(upbeat music) Well, how about them hogs?

Hey.

Welcome everybody to Naturally Wild.

My name is Steve Wildman Wilson and I serve as your host right here each week on this show.

You know, the season is finally here.

The hogs are off and running.

But I'm not talking about the Arkansas Razorbacks football team, folks.

I'm talking about real hogs.

Real wild hogs.

The ones that do over $1 million worth of damage here in Arkansas every year.

So when you hear that my two guests tonight say something like, "Go hogs, go!"

It has a whole different meaning than when we say it at a football game.

Let me introduce you to my guests.

First of all, right here on my right is Ryan Farney.

He's with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, and you are the Feral Hog program coordinator.

That's right.

Thank you.

Well, thank you for being here.

Appreciate you having me.

We're going to talk about hogs.

Next to him is Dan Wright.

And he is with the Arkansas Farm Bureau Federation.

That's right.

Now, if I sound a little bit confusing there, because if you've ever dealt with Arkansas Farm Bureau, they've got federations, they've got foundations, they've got, tell me, you've got how many different divisions, Farm Bureau?

We've got probably five different divisions that people are aware of.

We've got our Farm Bureau Federation, which was started in 1935, been here for 90 years.

And that's mostly, we deal with agriculture in that.

We've got our insurance departments and everybody, when they think about Farm Bureau, they think insurance.

Sure.

We've got our foundation, which is a way for us to give money to local 4-H groups and, and different folks that are needing grants and this and that.

And we've got a Southern Farm Bureau and other things like that that people may not be quite as aware of, but those are the three main ones that we do.

Well, good.

Well, thank you for coming as well.

And give me a little background.

We'll talk about your background in a minute.

You've been with them quite a few years, haven't you?

I've been on the county level Farm Bureau for about 24, 25 years.

I've been with the state board of directors for 13 years.

I've been a secretary treasurer four years.

I mean, now and my third year as president of Arkansas Farm Bureau.

And you're from where?

I'm from, Waldron, Arkansas.

Those who don't know where it's at, it's just south of Fort Smith, right up against the Oklahoma state line.

Yeah, it's pretty close to big towns like Acorn and Mansfield.

North of Acorn, south of Mansfield.

I always remember that because it's Tornado Alley.

Seems like they always come through there.

Ryan, you've been with Game and Fish how long?

Six years.

Six years?

Yes, sir.

And you came from where?

Muldrow, Oklahoma, which is not too far from where you are.

You're from Oklahoma?

The wind blows all the time in Oklahoma.

Well, eastern Oklahoma is not as bad.

That's true.

You got some mountains over there.

That's right.

I went to school in Bethany, Oklahoma, just west of Oklahoma City.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Not too far from where I went to college at then.

Yeah.

You went to where?

Northeastern State University, Tahlequah, Oklahoma.

Well, I'm glad to be in Arkansas, I know that.

And did you come to Arkansas for this particular job?

I did, yeah.

Background, education background was actually focused on feral hog population management.

And so when this job came open, it was just a natural fit.

And did you work for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife as well?

I did before I moved here.

Yeah.

Out in the field.

Yes.

Yep.

Good.

Out in the field.

You just came to a different field now.

That's right.

Well, well.

Welcome.

We're here talking about hogs tonight because, and you know, they don't know borders.

They're bad in Oklahoma.

They're bad in 30 something different states.

I just don't think people realize how bad they are.

And so the the whole purpose of me doing this show is to let you know about hogs at Arkansas, the damage they do and all the efforts being put forward trying to eliminate them.

I think it's a lost cause, but at least you can knock them back That's the best word I heard from a biologist one time and said, did you kill them all?

No, we knocked them back real good.

But let's talk about hogs themselves first.

They're very unique, individual animals.

What, how many different types of species do we have as far as wild hogs in Arkansas?

I'll take that first, I guess.

And the genetics tell us that we really have three flavors of hogs in Arkansas.

And generally speaking, you really only have one predominant version.

And that's the hybrid between the Eurasian and the domestics that were released many, many years ago in North America.

So the the combination of genetics there is Eurasian, the domestic, which gives you your hybrid, which is predominantly what you find in Arkansas right now.

Is that why you see different colors and, you know, blacks and reds and red and blacks and all that stuff, mixtures?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, just the genetic variation over time has produced a plethora of coat colors and patterns.

