[HN Gopher] Researchers are trying to mitigate the spread of wil...
___________________________________________________________________
Researchers are trying to mitigate the spread of wild pigs in
Canada
Author : HR01
Score : 54 points
Date : 2023-03-25 13:58 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.fieldandstream.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.fieldandstream.com)
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| > [The] reality is still that outside of the Prairie Provinces of
| Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, there are no meaningful
| opportunities to hunt wild pigs, which is not allowed in Ontario
| and Quebec
|
| In the southern United States it's open season on wild pigs to
| keep the population under control.
|
| In at least Texas, you can take a machine gun mounted to a
| helicopter to go hog hunting: https://www.helibacon.com/texas-
| helicopter-hog-hunting/
|
| This article is light on the risks of an unchecked feral pig
| population. Pigs are dangerous. They're mean, dirty, and can
| wreak havoc in ecosystems. Coming across a feral pig is
| dangerous, and they travel in squadrons so it's likely you'll
| cross a handful at a time. Unlike most animals that will leave
| humans alone unless they have reason, feral pigs will pick a
| fight.
|
| That these researchers are saying the pigs are pushing into human
| settlements is cause for concern.
| psychlops wrote:
| > Pigs are dangerous. They're mean, dirty, and can wreak havoc
| in ecosystems. Coming across a feral pig is dangerous, and they
| travel in squadrons so it's likely you'll cross a handful at a
| time.
|
| Sounds a lot like humans.
| STM32F030R8 wrote:
| What are you trying to say here?
| ornornor wrote:
| It does!
| spokesbeing wrote:
| Sport hunting doesn't help keep the population down though:
|
| https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/texas-has-a-feral-hog-...
| psychlops wrote:
| It's nothing that increased farming won't solve. Farmers will
| efficiently eradicate any pest in their designated areas.
| kyleabenzleeee wrote:
| [dead]
| pixl97 wrote:
| When I was younger my friends and I used to trap and kill
| dozens of them at a time. The sheer number of hogs and the
| rate at which they breed down in the river bottoms is insane.
|
| Not sure how you'd ever get rid of them, they are pretty
| clever and once you use a trick unsuccessfully on them they
| tend to avoid it.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> Not sure how you'd ever get rid of them_
|
| Same how Australia fought the Emus in The Great Emu war
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wms8ZEtVQhg
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu_War
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Biological warfare, in one form or another, might be the
| only way, but that comes with risks that are probably
| unacceptable, even in light of the amount of damage they
| cause.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| Put lions in - wolves are too small, and jaguar won't
| touch them, jaguar is solitary but pigs come in packs.
| ETH_start wrote:
| Lions can't handle the Canadian climate, Siberian tigers
| can, and they are proficient boar hunters.
| [deleted]
| cryptonector wrote:
| | But if you just shoot one, the rest scatter.
|
| But you don't shoot one. You shoot most of them. That
| requires thermal optics, semi-automatic rifles, high capacity
| magazines (and lots of them), ATVs or helicopters or well-
| planned stands with a good view of a clearing that hogs might
| hang out in at night.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| The great ~~emu~~ feral pig war
| [deleted]
| xoa wrote:
| I'm a gun owner and support controlled hunting both for needed
| food for some people and population control when done properly.
| But beware perverse incentives and proper management. There
| have been plenty of articles and research about use of
| incentives and industry for dealing with invasive species, not
| just the feral pig problem but many others (nutria and lionfish
| for example [0]). And states that have made hunting easier do
| not seem to have necessarily benefited perhaps in part due to
| also creating an industry and economic incentives around feral
| pig hunting that actively encourages people to want more feral
| pigs to hunt. This has echoes to efforts going way back, a well
| meaning simple program might offer payment for some proof of
| killing a pest animal. This seems like a way to get people to
| go out and get them. But will they do that, or will some end up
| actively breeding said pest animals, harvesting them for the
| reward, and having plenty escape or eventually cause other
| issues? There definitely has to be some holistic thinking
| before just letting systems develop, particularly since it can
| be hard/impossible to unwind even if it was a mistake. Like all
| kinds of economic activities once people get into them lobbying
| and economic arguments can in turn shift the politics.
|
| ----
|
| 0: _" Review of harvest incentives to control invasive
| species"_
| https://www.reabic.net/journals/mbi/2014/3/MBI_2014_Pasko_Go...
| cryptonector wrote:
| This is nonsense. No farmer or rancher in Texas wants feral
| hogs, and no one in Texas tries to promote feral hog
| populations. We have something like 4 million feral hogs. The
| problem is that avid 1 hunter can take out 20-30 in one
| night, but they don't go out to do it every night, and
| there's not enough feral hog hunters to make a dent.
|
| Feral hogs cause enormous amounts of damage, and there's no
| hope of hunting or trapping them down to manageable numbers
| much less zero.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| If I'm a hog farmer and I can make 200 smeckles for a
| standard hog or get paid 400 smeckles for each "feral hog"
| I hand over then logically I'll just start breeding the
| feral ones instead.
