MANDEVILLE — Feral hogs have been causing major issues in a Mandeville neighborhood just east of Texarkana this summer, causing local residents to take action.
Adrin Dansby, who lives near Pop’s Place Restaurant, said he and his neighbors started seeing the hogs roam the area some time ago. But as of late, pigs have been causing damage to yards and becoming more of a nuisance.
“It’s something that’s been going on for over a year now, where every once in a while we would spot these wild hogs in the area,” he said. At first, they weren’t really doing much damage, but you would just see them every now and then.
“It wasn’t really a huge problem until about two months ago. I first started noticing areas in the neighborhood where you could see trails where they were walking, but in the past two months, they haven’t just walked. They’ve started plowing and digging into the ground.” The wild hogs have come out at night to destroy crops, gardens and yards, including the property of one of Dansby’s family members a few weeks back.
“I mean they tore it up, like you went back there with a tractor and plowed it up.” In the following nights after the yard damage, Dansby came prepared with an AR-15 rifle and a four-wheeler, waiting for the swine to show up. Eventually, they did.
“It was a whole herd of them,” he said. “I was running them across the field, shooting them and running over them. But by the time I turn around to look for them, those hogs were getting back up and running, wounded.” He said he complained to the store where he bought his bullets because they weren’t killing the hogs, and he purchased some different ammunition.
This is not an isolated issue, Dansby said. His neighbors have experienced similar predicaments, so they have started to hunt the pigs at night.
One resident got knocked off his motorcycle when he hit a hog on U.S. 67 a few months back.
According to the Arkansas Department of Agriculture, feral hogs have been an issue to landowners in Southwest Arkansas for several years, if not the last decade or more. The problem led the department to create the Feral Hog Eradication Task Force in 2017.
J.P. Fairhead is the program coordinator of the task force. He said nationally, feral hogs are estimated to cause more than $2 billion in damages each year.
“Feral hogs are an invasive species that are especially destructive to agricultural crops, native wildlife and young domestic livestock,” Fairhead said.
In Arkansas, the latest survey by the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated that feral swine cause at least $41 million in agricultural damages every year, including $34 million in damages to soybeans, corn, cotton, wheat, hay, pecans and rice, and $7.3 million in damages to livestock.
But the problems created by wild hogs do not stop at property damage, Dansby said.
He recalled a time when he walked out his front door at night and heard something grunt. Dansby said he could not see the source of the noise, so he eased back in the house to turn on the lights. When he did, he saw a large boar standing no more than 20 feet away. By the time Dansby retrieved his gun, the hog was gone.
“That’s when it gets to be dangerous, because if they got some piglets with them, they could be very dangerous.” According to the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, feral hogs may be killed or trapped year-round by a landowner or anyone with the landowner’s permission.
Fairhead said it is recommended that landowners experiencing feral hog issues contact USDA Wildlife Services for assistance at (501) 835-2318.