Even though the mercury is high in the glass during September, landowners with feral hog issues can benefit greatly by intensifying their trapping efforts.
In the Carolinas, wild hogs, aka feral pigs, are spreading into just about every county like wildfire. While they offer hunters another species to target, the excessive destruction of natural habitat is overriding the joys of having another big game species in the crosshairs.
The population and spread of wild hogs continues to rise. Every county in South Carolina has reported wild hogs, and over half of the counties in North Carolina have a thriving population. Each year, the hog population continues to grow, destroying native habitat, agriculture crops and neighborhoods.
Landowners and hunters need to work towards population control and reduction whenever possible to make sure the Carolinas don’t end up with the same kind of problem that Texas has, with well over 5 million hogs statewide and millions of acres of damage to native habitats each year.
Hunters and landowners can take a step to control these beasts by taking advantage of their weaknesses, one of which happens to be food. Hogs are opportunistic and eat just about anything they can smell, see or get inside their mouth. But they have a preference; they absolutely love acorns.
As soon as oaks begin to drop their acorns in early October, hogs will spread out across oak ridges and hardwood bottomlands to find them. For the trapper, the massive abundance of natural foods instantly makes it difficult to attract hogs into traps.
Additionally, as hunters begin to plant cool-season food plots this month, that gives hogs more food options. So before the acorns begin to fall and food plots get started good, landowners need to intensify trapping efforts to take out as many wild hogs as possible this month.
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