In Pursuit of Boss Hog 

In December of 2005, a couple of weeks before Christmas, Dale Bailey and his neighbors a few miles north of St. Charles in Saginaw County got excited about a 200-plus pound, midnight visitor to their backyards. No, it was not Santa running ahead of schedule. It was some kind of wild boar searching for food under bird feeders and shrubbery. With visions of pork tenderloins dancing in their heads, locals spent the waning days of the muzzleloader and archery deer seasons hoping to spot it. But nobody saw the big pig in the neighborhood again.

A restaurant manager in Saginaw had an even closer encounter with a wild boar that same year. He killed a big porker with his car in the Crump area of Bay County not far from a fenced enclosure in northern Midland County where more than a hundred wild boars reportedly broke free several years ago. Supposedly, all but a few dozen were recaptured, but details of the escape are not well documented. The pigs that have shown up in Saginaw County about 30 miles to the south likely originated from that accidental release, but nobody knows for sure.

In northern Midland and Bay Counties, hunters occasionally get night-time photos of wild boars with their tree-mounted cameras. Ron Bates, a Michigan State University swine expert, says there are unconfirmed reports that the growing herd of wild hogs in Midland County already contains 40-60 animals. In most other areas of southern Michigan, there are few reports of free-roaming pigs, but the sightings are from widely separated areas.

This past fall on November 15, opening day of the firearms deer season, a hunter killed a feral hog in Gratiot County. Two days later, another hunter shot a huge wild boar in the Perry area of Shiawassee County at least 60 miles south of the Midland County accidental release. All told, state officials confirmed that seven wild hogs were killed—six by hunters and one by a car—during November and the first week of December. These confirmations were in Alpena, Gratiot, Shiawassee, Hillsdale, Roscommon,

Midland, and Presque Isle Counties. There have also been recent reports of wild hogs in the southern-most tier of Michigan counties including Branch, Hillsdale and Lenawee. And a number of areas of Northern Michigan—both in the Upper and the northeast Lower Peninsulas—have had wild hogs running around for several years.

With ample evidence that feral swine are roaming large areas of the state and breeding, concerns about the adverse consequences of their growing population are escalating.

In November of 2006, the Michigan Department of Agriculture (MDA) and the DNR issued a joint press release encouraging hunters with a valid hunting license to shoot any kind of feral swine in 23 Michigan counties (see map). This was a departure from the DNR’s more ambivalent stance on the issue a few years ago. In 2001, state representative Rich Brown of Baraga County sponsored a bill to allow shooting of wild hogs after some Russian wild boars escaped from an enclosure of the Huron Bay Lodge in the rugged Abbaye Peninsula. Despite the area’s deep snows, the escaped hogs seemed to handle life in the wild quite well and were soon raising havoc in gardens and natural vegetation. One wild boar reportedly even menaced a local resident, forcing him to hide in a shed.  Brown sought legislative help because DNR officials told his office that nothing could be done about wild hogs because they were not listed as game animals. Brown’s bill was opposed by the DNR and was never passed. Local residents apparently took the law into their own hands and solved their hog problem.

By the end of December 2006, another seven counties had been opened to hog hunting, but there is still not much effort being made by state officials to curb the wild hog problem. It is legal to shoot feral swine in the 30 listed counties only because potential owners of the hogs have been contacted and no one claims ownership. But outside those 30 counties, it is unclear whether feral swine can legally be shot.

During last year’s brief muzzleloader deer season (December 1-17), Scott Maxon of Sanford and two friends shot six wild boars on private property near West Branch in Ogemaw County. Three weighed between 120 and150 pounds, two were about 25 to 30 pounds, and one (taken the last day of the season) weighed in at 288 pounds. “We saw hogs throughout the muzzleloader season—one sow had six to eight piglets following her,” said Maxon. “We’re not really sure where they originally came from, but it’s clear they are reproducing in the wild.”

Agriculture and wildlife officials have little information about how many wild hogs roam Michigan or where they are. Interestingly, Shiawassee, Presque Isle and Alpena Counties, where wild boars were killed last fall, were not even among the listed 23 counties where wild hogs “officially” existed as of November. Officials think the animals now going “hog wild” are various combinations of Eurasian wild boars imported and raised for preserve-style hunting by commercial enterprises, and former domestic hogs. Wild hogs, regardless of their origin, can produce more than one litter of three to 12 piglets annually. So, it doesn’t take long for a population to explode. Many areas of the South have large feral hog populations that destroy crops, uproot desirable plants (including rare species) in forests, and potentially spread diseases to domestic pigs. By the 1980s, wild boars, which were introduced to Tennessee in 1912 through a private hunting preserve, had reduced herbaceous (non-woody) ground cover by 98 percent in some areas of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Nationally, feral swine damage has been conservatively estimated at $800 million annually.

During the past two years, I learned a little about wild hogs first-hand. On a trip to Louisiana I was amazed to find wild hogs thriving (at least before Katrina struck) in very wet areas of the massive Atchafalaya Swamp. These areas were extremely remote and had only narrow strips of dry ground. Yet, hogs moved in and out of deep water and muck readily. On vacation in Maui in the Hawaiian islands last year, I noticed a long, 25-foot-wide strip of land at the base of a cliff in a botanical preserve that looked like it had been disked in preparation for planting. A closer look revealed that the ground had actually been churned-up by hogs chomping choice roots of rare plants. I had previously read and heard about the adaptability and destructiveness of wild hogs but gained a new appreciation after my experiences in Louisiana and Hawaii.