|
| The market finds the most profitable solution, not
| necessarily the best solution.
| giardini wrote:
| You foolishly extrapolate to a market that has never
| existed (in Texas at least).
| robofanatic wrote:
| Wow, this is next level of killing living beings for pleasure.
| myshpa wrote:
| The nature needs predators. Maybe stop killing wolves like
| madmen.
| cgh wrote:
| Canada has a large and healthy wolf population, especially out
| west. The Manitoba wolf population numbers in the thousands and
| it's also got one of the worst feral pig problems, according to
| the article. Maybe the wolves just can't deal with them.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| The wolves and the pigs might not live in the same places.
| Manitoba is huge.
| black_13 wrote:
| [dead]
| metalliqaz wrote:
| Admittedly I am not an expert, but I'm fairly sure US and
| Canada has learned that lesson a while ago
| myshpa wrote:
| https://www.hcn.org/articles/wolves-was-yellowstones-
| deadlie...
| dgb23 wrote:
| Feral pigs are no piece of cake very much unlike typical prey.
| They can fight off wolves and scare them away. They are smart
| and dangerous animals.
|
| Wolves rely on causing panic, isolating few individuals and
| then hunt them over a long period of time. They have high
| stamina, good coordination and composure. However pigs can just
| decide to run at you and fuck you up. Wolves often don't like
| these odds.
| [deleted]
| jason-phillips wrote:
| In Texas we trap them, blow them up, shoot them from helicopters,
| and shoot them from quads while chasing them at 50mph. They're
| too smart to shoot them from a standing position.
|
| I've seen packs of 15-20 running along together while riding my
| motorcycle along county roads in the middle of nowhere, San Saba
| County. But they normally stay out of sight; they're super smart.
|
| Good luck.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> In Texas we trap them, blow them up, shoot them from
| helicopters_
|
| This is exactly what we in Europe imagine Texas to be like. I'm
| not disappointed.
| qup wrote:
| "shoot them from quads"
|
| Can you elaborate? I'm only aware of the traditional
| helicopters.
| greedo wrote:
| ATVs...
| overthrow wrote:
| ATVs, something like this https://www.amazon.com/X-PRO-110cc-
| Youth-Wheeler-Wheelers/dp...
|
| (never buy an ATV from Amazon, obviously)
| bbarnett wrote:
| _never buy an ATV from Amazon, obviously_
|
| But sir, it says "SMART DEALS NOW". Are you _sure_ one
| shouldn 't buy?
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| The Chinese scooters in a crate are lovely:
| https://www.amazon.com/-/dp/B00OMB4IFQ
|
| Bit of a pain to get titled, though.
| Aperocky wrote:
| Shooting from quads sounds very dangerous (for the shooter).
| cryptonector wrote:
| There's lots of videos of it on youtube.
| chasd00 wrote:
| I wonder if you can shoot them from drones? That could be
| interesting.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| IIRC flying a reaper drone and firing hellfire missiles is
| insanely expensive, so unless those pigs are terrorists, fly
| spy balloons, have massive oil reserves or made up weapons of
| mass destructions, it'll never come to drone strikes.
|
| Maybe we can get them to the negotiations table and broker a
| peace deal with the super pig regime and turn them into an
| ally.
| bbarnett wrote:
| _firing hellfire missiles is insanely expensive_
|
| Mass production can change that! The more we use on pigs,
| the less per unit!
| escapecharacter wrote:
| If I was a defense contractor, I would kick off a research
| program for an explosive weapon that was guaranteed to kill
| the hog and reliably cook the giblets into instantly edible
| bacon.
|
| For any VCs reading this, please wire me funding at your
| convenience.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| (Assuming you mean a small drone a citizen could be licensed
| to operate): Do drones have the ability to stabilize the
| recoil from a gun powerful enough to kill a pig?
|
| You could certainly air drop explosives on them but that
| connotes serious risk to the environment and extremely
| inhumane injury or death to the pigs.
|
| I wonder if some kind of dart could be used to euthanize
| them, though it would likely cost more than bullets and still
| lack accuracy.
|
| What an awful topic though. The pigs have no idea they're
| invasive. They're such intelligent creatures, it's an
| incredible shame that we've caused this.
| GravitasFailure wrote:
| >(Assuming you mean a small drone a citizen could be
| licensed to operate): Do drones have the ability to
| stabilize the recoil from a gun powerful enough to kill a
| pig?
|
| The FAA defines drones as being up to 55lbs, so yes. Most
| of the off-the-shelf octocopter cinema drones could
| probably handle an appropriate firearm with some minimal
| modifications. Now, whether the FAA and ATF will throw a
| tantrum over a remote control weapons platform like that is
| a different story...
