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50K views 19 replies 15 participants last post by  JoeyBeets 
See page 30 of the digest under "Feral Hogs" section. Hunting for hogs only in DMZ 25 and 65 during regular deer seasons.

Years ago, they were at White Oaks Branch WMA - they did a lot of damage to White Oaks Golf Course but since then the hog numbers were decimated. I've never seen them at White Oaks WMA the past year in the times I've been there. I think they were smart enough to get off of public hunting lands after the massive pressure to hunt them down few years ago. :)

If you google, I think you'll find news articles about it. Here's one from March 2009:

Hunters shrink New Jersey's wild boar population | NJ.com

They are cunning and ferocious, but the mysterious feral pigs of New Jersey were no match for the state's top predators: hunters.

State wildlife officials report that 56 of the bristly-coated swine -- more than half the estimated population -- were killed in December and January in the first New Jersey feral pig hunt in the wilds of Gloucester County.

The hunt was the second phase of a long-term plan by the state to wipe out the free-ranging hogs known worldwide as the ecological menace Sus scrofa.

"We still don't know how big the population is, but we hope the hunters got most of them," said Lawrence Herrighty of the state Division of Fish and Wildlife, adding, "We are going to attempt to continue shooting and trapping the pigs ourselves."

Federal biologists first tried trapping the hogs last year, but managed to bag only three between June and August. Then the state added wild boar to the menu during the annual deer hunt, with the results announced last week.

Next, Herrighty said, comes the "Judas pig technique."

"We'll be trapping individual pigs and putting a radio collar on them," Herrighty explained. "We use the collared pig to lead us to the rest. You don't want to hang your hat on just one thing to get rid of them."

Federal and state wildlife authorities suspect the swine -- common pests in other parts of the country, but previously unknown here -- began secretly breeding in a remote corner of South Jersey about 15 years ago.

Locals knew of them, but officials didn't take notice until 2001, when a sounder of wild hogs rampaged over the fairways at White Oaks Country Club in Newfield, a golf course located in the state's 2,675-acre White Oak Branch Wildlife Management Area.

Unlike the peccary or javelina of the Southwest, the only piglike creatures native to North America, these feral swine are imports. They are descendants of domestic pigs, Euro-Asian invaders accidentally introduced to North America by Christopher Columbus and subsequent explorers to eventually become one of the most destructive invasive species on the planet.

"They are one of the biggest threats to our environment because of the damage they do," said Len Wolgast, a member of the state Fish and Game Council and former wildlife biology professor at Rutgers University.

Wherever they take hold, the pigs root up native grasses and plants, kill habitat for native creatures and push out other wildlife as they aggressively fight for territory, Wolgast said. In Gloucester, the pigs already have turned sensitive vernal pools into wallows, displacing rare reptiles and amphibians.

These outlaw farm pigs have an uncanny ability to revert from plump, pink domesticated porkers to a seemingly primitive state -- growing tusks, getting lean, sprouting hair and turning black shortly after feeding in the wild. The metamorphosis is compounded in subsequent generations.

"The belief is that our pigs got loose from a hog farm in the early 1990s, but we have no proof," said Herrighty.

There are an estimated 6 million or more feral pigs in the U.S. alone. They spread through migration, deliberate introductions and accidental releases of domestic pigs. The feral swine are now a destructive force in 44 states, including Pennsylvania, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.

The Gloucester County pigs still carry some traits of their domestic ancestors, said Lou Gehringer, owner of the Sportsmen's Outpost in Williamstown, where many of the hunters registered their killed pigs for state records.

"All the ones checked in here had hair -- they looked like wild pigs. But they were different colors. Some were jet black, but others were orangish and some others were tannish with black spots, especially the smaller ones," he said.

Hunters were told they could shoot wild pigs at the start of the traditional, one-week shotgun season for antlered deer in December. But the hunt was limited to where the pigs have been spotted -- a geographical region around Monroe and Franklin townships in Gloucester County outlined in state hunting regulations as Zone 25.

"We found that a lot of guys just wouldn't shoot the pigs during buck week because they wanted to get their bucks first, so the initial number of kills was low," said Herrighty. "They got back to the pigs later when we let them continue."

Hunters pursued the pigs with shotguns, muzzleloading rifles and bow and arrows through Jan. 31. Some used corn to lure them in, while others put on drives, walking through thick brush to push the pigs to other hunters.

"Most of the pigs checked in here were shot with shotguns," said Gehringer. "I had a couple with muzzleloader, and one with a bow -- a young boy got a pig with his bow on New Year's Eve and it weighed about 110 pounds."

It wasn't the biggest dragged into Gehringer's shop. That honor went to a 250-pound porker brought down with a shotgun on Christmas Eve. But, in a subsequent survey of hunters, the state learned a 308-pounder also was bagged -- along with a youth or "shoat" weighing 10 pounds.
 
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