Ag officials gain ground on wild hogs
State agriculture officials killed 21,000 feral pigs in Oklahoma last year, an increase of 40% from 2019, but wild hogs are in almost every Oklahoma county and causing millions of dollars in damage.
“It' s kind of an up hill battle,” Scott Alls, director of wildlife services for the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry, told the Oklahoma Wildlife Conservation Commission on Monday.
Alls gave an update to wildlife commissioners on feral swine eradication efforts in the state. Last summer, the commission voted to close recreational hog hunting on some wildlife management areas i n Oklahoma at t he request of the Agriculture Department. It is easier to trap and remove feral swine in areas where there is less hunting pressure, Alls said.
“The more you hammer on these hogs with dogs or people hunting them, the spookier they get ,” Al ls told The Oklahoman last summer. “We can have pigs on bait and somebody comes through with a pack of dogs, it may be three weeks before
we see those pigs again.”
The 2018 Farm Bill gave the Agriculture Department more money to wage war on feral swine, and the agency began implementing its plan of attack last year with those funds. Four southwest Oklahoma counties — Cotton, Tillman, Jackson and Harmon — along with Kay County were originally targeted by the agency as areas where state agriculture officials believe it has a chance to significantly reduce the wild pig population and make a difference.
Alls told the commission on Monday that Oklahoma received additional funding from the Farm Bill so Osage and Pawnee counties were added to the swine eradication list in northern Oklahoma, along with Roger Mills and Beckham counties in western Oklahoma.
“We are just trying to make a bigger footprint,” Alls said.
In the four southwest Oklahoma counties, called the Red River project, Al ls said 176,000 acres are enrolled in the swine er adi cati on program and about 5,000 pigs have been removed thus far. Another 1,000 feral swine could be killed this week as state agriculture officials are flying helicopters over properties in Cotton County and shooting the pigs from the sky, he said.
Damage estimates from wild hogs on those 176,000 acres in southwest Oklahoma total about $500,000, he said.
In Kay County, there has been less interest in pig removal by landowners who are leasing their properties for hog hunting, Alls told commissioners.
“Pigs are whole lot more popular where they are newer to everybody. There is a lot of interest from north of the border incoming to Oklahoma and hunting pigs,” Alls said. “They're a little more hesitant to let us come in.”
Al ls said about 61,000 acres are enrolled in the feral swine eradication program in Kay County, but most of it is U.S. Army Corps of Engineers land around Kaw Lake. Between 350 and 500 pigs have been removed from Kay County where an estimated $330,000 in damage has been reported.
There are very few counties in Oklahoma that do not have wild hogs, Alls told the commissioners, even citing a recent example of 47 pigs that averaged more than 250 pounds each being trapped and removed from a sod farm near south Oklahoma City.
“Our numbers are high even in places where you don't expect to find many,” he said.
While state agriculture officials kill many hogs from a helicopter, the most effective method in removing feral swine has been trapping, Alls said. The newest traps contain a camera where the trapper can operate remotely. When the trap is full, a push of a button on the phone will drop a trap door on the hogs.
Alls told the commission there is a lot of interest in a new method to eradicate pigs by baiting traps with a sodium-nitrite poison that is currently being tested. It has been used in Australia with great success, he said.
There are field trials in Texas and Alabama underway which has shown its effectiveness, but there must be a bait delivery system developed that can target the pigs without harming other wildlife, he said.
After field trials are concluded, it will be submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for approval, he said.
“I don't know how it is going to look in the end,” he said.