| snerbles wrote:
| > whether the FAA and ATF will throw a tantrum over a
| remote control weapons platform like that
|
| _I Am Not A Lawyer, and attempting to build an armed
| drone without the advice of one one will probably earn
| you an ATF raid with your dog shot, your spouse sniped,
| you arrested, your house burned down, a cabinet
| appointment for the raid leader, and you put on national
| news with the option for a Netflix documentary 20 years
| later._
|
| The FAA has a regulation prohibiting the operation of
| "Dangerous Weapons" attached drones without prior
| approval [0], so that's your first and biggest hurdle.
|
| A servo-actuated trigger is likely going to get deemed a
| "machine gun" by the ATF, as it's one firmware tweak (or
| bug) away from firing more than once per "trigger pull"
| by the human user. Now if you were to become an NFA
| firearms manufacturer (Type 07 FFL+Class 2 SOT) you would
| be manufacturing, demonstrating (remember that FAA
| approval) and selling hog hunting drones officially.
|
| To reiterate: Do not even think about doing this without
| actual legal counsel.
|
| [0] https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/drones-and-weapons-
| dangerous-mi...
| cryptonector wrote:
| I've seen videos of hunting them from sitting positions.
| It's... scary, because they can run at you, so you'd best have
| large magazines.
| favaq wrote:
| [flagged]
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Fuck off, nazi.
|
| https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/tnd-kill-behead-roundhouse
| potatototoo99 wrote:
| Really, I thought it was more of a US phenomenon.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| The feral pig population in North America is based on a hybrid
| species with the Russian Razorback. It makes sense that they
| wouldn't be able to invade old climates as well
| kzrdude wrote:
| I'm not exactly in tune with the discussion on invasive species,
| but in this case it seems to be too late.
|
| Should we intervene in established ecosystems? These are natural
| systems and why not have a live and let live attitude to animals.
| theduder99 wrote:
| When hornets make a nest outside your garage, do you intervene
| or do you live and let live?
| kzrdude wrote:
| The city and the forest and two different places.
|
| I don't think we should be gardeners of the whole biosphere.
| likeraindrops wrote:
| CBC has an article [1] with more pictures of the pigs themselves,
| tusks and all, as well as their typical weight.
|
| Over 300 pounds! Largest recorded was 640 lbs.
|
| They remind me more of wild zebras than friendly farm oinkers.
|
| [1] https://www.cbc.ca/kidsnews/post/why-canadas-super-pigs-
| migh...
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| Pigloos!!!
|
| Do we have to wipe them out? Just because they're surviving our
| extinction event doesn't mean they're evil
| ornornor wrote:
| > Back in the '80s and '90s, Eurasian wild boar were brought
| here to be raised for their meat.
|
| > A number of the animals escaped from their pens and mated
| with domestic pigs.
|
| Yet another human caused issue. What a surprise.
| dmbche wrote:
| Who would've thought that breeding pigs to both reproduce and
| grow to maturity faster could lead to a massive invasive species
| issue that has seemingly no solution?
|
| Maybe we shouldn't be breeding animals to eat - but that's just
| me.
| dgb23 wrote:
| The pigs we breed stem from basically a single species that
| already had the properties of very fast reproduction and very
| flexible diet. They were already like that, which is why we
| breed them. Other species have been tried without success.
|
| During the middle ages, our domesticated pigs were basically
| feral pigs that lived on farms and in towns, even in cities, as
| a bio garbage disposal. There are a lot of fun facts you can
| dig up there.
|
| The these pigs in America are imported, yes but they became
| wild again very fast and are basically the same species as
| before domestication.
| mvdwoord wrote:
| Checks notes, yes... Just you.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| Meat is delicious and nutritious. I have no desire to move to a
| vitamin powder and soy extract based diet.
| fortran77 wrote:
| It's a problem here in Israel too!
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/09/world/middleeast/haifa-is...
|
| And here, they feel very safe.
| microtherion wrote:
| One natural resource that will never be fought over between
| Jews and Muslims.
| lebuffon wrote:
| Oh my. This surely falls under the category: G_d has a sense of
| humour.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| selling wild game appears to be illegal in Canada like it is in
| the US. Ostensibly the reason is because of risk of illness but
| it's likely also due to lobbying by farmers.
|
| I think there's a solution staring at us in the face here
| [deleted]
| mpsprd wrote:
| Canadian hunter here.
|
| From my understanding this is mostly to avoid poaching.
|
| At least here in QC hunting laws are extremely strict to
| protect the populations. I believe other provinces have similar
| laws (it's a provincial jurisdiction)
|
| It's too bad that the meat from these is inedible, but I wonder
| if it's related to their diet. Maybe some soy field diet would
| make them more palatable?
| therealjumbo wrote:
| The original reason for banning sales of wild game meat in NA
| is because species were being driven extinct or extirpated due
| to hunting. https://www.grandviewoutdoors.com/big-game-
| hunting/should-yo...
