SAN ANTONIO --She gobbled up the corn and the trap was sprung, catching the 300 lb. sow in a welded, wire enclosure. She paces back and forth, snorting, sniffing, ripping and rooting.
And she s pregnant, too. Trappers say feral hogs reproduce faster than hunters can bag them.
Robert Goins of Texas Hog Trappers, Unlimited, is busy setting traps with bait. The corn is piled up near one end of the large cage. He s betting he gets a drift of wild hogs by night s end.
State agriculture officials are betting the creatures are destructive. Officials say the damage exceeds $400 million a year statewide--from an animal with no natural predator. They travel in gangs, leaving their marks on the landscape of San Antonio. Yards near Bulverde, Texas, and golf courses along the north and north east sides of San Antonio aren t immune to the attacks, either.
Neighbors are left wondering: Should they repair the damage, only to be visited again by these unwanted animals?
Bryan Davis, the Texas AgriLife Extension Service county agent said, Feral hogs can be very destructive, cause several hundreds, even thousands of dollars worth of damage in a very short time.
State officials are trying to get a handle on the glut of these gluttonous guests. Half the feral hogs in the United States live here in Texas. That equates to more than 2 million of them.
And the numbers keep hog trapper Robert Goins busy. He continuously monitors and tinkers with his traps to keep the hogs coming into a 4 enclosure for food.
Added Goins, A hog is smart. People think they re dumb. They re not. Matter of fact, you catch so many of them, they change their routine, so you have to change your routine.
Before springing the traps, Goins uses infrared cameras to watch the hogs behavior over several days... to learn. And the video, he says, yields more than just clues to catching them.
Sometimes, he says, it is downright entertaining, as was the case when he witnessed more than a dozen feral hogs enter the trap.
Goins said, It looks like I marched them in there. They went in a line around the trap and in the door. All 15 of them.
On one property alone, Goins snared more than 2-tons of hogs, like the sow now pacing his trailer s cage. And this little piggy is going to market.
Goins said, They ship the meat overseas, Japan, things like that. And the guy told me the bigger and stinkier the hog is, the more they like it. I thought, whoa! Okay!
