If you turn your virtual New York Times to the “other sports” section, you’ll stumble upon an article written about one of the most interesting “other sports” out there: hunting down feral pigs with angry dogs (registration required), tying the pigs down, and butchering them.
Lest this sound like an overly judgmental way to describe the process, here’s a brief excerpt from the story:
The hounds set upon the hog, tearing a small chunk of flesh from her hindquarters and snapping at her ears. Mr. Kennedy pulled them away by the collars, fell upon the sow and held her by the neck. Mr. Watson dropped to his knees, wrapped her hooves with a length of mule tape and then fell back, breathing heavily.
Holy crap. To be fair: Pigs are delicious, and feral pigs cause a lot of trouble—the trouble in this particular case being tearing up golf courses and inconveniencing the wealthy. And you probably get more joy out of life living for a few years as a feral pig, ripping up some ball washers and carefully manicured greens and then being hunted down by dogs, than being Pig Product number 151516 somewhere in the warrens of Hormel.
This is an elegantly and economically written piece, nonjudgmental and poetically framed; regardless of the emotional baggage you bring with you as you read it, you’ll finish the thing.
And once you have your feral hog in hand, you’ll want to make your own pancetta, of course.
The NYT writes garbage like this so that their yuppie readers will feel more comfortable in looking down there noses at hunters. What feral pigs really do is, “The DNR [Department of Natural Resources] and most … hunters oppose the existence and spread of feral pigs because these animals not only compete with our native white-tailed deer but they have also been associated with the local population declines of quail and wild turkey in other states.
In addition, feral pigs can transmit diseases and parasites to livestock and people. Farmers are especially worried about the potential spread of exotic diseases to their domestic livestock. Of primary concern are diseases such as pseudorabies, brucellosis and tuberculosis. Many farmers are also troubled by potential crop losses. As mentioned above, feral pigs can be extremely destructive to recently planted fields and can damage pastures, facilities and fences, resulting in serious financial losses. Wallows can affect ponds and wetlands by muddying the water, creating algae blooms, destroying aquatic vegetation and lowering overall water quality. Digging and rooting activity of feral pigs near a watercourse leads to bank erosion. All of this activity can lead to decreased livestock use and poor fish production. Officials in other countries have reported feral pigs killing lambs and other domestic stock.
Due to feral pigs’ tramping and rooting behaviors, Wisconsin’s and other state’s wildlife biologists are becoming increasingly concerned about the devastation these exotic animals can cause to ecologically sensitive native habitats, particularly native plants and rare, threatened or endangered species. These biologists are beginning to document the population declines that feral pigs are inflicting on grassland birds, wetland wildlife, and various small mammals.”
Oh, and they may get on a golf course or two.
Then maybe the wildlife biologists rather than self-styled vigilantes with rifles should come up with a plan to try to do something semi-humane in response.
Yeah. You don’t have to rip it to shreds alive to kill it. What ever happened to hunting rifles and a humane kill shot?
In California, feral pigs are fair game. Literally. I publish the state regulations, and it always amuses me that there are pages and pages, many thousands of words, used to describe just when and how you can hunt a deer, and how many of what type you can kill, and the regulation on feral pigs is just:
Wild pigs may be taken only as follows:
(a) General Season: Open all year.
(b) Bag and Possession Limit: There is no daily bag or possession limit for wild pigs.
They don’t just rip up golf courses and other things important to “rich people” — they’re rooting animals, and they can devastate farm fields, grazing lands, and other places important to chowhounds.
I’m not sure why DougRisk thinks the story was written for “yuppies,” unless he perhaps didn’t read the story. If you do read it, you’ll find that it’s about exactly what you describe, as these two grafs illustrate:
These are dark, bristled creatures with sharp tusks, long snouts and fleet hooves. They descended from the unholy union of swine introduced to Florida by conquistadors, domestic pigs escaped from farms and Eurasian wild boars released by hunters. They can grow to three feet high and weigh as much as 400 pounds.
Capable of breaking through fences, the hogs dig up the earth rooting for grub worms. They run pickup trucks off the road. They prey on young livestock and woodland creatures. They carry disease.