|
| Unfortunately allowing selling of specific species we don't
| like that reproduce easily would probably just lead to private
| land owners promoting habitat and food for that species on
| their land. That's what's happened in Texas on a lot of private
| ranches due to the popularity of pig hunting. Texas is mostly
| private land, unlike Montana which is mostly public but still.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Hunters caused the problem, we shouldn't encourage them to make
| it worse.
|
| https://www.agweb.com/news/livestock/pork/pigs-dont-fly-fera...
| taeric wrote:
| I mean, I have no doubt there is some regulatory capture going
| on here. That said, this is also the kind of regulation that
| was written in lives lost. Wild game can be done safely, sure.
| But typically not at large, and best to let the folks taking
| the risk be the ones eating it. That is, it works now because
| there is no incentive to just at mass capture any feral/wild
| animal that you can, butcher it, and sell it. As soon as that
| incentive does exist, expect lots of problems.
| xwdv wrote:
| Canadians should simply rise up and eat these pigs.
| haram_masala wrote:
| Most of those pigs are, by western standards, inedible. With
| the exception of the very young adults (and the piglets), their
| meat is tough and has a very objectionable
| gamer/musty/garbage-y flavor.
|
| Texas is contending with a similar problem, and if Texans can't
| find a way to eat them, you know that meat is worthless.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| Yes but we can process the shit out of the meat and add msg
| etc. It doesn't have to be bbq
| dgb23 wrote:
| That's what I'm thinking too. There are a lot of products
| that are made from highly processed unidentifiable meat
| stuff.
|
| My dogs certainly wouldn't object to feral gamey pig meat
| either. I sometimes think the more disgusting the food the
| more they like it...
| starkd wrote:
| But isn't that true of most any game meat?
|
| I've heard that bear meat can be tough and grisly, but I was
| told it depends on how you butcher it.
| [deleted]
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > But isn't that true of most any game meat?
|
| Most so-called "gamey" meat is down to poor handling of the
| meat. Hogs are an exception... uncastrated males do taste
| bad to many people.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| I always thought gamey was from high activity of the
| muscles. Farmed animals certainly don't run around
| forests fending for themselves
| bbarnett wrote:
| _I always thought gamey was from high activity of the
| muscles_
|
| An animal's diet affects its flavour. Eating all manner
| of random foods, makes partially the gamey flavour.
| mpsprd wrote:
| I've eaten deer, moose and even beaver from hunting and
| trapping. They will taste amazing if handled well and given
| early to a butcher.
|
| Old bucks don't taste as good, but younger deer have
| amazingly tender meat.
| wolfram74 wrote:
| Is this a problem that can be solved with enough chili
| powder? I'm not a terribly picky eater or familiar with wild
| game, just have a lot of confidence in gastro science.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| How much chilli powder does it take to kill parasites?
| tmoertel wrote:
| Does cooking not kill the parasites?
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Some prion diseases cannot be destroyed by cooking the
| meat.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| Cooking does, but the best thing about the pig is that
| you can turn it into sausage, and improperly prepared
| sausage puts the consumer at risk for trichinosis.
| stametseater wrote:
| Gamma irradiation is very effective at killing
| trichinosis in swine flesh and is approved for this
| purpose in America.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| A cobalt source for the _home_? That 's plainly nuts.
|
| In Europe they dealt very successfully with trichinosis
| by inspecting pig carcasses. But I have no idea if you
| can take a muscle sample from a porker you shot yourself
| to your local large-animal veterinarian to see if it's
| trichinotic. (In rural areas they just might that service
| - back then in my home village we had that pharmacist who
| was a devoted mushroom hunter, and people would run their
| mushrooms past him for identification if they weren't
| really sure.)
| stametseater wrote:
| Obviously food irradiation is done at specialized
| processing facilities where hunters would send their
| kills, not at home. Here's a clue for you: it's already
| the case that most hunters don't process their own meat.
|
| > _That 's plainly nuts._
|
| You're the one who said it, so right back at you buddy.
| Stop pulling absurdities out of your ass and attributing
| them to other people to have something to disagree with.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| Not sure if your average family-owned deer processor
| would want a gamma source with all the required
| safeguards in their facility. And they'd have to get it
| past the customers too, there's going to be resistance
| with at least some of them.
|
| A friend from school, his parents owned a butcher shop
| where they killed and butchered their own hogs (not beef,
| beef would have been to large for the facility). If
| anyone had asked him what he wanted - irradiation or
| inspection plus proper treatment of the meat (boil, fry
| or hot-smoke) the reply would have been unequivocal and
| loud.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| > specialized processing facilities where hunters would
| send their kills
|
| Have you ever met a hunter? They do not send their kills
| to "specialized processing facilities" they send their
| kills to their buddy Jim who butchers it in his shed.