You know, a lot of people, they they know we have hogs, but they think they're really wildlife.

But they're not native to America, are they?

How did they get here?

Not that you were around then, Dan, but how did that, how did they get here in the first place?

You're better at this.

You're you're you're the hog expert on this.

But I think I think they were in our area back in the days when people would have hogs.

They just let them run loose, and they would, they would go out and become part of part of the environment and become wild.

And folks would just never reclaim them.

Yeah.

And I think that's that's kind of where they started.

They adapted to what their surroundings are.

That makes them a feral hog, I guess once they were wild and then they're captive.

How did we get them in the United States?

So the historians attribute that to Hernando de Soto, the Spanish explorer that came in the 1500s.

I don't remember him, but I read about it.

Yeah, it was a little before my time, but he landed in Florida and brought them with him.

And just something to eat.

Something to eat.

Brought them over.

They were exploring the new world.

And so he brought them with him, and they traveled across the southeast.

And as time went on, they escaped, or they traded him with the Native Americans.

And that was kind of the genesis of hogs in North America.

Yeah.

Do we have any true razorbacks?

Everybody always asked me, you know, razorback, Arkansas Razorbacks.

Any hogs here true razorbacks?

I would argue that you don't have any.

And when when somebody says a razorback, I think they're really referring to that Eurasian breed.

And I would argue that we don't have any 100% full bred Eurasian hogs in Arkansas right now.

Not unless somebody has a high fence that we don't know about, and they brought them in and put them on it.

Now, he brought in some hogs, obviously for meals and sausage or whatever they made back then.

I guess there's a real good reason that they multiply pretty fast.

Why don't you talk about, this is the astonishing part for me, how fast they multiply.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I can talk about it and I'm sure you can as well, but hogs multiply much faster than any other animal relative to their size.

I mean, when you talk about reproduction in feral hogs, they, they reproduce at early as six months old, and they only they're only pregnant for about four months in total at a time.

And those are again sexually mature at another six months.

And so in general, in the wild, female hogs have two litters every single year, and they average between 7 and 8 piglets per litter.

So you're talking 12 to 14 animals per sow every single year.

Whereas opposed to a deer they're having 1 or 2 a year.

You need a calculator.

You do.

So a sow can have two litters in one year.

And one of those litters can have litters the same year.

Yes.

Yeah that's a lot of piglets isn't it?

Yeah.

Yeah I mean if you do the math, it kind of gets crazy pretty quick.

Somebody did the math one time and put it to pencil.

And he said that just to keep hogs at the current level, at the current level where we are, which is way too many, just to keep them at that rate, you got to kill 70% of them every year.

Yeah.

Have you heard that before?

And we're nowhere near that.

Yeah.

Do what?

We're nowhere near.

No, no, no, I mean, that's that's the problem.

And it's it's going to get worse.

All we can try to do is knock them back a little bit.

Okay.

No razorback hogs.

And how many different states in the United States have hogs now?

There's, I'd venture to say probably half of the states have got hogs.

I think in your really desert states, you're not going to see a lot of them.

The southern states are pretty well, pretty well ate up with them.

And I know with my dealings with Farm Bureau, we have a president from Hawaii.

Hawaii's even got feral hogs in it.

Really?

And that's the last place I thought you would see a feral hog, but, but they do have them.

But they got them in Alabama, Tennessee, Texas.

And I mean, it's just, southern is really bad.

The farther north you go, I think the, the Canadian, around that border is just too cold for them.

Okay.

So they usually don't go that far.

Weather and everything Ohio a few years ago had some.

But I don't think they have that big a problem.

So other states have problems like we do southern states mostly?

Yeah.

So this is not, it's not isolated, just Arkansas As far as Arkansas goes, do all 75 counties in Arkansas have them?

I think all 75 counties have got some form of feral hog.

I think those in the in the timber and the row crop areas have have got quite a bit of problems.

We were talking earlier, in the northeast, we don't hear as much.

The far north we hear a little bit, but not as much.

But down in the South, I mean, they're just inundated with feral hogs.

Yeah.

We know they multiply.

How long do they live?

I many how long can they keep having those babies?

I mean, what's a limiting factor on a hog?

Not much, to be honest with you.

The research suggests that anywhere from 7 to 8 years is a general life expectancy for a hog in the wild.

