Feral Hogs are getting out of hand

[Chief Grey Bear]

42 minutes ago, fishinwrench said:

The supporting evidence is the fact that they impose limits on the harvest of every other animal that has a heartbeat.  They do that because they KNOW that if people were allowed to kill all they want then said animal would soon be extinct.   

That IMO should be all the supporting evidence you need. 

I may not be able to kill every fly in my house with a flyswatter but in 5 minutes I can make it to where they aren't a problem anymore. 

Maybe you should get the wildlife code book back out and re-read it. 

Because you have no supporting evidence of that statement. 

[fishinwrench]

It wasn't a "statement", Chief it was a personal thought.  

I don't pretend to know everything, I'm just sharing my thoughts about it.  That's what we do here.

So if it's not to protect the population of game, then why are limits enforced ?   Educate me.

[Quillback]

5 minutes ago, Chief Grey Bear said:

I didn't say it was an epidemic. 

But you will not talk to any biologist that is overly thrilled with the release of pen raised birds.

Then I also have to ask, if they are a real threat, why don't the MDC and AGFC shut down pen raised bird operations?  I can understand them being a bit worried, but there doesn't seem to be a problem.  

[SpoonDog]

2 hours ago, fishinwrench said:

The supporting evidence is the fact that they impose limits on the harvest of every other animal that has a heartbeat.  They do that because they KNOW that if people were allowed to kill all they want then said animal would soon be extinct.  

A whitetail reaches maturity at 12-18 months and has one or two fawns- by that time a sow hog's already had two or three litters of 4-12 piglets each. And while there's a number of native predators that can take down a poult or a fawn, not many can tangle with a 50 lb hog, much less a 350 lb one.  Hogs aren't ducks.  Hogs aren't turkeys.  Any four year old with a See and Say knows that.  They're a different species, with a different biology, and it'd be profoundly ignorant to act otherwise. 

 

Your hypothetical situation assumes enough hunters would be successful to drive the population down- and if that were the case, it'd be fantastic.  I'd be all for it.  It sounds great on paper, and yeah, it's worked with deer and turkeys and some other game animals.  But I can't find an instance where it's worked with hogs, and those are the animals we're wanting to get rid of.

 

 

 

[SpoonDog]

1 hour ago, Quillback said:

Then I also have to ask, if they are a real threat, why don't the MDC and AGFC shut down pen raised bird operations? 

...Because there's a market for pen-raised bird operations.  Even though pheasants and chukar aren't native to Missouri and even though they don't do particularly well here, folks'll still drop thousands to raise and release and hunt them and they'll get their panties in a wad if you try and shut it down.  That's precisely why MDC doesn't want to cultivate a whole lot of people interested in keeping hogs around to hunt.

[Quillback]

9 minutes ago, SpoonDog said:

...Because there's a market for pen-raised bird operations.  Even though pheasants and chukar aren't native to Missouri and even though they don't do particularly well here, folks'll still drop thousands to raise and release and hunt them and they'll get their panties in a wad if you try and shut it down.  That's precisely why MDC doesn't want to cultivate a whole lot of people interested in keeping hogs around to hunt.

I'm just not going to buy that line of reasoning, if those birds were a REAL threat I would have to believe MDC would shut it down,  Hogs are much, much more destructive, and I would throw it out there that if hogs weren't destructive, MDC would probably not care if people hunted them or not. 

And if pen raised birds were disease carriers you would think the chicken and turkey producers would be raising Cain, but they aren't. 

[SpoonDog]

6 minutes ago, Quillback said:

I'm just not going to buy that line of reasoning, if those birds were a REAL threat I would have to believe MDC would shut it down,  Hogs are much, much more destructive, and I would throw it out there that if hogs weren't destructive, MDC would probably not care if people hunted them or not. 

And if pen raised birds were disease carriers you would think the chicken and turkey producers would be raising Cain, but they aren't. 

Whether you buy it or not is immaterial. High-fence hunting operations are almost certainly the source of CWD in Missouri; we still have high-fence hunting operations in Missouri because the state decided captive deer aren't deer.  Believe it or not a market exists for those facilities, and when you start regulating people's livelihoods, whether it's canned hunting or bird pens or cockfighting or bear wrestling (I still hear people upset about those), that's when the state legislature starts saber-rattling. 

I don't know about pen-raised birds, but for what it's worth the state's wild hog task force includes the conservation federation, Farm Bureau, MFA, and the Missouri Pork Association- so yeah, pork producers are worried about disease and are supporting the hunting ban.  Which makes sense- I'd rather have diseased animals herded up over a couple hundred acres than busted up and roaming a couple thousand. 

[snagged in outlet 3]

3 hours ago, fishinwrench said:

I may not be able to kill every fly in my house with a flyswatter but in 5 minutes I can make it to where they aren't a problem anymore. 

If you throw in a bug a salt rifle instead of a fly swatter and make it fun, you would kill them all in no time.

[Quillback]

2 hours ago, SpoonDog said:

Whether you buy it or not is immaterial. High-fence hunting operations are almost certainly the source of CWD in Missouri; we still have high-fence hunting operations in Missouri because the state decided captive deer aren't deer.  Believe it or not a market exists for those facilities, and when you start regulating people's livelihoods, whether it's canned hunting or bird pens or cockfighting or bear wrestling (I still hear people upset about those), that's when the state legislature starts saber-rattling. 

I don't know about pen-raised birds, but for what it's worth the state's wild hog task force includes the conservation federation, Farm Bureau, MFA, and the Missouri Pork Association- so yeah, pork producers are worried about disease and are supporting the hunting ban.  Which makes sense- I'd rather have diseased animals herded up over a couple hundred acres than busted up and roaming a couple thousand. 

Well quite frankly your reasoning is also immaterial, and now you're bringing high fence operations into it which have nothing to do with birds,(and bear wrestiling? LOL).  And you're also implying that MDC, which according to you, suspects pen raised birds of spreading disease, but won't take action because it may interfere with the few commercial enterprises that raise game birds.  Have MDC biologists gone to the legislature and asked them to outlaw raising game birds?   If they haven't, which I doubt, I don't think it is because they are afraid the legislature will give them a hard time, I would think it is because they don't see it as a realistic threat to wildlife populations.

[Chief Grey Bear]

5 hours ago, fishinwrench said:

It wasn't a "statement", Chief it was a personal thought.  

I don't pretend to know everything, I'm just sharing my thoughts about it.  That's what we do here.

So if it's not to protect the population of game, then why are limits enforced ?   Educate me.

Pretend?

First you said if it's heart beats it is regulated with seasons and limits. And that is not true. Hogs have no season and no limits. The same is true with every species of carp.

And on a side note, when make the claim that it is fact, it ceases to be a personal thought.