| Maybe they know a commerical butcher that will do it for
| them, and even then it's the butcher down the road.
| Specialized processing facilities, that's hilarious.
| detaro wrote:
| In Germany at least inspection is _mandatory_ , even if
| you've hunted for personal use.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Not safe, and not good meat.
|
| Don't take my word for it, here is proof by inference:
| hunters in Texas aren't barbecueing it already, thus it's
| not edible, QED.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > very objectionable gamer/musty/garbage-y flavor
|
| Uncastrated males do, certainly -- the same is true of
| domestic hogs. Females don't.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boar_taint
| netr0ute wrote:
| What if you slathered the meat with barbecue sauce and chili
| peppers? Then there might actually be a chance.
| wankle wrote:
| > very objectionable gamer/musty/garbage-y flavor
|
| Speaking as a gamer, I can relate.
| sdwr wrote:
| I believe this was a feature of the techno-apocalypse in _Oryx
| and Crake_ by our very own Margaret Atwood
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Some people complain there are too many wild pigs, while other
| people complain they have nothing to eat.
|
| Can't those problems be solved at the same time?
| HopenHeyHi wrote:
| For a moment I though my ex-gf started posting to HN :/
|
| (This was her love language, ok? Don't judge us)
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| I don't know why you were downvoted, this is adorable
| HopenHeyHi wrote:
| A segment of HN is allergic to humor. Real
| Jabronis/Giambones.
| black_13 wrote:
| [dead]
| 0xbadc0de5 wrote:
| <insert joke about Canada's bloated government>
| motohagiography wrote:
| The solution is to eat them. It's humane and it's free range
| pork. Let rural butchers test and certify the meat and sell it to
| local restaurants as a super premium product, then leverage the
| now all electronic game tag system for supply chain management.
| The only thing standing in the way of solving the feral pig
| problem is the attitudes of the urban governing class toward
| people capable of hunting and our histrionic firearms
| regulations. Maybe the middle ground is to make it a military
| privilege to hunt feral hogs where you need to be a reservist,
| and if you join you get a lifetime rural open carry and hunting
| permit.
|
| Canada is uniquely vulnerable to feral pig problems owing to what
| can only be described as a popular resentment of rural culture,
| which makes solutions like commercial hunts and culling by
| hunters non-viable. Maybe I should move to a U.S. border state
| and operate a commercial hunt business.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Just hunt them. You can't eat them all without going to huge
| expense having all-terrain refrigerator trucks to pick them up
| with. Vultures and other animals and just nature will take care
| of the carcasses. That's what people do here in Texas, where we
| have the largest wild pig population in the U.S., and it's a
| big big deal. There are hog hunting festivals. I've only ever
| seen videos of this, but this is one of those cases where an
| AR-15 is one of the most excellent firearms for hunting.
| swalling wrote:
| The open hunting season in states like California and Texas
| actually creates a perverse incentive among hunting guides
| and private land owners to deliberately introduce and
| maintain feral pig populations, in order to act as supply for
| their business.
|
| It's widely accepted among wildlife ecologists that hunting
| has minimal control effect and might actually be causing more
| spread.
|
| https://www.aphis.usda.gov/wildlife_damage/reports/Wildlife%.
| ..
| anigbrowl wrote:
| It's not as simple as 'just hunt them'. For one thing, if you
| don't pick the right ammunition, that will damage the vulture
| population, as well as other scavenger animals.
|
| https://projectvulture.org.za/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/06/Lea...
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| Ah here is the issue, feral pig meat isn't really pork the way
| most people know it. It's gamey and often parasite ridden.
| karaterobot wrote:
| This is true. You don't kill feral pigs for meat, you kill
| them for the same reason you kill rats. It's not the kind of
| meat you'd eat if you had any other choice.
| cityofdelusion wrote:
| Wild pig meat tastes fine if the animal is young, fit, and
| healthy. It is very lean and tough, I did an 18 hour slow
| cook and it as pretty good.
| collegeburner wrote:
| well some stuff might but that's why you cook pork more than
| beef. it's not that gamey (depends on what it eats) but if
| you don't care for it, makes a good sausage with rabbit or
| squirrel.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Maybe the solution is to kill the parasites, through
| detection and processing technology, and spraying habitats.
|
| If we really can't eat them, the other solution is to use
| chemistry to make something that feral pigs get addicted to
| and that they will give up food, sex, and nursing their young
| in pursuit of, and which is a human controlled substance we
| can manage. Drop enough of it in their habitats that they can
| always become dependent. If you just try to poison them, you
| kill off their own competition for food and just create more
| resilliant ones, but creating a chemical dependency where
| they will seek out sources that humans control would provide
| the lever to manage the population.