Do the math on that.

I mean, that's got to be a lot of little piglets there.

By the way, I call them piglets.

I call them Schultz.

Is that a good word for them?

Pigs.

I call them piglets.

Yeah, yeah, I know the different, they have different senses obviously.

Are there, what's their strongest sense?

Smell, eyesight, memory, what?

I've noticed with my dealings with them, smell.

I mean, if they if they know you've been in the area, and you're trying to find out where you're going to trap them, if there's a lot of things happening in the area, they're not going to come around.

If some of the bait that I would use in my farm, I would put some additives into it for smell and they'll come right to it.

So I think smell is a major one.

Olfactory.

And good memory too.

Yeah, I think I always kind of summed it up, their the ugliest, smartest animal I know because, I mean, they are really smart, aren't they?

They are very smart I don't know how big a brain they got, but it works.

Yeah.

They don't they don't get as much credit as they deserve most of the time.

How big they get?

I mean, it varies based on the availability to food and cover and water.

But I mean, generally speaking, a wild hog in Arkansas is probably going to rain somewhere around 150 pounds for a full grown adult.

And then the biggest ones that we've seen are pushing 300 pounds plus in the wild.

Had a 400 pound one killed by my chicken house.

A 400 pounder killed over at your place by the chicken house?

They went and weighed it, 400 pounds.

That's a lot.

Yeah.

That's a lot of hog.

By the way, I'm not a real big trivia person, but if you're ever in a trivia game, I've got a good trivia question for you.

What do you call a group of hogs other than a bunch of little piglets?

But what, what's the formal name for a group of hogs?

You know, deer run in herds and ducks go in flocks.

A group of hogs is called a sounder, a sounder.

Yep.

Not a lot of people, I didn't know that for a long time.

Not a lot of people do.

Yeah, well, we got plenty of them here in Arkansas.

So rather than just ask you what the problem is, I think pretty easy to see.

We got too many of them, but they cause a lot of damage.

Let's watch this video right here and kind of sums it all up.

And then we'll come back in here and talk about some possible solutions to the problems.

Let's watch this.

From an economic standpoint, we know that feral hogs cause 30 to $40 million of damage in Arkansas every single year.

And so there's an economic component, but there's also an ecological component as well.

Feral hogs have been in the state since some of the early pioneers, and they've had their feral hogs or their hogs that they used in their farming, and so they would put ear notches in them and release them and then use them as a food source.

Feral hogs are very prolific.

They have a very high reproductive potential.

Once these feral hogs became established, it became more and more difficult to control their numbers.

For farmers, there's a variety of issues that they have.

We mostly think about them eating their crops and yes, they do that.

I even had one farmer who had issues because he had laid down all his poly pipe, and for whatever reason, the hogs decided to get out there and mess with it.

Well, he had to send workers out to re-lay down that poly pipe and that cost him money.

And it was during a season when he frankly didn't have much time to divert his labor to do that.

In about 2017, the Arkansas Feral Hog Eradication Task Force was formed by a legislative act.

The idea being that there needed to be a combined concerted effort across the state to unify state, federal and non-government organizations to combat the feral hog issue.

Having the different agencies and organizations is incredibly important.

Every agency brings their own perspective, their own ideas, their own thoughts on how they can address an issue.

And we all work in different parts of the state.

We have federal land, state lands, lands owned by organizations such as The Nature Conservancy.

And so everybody plays their part on their areas that they own and manage.

But also, it's important for those agencies to come together to figure out how we can best address the issues on private land.

Recently just concluded the conservation incentive program with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.

This put traps in the hands of over 200 landowners, protecting approximately a million acres across the state and removing 6500 pigs just last year in 2024.

Trapping, which is mostly what we recommend, especially if you have a sounder that's an established a group of sows and their related young ones, and if you can kind of get rid of those, then you can start working on the single boars or the bachelor groups or these other groups that are coming very transient through your property.

The most ideal approach that we can take is to have a two component system where we have full time trappers, those that go out and help individuals that have land that don't have the time or capacity to trap, but also the cost share program I think is really helpful for those landowners that have the time, have the ability on their own, just maybe don't have the funds to purchase the right type of trap.

If you are a landowner in Arkansas, there's no reason you should want a feral hog on your property.

They add nothing beneficial to your land.

They will compete with your native wildlife.

