Blue Ridge Country - July/August 2017 - 12

Creature Feature

'Pigs with Wings'
Wild hogs are going hog wild,
with increasing numbers spotted
throughout the Southeast.
by Nancy Henderson

Sometimes, the best-laid plans backfire. In 1999, in response
to a surge in wild hogs in the Appalachian Mountains
and along the Cumberland Plateau, the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency established a year-round hunting
season to slow the expansion.
"But that good intention came with bad consequences," says Ben Layton, a TWRA big game biologist. "We
saw a greater spread of hogs across Tennessee in the 11
years we had that year-round hog season than we had
seen in the prior 50 years. It was pretty much just hogs
popping up everywhere. So we scratched our heads and
said, 'How did this happen?'"
The wildlife experts theorized that by granting
permission to shoot the wild hogs, they had actually
prompted farmers to release some of their own for sport
hunting, causing the animals to spread to west Tennessee, other Southeastern states, even Ohio and New York.
"As late as 20 years ago maybe, we had 17 states with
hog populations," Layton says. "Now it's more than 40.
If a hog shows up in the middle of Ohio, well, I don't
think it walked there. The most likely culprit is that
they're pigs with wings."
Believed to have been introduced to the Southeast
by the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto-some of
the 300-400 hogs he brought with him in the 1500s escaped and reproduced-over the years, the population
expanded and survived well on its own. Early settlers
often relied on free-ranging livestock, some of which
never came home.
And when a wild boar shooting preserve in the east
Tennessee mountains went out of business, the animals
escaped and started a baby boom in that part of the state.
Wild hogs have no major natural predators and are
12 BlueRidgeCountry.com

opportunistic feeders that devour all types of vegetation and prey. Says Layton: "Basically if they can get
it in their mouth, they're going to try to eat it." They
are smaller than their domestic counterparts-generally weighing no more than 200 pounds, compared
to 400-500 for captive hogs, with the exception of the
800-pound hybrid "Hogzilla" that showed up in Georgia in 2004-and are prolific breeders.
They can also be pretty destructive when it comes
to crops, hardwood forests (they love acorns) and even
suburban yards, where they root around for grubs and
adult insects, turning green lawns into rutted feeding
troughs. In the past, farmers noticed damage to their
cornfields mostly in late summer. Now, says Layton, the
hogs start "going down the row, eating the corn as it's
planted."
The TWRA no longer allows sport hunting of wild
hogs in Tennessee. Corral trapping is the preferred option if a landowner is having problems with sounders,
or groups of them.
Contrary to popular opinion, wild hogs are not naturally aggressive, seldom charge unless their young are
threatened, and are fairly shy around people. Some, particularly those that live near popular hiking areas, have
become accustomed to humans.
"If it's a real feral hog that's been born and raised in
the wild, most of the time they're just going to turn tail
and run when they see you or even smell you," says
Layton. "I can't really tell you how a hog's going to react because I don't really know what the history of that
hog is. But I spend a lot of time in the woods and really
I can't tell you of anybody who's ever walked up on a
wild hog and actually been chased or attacked." 

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Blue Ridge Country - July/August 2017

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