|
| This solution is related to one I commented on about the rat
| population in new york city. Just make something they want. I
| should do a startup, we could call it Pied Piper.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Animals in non-contrived normal environments don't actually
| do that. Furthermore poison of any variety is unlikely to
| be sufficiently targeted to just kill pigs and most isn't
| very humane.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| It's very difficult to kill the parasites of precisely one
| species with broad applicability.
|
| Also, your goals and the goals of environmentalists seems
| to be quite different here. You're suggesting farming them,
| but environmentalists don't actually want them there at
| all.
| is_true wrote:
| I've eaten wild board and it's gamey but tasty, a relative
| often does salami from a mix of wild board and axis deer. But
| I understand that feral and wild boards are different.
| samstave wrote:
| I've had Wild Boar in Borneo with the tribe that was many
| years ago the "head hunter" and "poison blow dart" tribes
| we know of from yore... Super fatty, greasy and gamey.
|
| Washed down with the alcohol they drink in thee Borneo
| Jungles, which is a certain leaf fermented in human spit.
|
| An experience, yes. Not one I'd seek out again, but a great
| memory.
| clbrmbr wrote:
| Gamey me I can handle. But parasites? Count me out.
| tra3 wrote:
| "Regular" pork has parasites too, that's why you wanna cook
| it to the "safe" temperature.
| MichaelRo wrote:
| Not really. Compared to the number of domestic pigs,
| parasite infections (like the deadly for humans
| Trichinellosis) are almost inexistent.
|
| And domestic pig meat is tested for parasites
| nevertheless.
|
| With all that I feel uneasy eating raw meat, although
| salami and prosciutto are very tasty and sometimes I
| submit to temptation. Feel like running the Russian
| roulette everytime although the probability of an actual
| parasite infestation is extremely low.
|
| Wild pigs would probably be okay if processed into I
| dunno, pasteurized canned meat. If that's guaranteed to
| kill parasites it should be okay for human consumption
| provided the meat is tested before nevertheless.
|
| One thing I'm thinking of is this problem: as far as I
| know testing the meat is a slow, manual process, where a
| human is required to take slices of the meat and check
| them under a microscope. Therefore it's only done on a
| statistical basis. That's enough for farm pigs, if a pig
| from a larger culture is parasite free, chances are very
| high that all are parasite free.
|
| But this is not possible for wild boars. Every pig they
| shot needs to be tested coze you never know otherwise.
| This is again feasible for the occasional hunt (here at
| least). Hunters will send a probe to the lab before
| consuming the pig and that's doable because it's like ...
| one or a few pigs. Not really possible if you massacre
| 1000 of them.
|
| So unless some technology is developed for automating
| this testing procedure, you can't safely eat the meat of
| a wild boar mass slaughter.
| linuxftw wrote:
| The USDA inspects for parasites and rejects any animals
| that have signs of them. Very little US farmed pork has
| parasites.
| taeric wrote:
| I think this is also the case for salmon? First time I
| had wild salmon at home, I was... rather surprised by the
| number of parasites on it.
|
| It really is impressive how well farmed meat does at
| keeping that out. I don't think many of us have any sort
| of intuition for just how parasite ridden food was even a
| half century ago.
| thehappypm wrote:
| Confidently incorrect!
| dgb23 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure I've eaten feral pigs before. I remember it
| as being good quality. It's common to eat game in autumn
| where I live. Especially in rural areas.
|
| I think this might be one of these cases where meat
| consumption might be ethically sound and good for the
| environment.
|
| Feral pigs are hard to contain. They are smart, greedy,
| dangerous. They seem to be very similar to us humans in many
| regards, just less dominant overall, but the pigs we are
| talking about here also multiply very fast.
|
| There are very few animals who can fight large feral pigs,
| and even fewer who have good chances of not getting severely
| injured. Pigs come in packs and they can assess situations
| much better than typical prey. They can fight off wolves or
| scare them away, especially when they have a numbers
| advantage. So the typical wolf strategy often doesn't work.
| Wolves might have the stamina and composure, but the
| risk/reward isn't there.
|
| I don't think the article mentions it, but pigs track the
| schedule of human hunters. They know roughly at which times
| they will show up, so they carefully try to pick up the
| hunter's sent and track where they go in order to plan safer
| paths through the wild. So even if you hunt them actively,
| it's not an easy task at all.
| Tade0 wrote:
| > The solution is to eat them.
|
| To quote a certain president: sounds good, doesn't work.
|
| Over here in Poland despite having open season for boars all
| year round and eliminating 185k specimens due to ASF a few
| years ago there are still a lot of them.
|
| The meat is great - leaner than pork and gamey, but it's also
| expensive - 2-4x more than pork.
|
| I mean, they disrupt ecosystems with their omnivoracity and
| propensity to multiply at a high rate so their population
| should be regulated, but you can't really compete on price with
| factory farming.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| We ate almost all large animals on the planet to extinction
| with just stone tools. If we wanted to wipe the pigs out it
| can definitely be done with automatic rifles.
| giardini wrote:
| An _automatic rifle_ is a "machine gun". Hunters, by and
| large, don't hunt pigs with machine guns.
|
| The term you seek is _semi-automatic rifle_ , which is a
| rifle firing one shot with each trigger press. These are
| what hunters use.
|
| In North America some persons are allowed to use machine
| guns to shoot pigs. But doing so is a challenge from both
| an efficiency and a safety standpoint:
|
| https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-
| texas/texas/ar...
|
| Except among mass killers, the machine gun is hardly the
| tool of choice for hunting (any animal including humans).
