Anyone who has spent any time in rural Texas understands the havoc that the burgeoning feral hog population (previous posts here) has caused in almost every area of Texas. Chronicle outdoors columnist Shannon Tompkins has been studying the problem for quite some time and, in this article from this past weekend, he puts the hog problem in perspective:

Texas is awash in a rising tide of feral hogs. And Texans appear as impotent as King Canute in stopping that tide from climbing up the beach. [. . .]
Texas has about half as many feral hogs as it does white-tailed deer ó perhaps 2 million hogs and about 4 million deer. [But] almost all the growth in the hog population has occurred over the past 20 years. Once limited to a few thousand pigs in small pockets of East and South Texas, feral hogs infest all but a half-dozen or so of Texas’ 254 counties.
This is an incredible rate of expansion. And with it has come millions of dollars of damage to agriculture, land, water and native wildlife.
What’s behind the expansion?
We Texans did this to ourselves. People hauled live-trapped feral hogs all over the state and released them, thinking they would create good hunting opportunities.
Those infections spread.
Also, changing land-use practices ó everything from what grows on land, who owns it, average size of tracts, who has access to that land and what they do there ó gave feral hogs the conditions they needed to become established and thrive.
Will feral hogs become more populous in Texas than whitetails?
Could happen. Texas’ deer population is stable, and deer live on just about every acre that can support them; the herd isn’t going to grow.
But the feral hog population continues mushrooming as the animals pioneer into new corners and herds expand to fill the newly infested habitat.
Feral hogs can outcompete and outreproduce deer.
Hogs are omnivores. Deer are browsers. Deer depend on a small suite of plants for food. Hogs can live on almost anything, and in places that will not support deer.
A doe deer doesn’t breed until she’s a year old, then produces one fawn most years and twins in really good years. On average, half those fawns survive to their first birthday.
A sow feral hog can breed for the first time when she’s 8 months old or so, and throw litters of four to eight piglets twice a year, and almost all survive.
Do the math.
It appears impossible to eradicate feral hogs once they have become established at the level we have them in Texas.
Yes, extreme methods ó intense trapping, aerial gunning ó can clear an area of feral hogs. But it’s expensive, time-consuming and only a temporary solution. If intense control is not maintained ó constant trapping, brutally efficient gunning over a large area ó new hogs migrate to fill the vacuum.
Look; Texas has the most liberal hog-killing regulations in the nation. Feral hogs can be killed by any method other than poisoning. They can be shot from the air or ground. They can be trapped. They can be run down by packs of hounds. Day and night. No limits.
No one has a dependable estimate of how many feral hogs are killed in Texas each year. But it has to be in the neighborhood of a quarter-million or more. Heck, the state’s two commercial processing plants that butcher feral hogs for the retail market are annually handling an estimated 100,000 wild swine. Maybe twice that many are taken by recreational hunters and trappers.
Still, the pig population climbs.
Feral hogs are the four-legged equivalent of fire ants, tallow trees, salt cedar, water hyacinth and all the other non-native, invasive species that are damaging Texas’ biota. Their only positive qualities are that they provide hunting opportunity, and they are great on the table.
I kill feral hogs whenever I can, even though I understand that assassinating one every now and again from a deer stand or even trapping a dozen or two a year from the deer lease has the same impact as trying to dip out the ocean using a coffee cup.
It’s not particularly satisfying work. But I like to think the deer and the quail, squirrel and turkey and every other native creature in the woods appreciates the effort.

Feral hogs have even been seen roaming in parts of Houston’s Memorial Park near Buffalo Bayou. And markets are developing for feral hog meat. But the population continues to grow steadily. Any ideas?