Feral hog hunts illegal on many public lands

LITTLE ROCK – The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission prohibits hunting wild hogs on wildlife management areas it controls in an effort to eradicate them.

The regulation was enacted on some Game and Fish management areas during the 2014-15 hunting season and now includes nearly all in the state.

The agency allowed harvest of feral hogs for decades during any open season with weapons legal for that season on wildlife management areas. Coyote season enabled hunters to be afield nine months of the year with high-powered rifles to pursue feral hogs.

However, feral hog populations continued to rise.

“Hunters were not able to harvest enough hogs to keep the population in check, and the idea of a near year-round hunting season on public land may have caused some hunters to dump hogs on new areas in order to hunt them later,” said Brad Carner, chief of the agency’s Wildlife Management Division.

“We have to change the direction of feral hog management on our properties, and trapping has shown much more effective at removing hogs completely from a property.”

Removal is the key to hog eradication. Pigs are so prolific that unless 70 percent or more of a population is removed, the pigs that are left will repopulate the area within a year.

“Sows can have two litters per year with up to a dozen piglets per litter, and a young female is sexually mature at six months old,” said J.P. Fairhead, feral hog program coordinator for the agency.

State biologists now bait family groups of pigs into traps and eradicate dozens at a time.

“We have removed 6,802 hogs on our areas since 2013 through this new trapping method,” Fairhead said.

Some wildlife management areas owned by other agencies, but cooperatively managed by Game and Fish for hunting still allow hunters to take a hog if it crosses their path during a firearms deer, bear or elk season, as manpower for trapping in those areas can be limited.

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