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > The meat is great - leaner than pork and gamey, but it's
| also expensive - 2-4x more than pork.
|
| Is it actually wild boar?
|
| We have butchers and farms selling "wild boar" products in
| Canada, but it's actually farmed from descendants of recent
| "adoptions" of wild specimens.
|
| It's wild in terms of genetics; which might still be better;
| but isn't accomplishing much in terms of culling.
| Tade0 wrote:
| > Is it actually wild boar?
|
| There isn't much of a market for farmed boar, because it's
| still expensive.
|
| We have a strong hunting lobby (many members of parliament
| are active hunters) so there's actually more bureaucracy
| with maintaining a farm of them than hunting. Farms
| probably exist(never heard of any), but it's not a
| particularly profitable business.
|
| Becoming a hunter is actually one of the two most popular
| ways of acquiring a firearm permit(the other being sport).
|
| During the ASF epidemic there was controversy regarding the
| origin of some of the meat on the market because, according
| to the law, boars culled due to ASF can, ahem, only be
| eaten by the one who hunted them, so the spike in supply
| was suspicious.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Ah gotcha. In Canada, it's basically prohibited to let
| game meat enter commercial trade. Still happens
| informally, but nobody is going to be able to walk into a
| butcher and buy it.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| You have what is believed for instance to be hundreds of
| thousands of wild pigs in Saskatchewan Alberta and Manitoba.
| Sows are capable of producing up to 12 piglets per year.
| Meanwhile those 3 have a combined population of 7.3M around 18%
| living in rural areas or about 1.3M.
|
| You can already legally own some rifles in Canada and hunt pigs
| in accordance with the law however you need to kill around 70%
| of the population each year just to keep the population the
| same size due to fast breeding and the survivors being about as
| smart as dogs do learn and become harder to kill.
|
| It's not obvious that either gun control nor well earned
| disdain for the rural population are a meaningful contributor
| to the problem whatsoever. Nor is it obvious why any sane
| person who isn't already inclined to join the reserves would do
| so for the purpose of obtaining essentially a hunting license
| nor why tossing in rural open carry would improve the bargain.
| Instead such a license ought to be free since you are in effect
| doing the government a favor.
|
| It seems more likely that people just aren't sufficiently
| inclined to kill enough of them because its a lot of work that
| wouldn't be sufficiently rewarded. Establishing a demand for
| harvesting and marketing them is something you would have to do
| the ground work on BEFORE people are inclined to put in the
| effort and furthermore it seems incredibly unlikely that the
| market should demand enough at a price that would support the
| amount of harvesting at a high unit cost required to even
| stabilize the population.
|
| I would suggest government pay employees directly to shoot a
| shit ton of pigs. It is far cheaper than trying to store and
| process them and avoid incentivizing breeding them by not
| paying independent agents per kill.
| 13of40 wrote:
| > Maybe the middle ground is to make it a military privilege to
| hunt feral hogs where you need to be a reservist, and if you
| join you get a lifetime rural open carry and hunting permit.
|
| I can't make out whether you're in the US or Canada, but where
| I live (Washington State) if you're out in the sticks, not only
| can you open carry but if you're hiking, fishing, hunting, etc.
| you can have a concealed weapon without a permit. Are you
| telling me there are states out east where you're no longer
| allowed to even *open* carry a gun in the woods?
|
| (Also the reservist tie-in is a little bit weird. I'm 50, I
| ain't drawing no TA-50. That makes me ineligible?)
| tra3 wrote:
| There's no concealed carry in Canada. In fact handgun
| acquisition has been banned last year. Hunting requires a
| license and then additional per species license. Except for
| species like wolves and coyotes, I think.
| doubled112 wrote:
| https://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/en/firearms/authorization-carry
|
| There is, but it's not very common at all, and not in the
| sense that you can just grab a gun and wander wherever you
| want.
|
| I've always wondered if they process the application
| without any of the work check boxes checked. I assume the
| answer is "no".
| bitxbitxbitcoin wrote:
| Seems like a suggestion by someone that isn't aware of the
| classes and education that are needed to get a hunting
| license or concealed weapon permit.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Why are they being called "super pigs"? Although that would be
| cool, it's not like they can fly, shoot lasers or be resistant to
| bullets.
|
| So, why not hunt them down for sport?