One myth I sometimes hear in Michigan is that any escaped wild boars or other swine will hang around houses and barns and can quickly be rounded-up or at least shot by hunters. That’s not necessarily the case; wild hogs that have bad experiences with people quickly learn to avoid them. They become nocturnal and use their keen sense of smell to avoid danger. In areas with large thick woods or swamps, it is almost impossible to eradicate them by hunting.

Should our state be demonstrating more urgency about controlling wild hogs? A growing number of conservationists, and agriculture experts involved in the swine production industry, think so. Many believe the reproductive capacity of wild hogs is too high for the population to be controlled by incidental shooting by licensed hunters during limited hunting seasons. “State officials just don’t get it,” says Dr. John J. Mayer, of the Washington Savannah River Company, a South Carolina environmental support firm for the U.S. Department of Energy. The nation’s foremost expert on wild hogs, Mayer believes it will likely take a huge catastrophe such as disease outbreak in a state’s livestock before effective action against wild hogs will be taken. “State agency personnel simply don’t realize how fast wild hogs can reproduce and how damaging they can be,” said Mayer. “They can’t see the threat until the bomb explodes. And most people don’t appreciate the seriousness of the problem until they’ve had their yard rototilled by wild boars.”

Mayer has studied wild hogs in the U.S. for more than 30 years and noted that for quite a while the number of states with free-roaming wild boars held at 19. But since 1990 the number of states with a wild boar problem has jumped to 32.

MSU’s Bates points out that spread of disease to domestic pigs is a real concern even with small numbers of wild hogs. “We spent hundreds of millions of dollars in this country getting rid of pseudorabies, a virus with potentially devastating impacts to domestic swine production. The fear is that wild hogs could carry and transfer the disease to a domestic animal that might be moved through markets and quickly spread the disease. MDA is worried because un-documented wild boars are likely being imported from other states,” said Bates.

The Great Smokey Mountains National Park assigns six employees the task of reducing the boar population in the 500,000-acre Park. “We shoot or trap an average of about 250 wild boars a year,” says Park wildlife biologist Bill Stiver. “That doesn’t stop damage by hogs to the Park which has had the costly hog control program since 1959. And it hasn’t stopped the threat of disease. We’ve found pseudorabies in some of the wild boars,” says Stiver. “There are many areas of the South where wild hogs are carrying diseases that could be transmitted to livestock,” added Mayer.

The wild boar business in Michigan is booming and essentially unregulated. The demand for wild boars at commercial hunting preserves has increased greatly in recent years because they are relatively cheap. Preserve clients typically pay about $400 to shoot a boar—much less than the cost for a big white-tailed buck. Wild boar raisers sell them to the preserves for around $1.25 per pound, several times the going rate for domestic hogs raised for meat. A few years ago many of the wild boars used at Michigan hunting preserves were imported from Canada. Now more Michigan residents are raising them.

Most escapes seem to occur when the hunting preserves release the hogs into large areas fenced to keep in deer. The hogs can lift up or go through typical deer-proof fencing, as I learned at a tour of a facility in Central Michigan that breeds and raises wild boars for the preserves.

While the state regulates both native and exotic deer, there are no rules governing wild boars. Those who buy and sell them don’t even have to keep any records.

The January issue of one popular Michigan hunting magazine contained 15 separate ads for wild boar or feral hog hunting in fenced enclosures in Michigan. One of the operations reportedly handles more than 600 wild boars annually. Almost all of these preserves are in areas where feral swine have recently been seen.

At present such fenced wildlife enclosures seem like the ballast water in ocean ships that have brought so many harmful exotic species to the Great Lakes—accidents waiting to happen. A careful look at these facilities and a more aggressive, year-round effort to eliminate free-roaming wild hogs are needed if we are to dodge this environmental bullet. All available evidence indicates it may be too late to eliminate wild hogs from Michigan. State officials are asleep at the switch.

Dr. Patrick J. Rusz
Director of Wildlife Programs

The Nature of the Beast

Domestic pigs were derived from the Eurasian wild boar, so all feral swine are of the same species, Sus scrufa. They interbreed and the hybrids are sometimes spotted black and tan and often less hairy than the pure wild boar.

Wild hogs mate any time of the year, but peak breeding seasons in free-roaming herds are usually in winter and early summer. The young are typically born in spring and fall. Litters of 3-12 are the norm. The young have pale, longitudinal stripes until about 6 weeks of age.

Wild hogs may weigh up to 400 pounds, but most are less than 300. The lifespan is 15 to 25 years. Once they reach maturity, few are killed, as their large tusks are effective in warding off predators. They are fast runners and excellent swimmers. Hog home ranges are usually 10-20 square miles.

Wild hogs will eat almost anything including birds’ eggs and young, insects, mice, roots, crops, woody browse, and carrion. Some have even been known to kill and eat deer fawns. A study in Louisiana found that acorn crops were exhausted twice as fast where hogs were found as in places where they were excluded.

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