But they thrived in certain areas until a big freeze came in 2011.

It was -35 degrees in the mountains and -15 in the basins all the way to Texas. It stayed that way for three days with the highs getting just above zero. It killed a lot of hogs. 

When you saw one after that he had no ears. They were frozen off. Some were gimpy where a foot had frozen and decayed. They were few and far between.

The fish and game department decided to strike while the iron was hot and kill the rest of them while they were on the decline. They caught some and radio collared them. Then followed them home. They got 99% of them within a year of the freeze.

Texas has done a pretty good job. But on the private ranches they are a huge problem. They hunt thousands and trap tens of thousands every year. They say they are controlling them now and it appears the numbers are going down. There is still pigs everywhere.

My nephew says they only show up for a week or so every couple months. There are groups of 50-100 animals sometimes. They come into an area and all the neighbors start seeing them. And then they disappear to some other group of ranches a few miles away in a few days.

They go through or under just about any fence. So nothing can really keep them out. And during the day you will rarely see one unless you are in the same bush with him. 15 hogs can hole up in a little stand of trees and you would never know they were there. You can't really track them because their tracks are everywhere. Even dogs have a tough time locating them because there smell is everywhere.

Lots of guys hunt them on the big ranches with dogs on ATV's. The dogs have radio collars and the ATV's have little radar screen GPS devices to track them. What a hoot no?

Lots of guys trap them. They build big steel traps and contract with the landowners to trap them. I know a couple guys who make their living trapping those rascals.

I have never killed a Texas boar. My son has killed a couple. His grandad on his mother's side owned the ranch where this boar was killed. The old man passed on about 18 months ago and left the place to my son and his uncle (in the photo). So I'm anxious to go shoot a boar on their Texas ranch soon.