They will destroy native plant communities.

They are very territorial.

And so if you have a lot of hogs on your property, you're not going to have much else.

We still need that gas pedal down.

We still need to be removing them, because as soon as you let up a little bit, they're back.

In other words, go hogs go.

It's pretty much open war on hogs here in Arkansas, isn't it?

It is.

Well, talk a little bit about the task force and how much money has been put toward this.

I know incentive programs.

I just saw where there's a lot of money on the table.

Something fairly new?

Yeah.

The USDA has put out an additional $35 million, and this is going out to a 14 state area.

If the state wants to participate in it, they can participate in it.

And those state includes all the states around Arkansas, plus Florida, Georgia, Alabama and Hawaii is included in one of those states.

But it's something, it's in addition to the eradication program, the $105 million program they did a few years ago.

But the USDA has recognized the damage that hogs due to agricultural land and not just pasture or meadows, but but row crop.

And you saw in the video the corn that was knocked down.

They're saying that it's a major issue and their need to do something about it.

Now, you've got a personal experience with this.

You're over in Waldron and you have a, you have some chicken farms.

Talk about the damage at your place.

Yeah, I do chicken farm and I do hay in my meadows.

Okay.

It used to be a relatively smooth meadow where you can probably go 4 or 5 miles an hour on the tractor, spraying or cutting or anything.

I can barely do three now and is a rough ride from the time you get out here to the time you get back.

I've gone out there at times and it looks like you've had a tractor go and plow the fields up whenever the hogs come in and you go out and you and you level it back with a disc or whatever, that just loosens it up for them to come back because they love grub worms, and they'll dig in the ground to get those grub worms.

And when they do, they don't clean up the mess when they leave.

Imagine cattle farmers.

It would be a problem for them to as well with their cattle grazing out there.

What about from a wildlife perspective?

I know I think about in my deer camp, we used to have a lot of hogs, and we'd have a lot of hogs one year and then they'd be gone for two years.

Then they come back.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, I mean, as far as that situation goes, it could be a variety of things.

You or one of the other people in your lease could have pushed them off of the area with hunting, or your neighbors could have.

They've got big territories sometimes, so they could just be spending a lot of time in part of their home range that's not on your hunting lease.

But generally speaking, from a wildlife standpoint, they're very disruptive.

They're very disruptive.

And they, like I said in the video, they compete for native resources and they will push off your wildlife.

And I think it still, it rings pretty true that if you've got a lot of hogs on your property, you're not going to have much else.

Do they eat a lot of acorns?

Is that one of their main food sources?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, pretty much anything they want, I guess.

They root up plants, so forth.

Yeah, vegetation makes up most of their diet.

And so acorns or tubers or root systems, whatever it may be.

That's what they prefer, you know.

And then the grubs and the earthworms, it's just an added benefit, you know, when they find those things.

All right.

Let's talk about trapping.

I know a lot of people like to hunt hogs.

A lot of people started that running with dogs and so forth.

And while, I guess it's fun, I've been on some of those hunts, folks I think we're to the point where this really isn't a sport anymore.

This is a problem.

I mean, this is a, this is a nuisance animal.

So we're not really concerned about having fun.

We're concerned about getting rid of these things.

That's right.

Is trapping really the only solution where you can get a whole sounder at one time?

In my area, we've had a lot of folks that just like to go out and hunt them.

Yeah.

When you hunt, you may get one, two, maybe most three, and you scatter the rest.

When you trap them, when I would trap, I would get 9 to 20 hogs at one time.

And you know, when you, when you hunt, you just you just actually scattering them and it makes it harder to do.

You'll run them, you're running them from your farm to your neighbor's farm, but they'll come back to your farm again.

And the thing is, as many as there is, they've got to be eliminated, you know, whittle down at a faster rate than what hunting does.

Yeah I know Game and Fish has been very instrumental in trapping thousands of them.

It sounds easy, but it's a lot of work.

Kind of go through the process out there.

You set a trap up and you have to watch it.

You you got cell phones and cameras up.

Because really, if what you want to do, you want to catch a whole sounder at one time, because if you happen to leave two out, that's a male and female and they like each other, you're right back where you started from in a matter of a few months, right?

Yeah.

That's right.

Yeah.

