Did the domestic ancestors of today’s feral pigs streak off De Soto’s ship into the Florida scrub of their own accord in 1539? Or did they have to be urged to go find something to eat? All you need to know about hogs: they’re omnivorous and smart.
In 1893, a robber baron imported 50 wild boars from the Black Forest and released them on a 20,000-acre private hunting preserve in New Hampshire. In 1910 and 1912, Russian wild boars were released on a North Carolina preserve. Animals from there were introduced in 1925 near Monterey, California, then a few years later on Santa Cruz Island. The last such introduction followed in Texas in 1930. Some transplants escaped from these preserves. They often bred with domesticated pigs; their offspring bred with feral pigs; the population soared. Free-ranging of swine was legal in the US until it was outlawed in the mid-twentieth century as part of a disease-eradication effort.
Wild boars breed three times a year, each litter yielding five to ten more of them. Since the creature has no natural predators, the survival rate of a litter is about 100 per cent. A pig population can double in four months. On top of that, illegal translocation of hogs by humans has contributed to their range extension.
Today, feral pigs and pig-boar hybrids are found in at least 45 states, the largest populations in the coastal states surrounding the Gulf of Mexico and in California (not surprising, since Spanish explorers settled these). In locations where feral pigs have more recently been discovered, it is likely that these are escapees from domestic swine facilities, releases from game farms, or illegal stocking. “Ecological train wreck,” they’re being called in Texas by wildlife experts.
On beaches, wild pigs eat sea turtle eggs. In the desert, they root up plants that may not regrow for generations. They eat farmers’ crops; they cause soil erosion. They are linked to an outbreak of E. coli in California spinach that made 200 hundred sick and killed three. They are known to carry or transmit more than 30 diseases and 37 parasites, including swine brucellosis, which can be fatal to people, and pseudorabies, which can kill endangered Florida panthers. They can carry trichinosis, a parasitic disease caused by a roundworm that lodges in the host muscle.
When de Soto first arrived, these diseases may have ravaged Native American communities. In The Hernando de Soto Expedition, Ann Romenofsky and Patricia Galloway write that millions of Native people died because they lacked previous exposure to swine-borne diseases, such as brucellosis, leptospirosis, trichinosis, tuberculosis, cysticercosis, and several strains of flu.
These days, hog hunting has become popular in the South, though there is no evidence that wild pig populations are on the decline. Perhaps it is time to turn to the traditions of the Chianti region, where the boars are native. There hunters used dogs to chase the swine from the forest into open areas where hunters could shoot them at will. It was an efficient, if somewhat unsettling, way to kill wild hogs. (The practice is now banned in Italy.)
Wild boar has been called the ultimate organic pork, a gourmet meat. (Just don’t undercook it.) Texas chef Jon Bonnell notes, “It’s a leaner meat. And because they’re raised on a natural diet, they’re a little smaller, got less fat. It’s a little healthier, and the flavor is just rich as can be.”
Interested in trying some wild pig? Blackwing sells wild boar chops and other cuts from hogs hunted in Alabama and Florida. There are several purveyors of wild pigs in Texas. In the past few years, more than 450,000 pigs have been captured in the state, federally inspected, and sold in the US, Europe, and Asia. We have purchased some delicious hog meat from Broken Arrow Ranch .