| jason-phillips wrote:
| I'm not sure why they're called that. They are, however,
| veritable super animals. They're incredibly intelligent,
| prolific, destructive and wiley.
|
| It's impossible to dent their numbers using traditional means.
| Super_Jambo wrote:
| I'm really hoping the other predictions in Neil Gaiman's System
| Shock aren't also coming true. But I suspect they will...
|
| For the big ones I have it as 3/6 already. (Not detailing em to
| avoid spoilers :))
| Syonyk wrote:
| > _Neil Gaiman 's System Shock_
|
| Ehm... which book?
|
| Are you thinking of Neil Stephenson's "Termination Shock"? That
| one involves feral pigs, and I'm not seeing "System Shock" as a
| book by Gaiman.
| thechao wrote:
| I'm pretty sure this is what OP meant; but, now, I am
| saddened we haven't seen the Neil's collaborate on a sci-fi
| graphic novel. Obviously, it'd be 12000 pages long.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Complete with 300 hour audio book version that describes
| each panel in the graphic novel.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| pigs are arguably smarter than dogs and as many can attest, these
| pigs will avoid traps and hunters rather adeptly - this is a
| situation where we need to repopulate wolves - hobby hunting will
| never outpace their population growth, we need full-time allies
| cryptonector wrote:
| Wolves won't hunt 300lb hogs.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| They said that about chimps but then those chimps figured out
| you could chase them off a cliff and then eat them at the
| bottom.
|
| Give them a chance and they'll adapt. It's either kill hogs
| or they starve.
| throw-4e451c8 wrote:
| [flagged]
| dean2432 wrote:
| how do you downvote on HN?
| the_only_law wrote:
| You need to have more karma points. I don't remember the
| exact number, but I think it's either 50 or 500.
| davchana wrote:
| 500. Downvote button I think is available for first few
| hours of comment.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| _People in Canada and the northern U.S. should report any
| sightings of feral pigs to their local conservation officers and
| to the Squeal on Pigs program_
|
| Why do they have a link at the end of the article asking people
| in Canada to report the pigs to the Montana government? [1] Are
| the US and Canada putting in a temporary agreement to allow
| Montana hunters into Canada to thin the herd and if so are they
| bringing disease testing centers into the loop? Or is this just a
| wording issue and I am interpreting it incorrectly? Perhaps they
| meant respectively?
|
| [1] - https://invasivespecies.mt.gov/montana-invasive-
| species/sque...
| Aperocky wrote:
| > article asking people in Canada to report the pigs to the
| Montana government
|
| This is too laughable, and it's not even that far out of
| context.
| maxerickson wrote:
| The brochure there says that hunting is banned. Whoever is
| authorized to do the culls is apparently trained to eradicate
| entire groups, so that they don't further disperse and/or learn
| to avoid hunters.
|
| The eradication in Montana appears to be relatively successful.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| What do you mean by disease testing centers?
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Hunters have animals tested for a myriad of diseases prior to
| being consumed. There are some diseases that spread to humans
| and some that have not yet spread but will be world changing
| events when they do. Deer and Elk around me for example are
| tested for Chronic Wasting Disease which is a misfolded prion
| disease with no cure. [1] It's why I make 30 food piles for
| 28 deer every day.
|
| Feral swine can carry several diseases that can be passed to
| humans such as leptospirosis, toxoplasmosis, brucellosis,
| tularemia, trichinellosis, swine influenza, salmonella,
| hepatitis and pathogenic E. coli. [2] They can also spread
| this to your pets and livestock. Brucellosis has been a
| recent problem in Montana for example.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_wasting_disease
|
| [2] - https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/ourfocus/wildlifedamag
| e/ope...
| ETH_start wrote:
| Siberian tigers are proficient predators of wild boars:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_boar
|
| >>A single tiger can systematically destroy an entire sounder by
| preying on its members one by one, before moving on to another
| sounder.
|
| Siberian tigers are endangered due to poachers seeking to meet
| the demand for tiger body parts in traditional Chinese medicine,
| and could be well protected by Canadian conservation authorities
| on Canadian soil far from China.
|
| A population could be transplanted to Canada and allowed to
| proliferate, to act as a natural wild pig limiter.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| I mean I absolutely want tigers to be set loose in the
| countryside but I feel like that's going to then end in people
| shooting tigers out of helicopters with a machine gun.
|
| If people are willing to move on from the idea that we have to
| try and keep animals exactly where they were and preserve
| habitats (that we then wipe out) then we could probably save
| species like that. Tigers would do great in a nice forest full
| of pigs.
| giardini wrote:
| NIMBY.
|
| Tiger meat is too tough, not tasty enough and there aren't
| enough recipes for preparation. I credit this to a scarcity
| of tiger hunts. Step 1 in every recipe ("kill the tiger") is
| always a bitch!
|
| I'd much prefer being overrun with feral pigs than feral
| tigers. Bacon!8-))
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