It starts with scouting and baiting and making sure that you know how many pigs are coming into the area, because when you, like I said, when you set your trap up and you get ready to catch, you want to make sure that when you see 15 pigs in that trap, that you know that that's all that's in that group and not, you know, there's actually not 20 pigs, you know?

So when you drop that gate, you don't leave the five out that you didn't know about.

And I understand technology lets you basically stay at home or in your office.

And if you've got a trap set up somewhere, South Arkansas motion sensor alerts it.

How does that work?

Yeah.

So I mean, all the cameras that come on, the traps that we promote now have motion activated sensors.

And so when any animal and they're even getting to the point now where they've equipped a lot of their cameras with AI, and so you only get notifications when a hog steps in front of the camera instead of anything.

Deer or something like that.

So the camera goes off, you get an alert on your phone, and then you pull the live feed up.

And when all the pigs are in the trap, you press the button on your phone and down goes the doors.

And they even to the point now where they're equipping their their cameras with the satellite, like satellite, where you can get service by satellite and not just from like AT&T or Verizon, because a lot of places in Arkansas, you don't have great cell phone service.

Especially where the hogs are.

That was my problem.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So we've actually started equipping some of our traps with that technology, and we can put our traps now in places where we were never able to before.

Yeah.

What do you use for bait?

What do you, I know you put it out and and again, you would think a bunch of hogs would just run in there and eat.

But they're fairly reluctant to go in lots of times.

But few of them go in?

I use corn.

Okay.

I use corn.

The problem that I had with corn, this is the you talked about the smell a while ago, it was the raccoons and the squirrels would come eat your corn, and the trap that I used was a net trap.

And they would come and eat it all up and be gone.

So I mixed diesel.

Diesel?

With the corn.

The raccoons and the squirrels don't like the diesel in it, but the hogs would attract them.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Is there anything a hog won't eat?

What do you use?

I don't I don't typically recommend people use diesel.

I think that there's a lot of a lot of things that you can use.

But no, I haven't found anything generally that a hog doesn't really have any interest in if it's hungry, you know.

Yeah.

They'll eat just about any type of bait that you put in there.

They're going to eat.

If they want to, if they want to be in the trap.

Yeah, yeah.

But their real scared, I mean, like I said, they don't just run in there.

They're, some of them stay outside.

Oh yeah.

Yeah I mean they definitely have a reluctancy to go into a trap.

You know at first they can anyways.

Not always but yeah, you just gotta you got to watch your cameras and monitor them and trying to kind of get a feel for how they're reacting to it.

Before we run out of time.

A lot of rules and regulations governing this stuff because they're not a game animal.

So there's not a hunting season on them because they're not wildlife.

They're feral.

So where do folks find out the latest information?

Because I know it's changed a lot.

You can't transport any live hogs unless it's for like you're going to a fair.

You got to have them vaccinated and so forth.

Talk about the rules and regulations and where people can find out the latest.

I'm also a member of the used to Lifestyle and Poultry Commission is the animal health department now and back in 2013, the legislature passed a law that you couldn't transport feral hogs anymore.

You can transport them dead, but you can't transport them alive.

If you do transport, they better have health papers which alleviates our folks going to shows and and to things like that.

They're, they're able to haul.

But if they're a feral hog, they can't be alive when you transport them.

And that's something Arkansas Farm Bureau has been fighting for for years.

We are firmly behind that.

Well, there's still some hog farmers in Arkansas as well, that raises it for like Tyson and things like that too.

So they they got to transport.

And that's our, you know, our other issue is that there is so many hog farmers.

These things carry disease.

A good point.

And we have we have these things going right up to a hog farm, a commercial hog farm.

And they'll take that disease right with them.

Yeah.

With cattle the same way.

You know, we talk about our new world screw worm while ago.

They could be a major carrier of that screw worm.

And that's what the problem they're having in South Texas is the feral hog carrying it across this Mexican border.

Well, a lot of good information about hogs.

And once again, we just joined in, we'll do a cheer, go hogs, go!

Right.

Go away.

Yeah.

Go away.

Yeah.

Thank you all for being here.

Thank you.

Thank you all for watching tonight.

We appreciate it so much.

Go hogs, go.

And I'll see you next week right here on Naturally Wild.

This program was made possible by Arkansas Hunters Feeding the Hungry, East Harding Construction Company, David's Burgers, Greenway Equipment, Arkansas Farm Bureau, and the Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas.

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