Wild Pigs

[larryJ]

Well I wasn't going to say anything but my last trip through Kansas I saw a guy---rather big guy---at a waffle house and he had---

Larryj

[ddurbin]

There are several areas in Kansas that have feral hog populations.  Besides the Bourbon Co ones already mentioned, there are herds on Ft. Riley, in the Ashland area, around Lake Clinton, and some here in Cowley Co on the Kaw Wildlife Area.  There are probably more that I'm forgetting.  Kansas has been very aggressive in trying to eliminate the herds.  Trapping them is permitted by 'infested' landowners, and special teams have been hired to shoot them from helicopters.  They have also been made illegal to  hunt, in hopes of preventing any more introduction for that purpose.  They are very destructive to crops and cropland, and also carry diseases that can infect domestic herds.  The last articles I saw about them suggested that their populations were beginning to be controlled and maybe reduced a little, but certainly not to the point of eradication.  That will be a very hard goal to reach.

[Lazy Bear]

Now this a subject that I know a little about. The former game warden here in CQ county says feral hogs are a problem and that he used to eradicate them on the spot. He said it was nothing to see two or three sows and litters a day and dispose of them. He said mainly by Hewins and Elgin on the river were where they were found. I have had pigs get loose and come back in two or three months and look better than the ones I had penned up on high powered rations. This is not always the case as feral hogs are actually low on protein which makes there snouts longer, there hair is long and wirey, and they don't grow as big as domestic hogs. If you've ever seen one or been at the sales when they sell them, they stink to high heaven. Once in Coffeyville someone brought in about 25 of them, and it like to have cleared the place out from the smell. Feral hogs are a big problem in Ga as seen in this

[dnalexander]

National Feral Swine Map
http://128.192.20.53/nfsms/

Dept. of Agriculture Page on feral pigs.
http://www.aphis.usda.gov/wildlife_damage/nwdp/feral_swine.shtml

David

[Tobina+1]

After seeing the damage done to land in Florida on Chuck's family's ranch, I can understand why it's important to try and keep them out of Kansas (or at least controlled).  I spoke with the head of the Kansas Animal Health department one time, and he was setting up a hunt with helicopters for later in the week.  He said it was hundrends of dollars per hour to rent a helicopter, and at that time (2 years ago) there was only 1-2 people in Kansas that were licensed to fly a copter that low and in that fashion.
Yes, it is illegal to hunt them, so that is supposed to keep people from "imprting" them and increasing the population.

[W. Gray]

Someone refresh my memory, but it seems that at one time one could kill a coyote and take the ears to the court house or some local place and receive a bounty payment of $1.25, or thereabouts.

[Jo McDonald]

The bounty got up to $2.00 in the 40's  -  The bounty for a crow's bill was 2 cents, a looooong time ago.
Fred's father was a fur buyer ---way back when --- but I don't remember the other bounties.  Maybe Sarge can post on this.
Jo

( or I could do what is right and talk to Fred and Russell, but probably won't  lol )

[W. Gray]

Two cents for a crows bill. Had not heard of that one. There must have been kids out there with sling shots trying to make some spending money.

I have not yet received a Prairie Star with your new column, but one of these days if the news gets slow you could recount some of the old bounties in Elk County.

[Jo McDonald]

I must correct my last post.  I just visited with Fred about this and he said crow's bill was 5 cents.  ( big bucks  lol)
and the coyote bounty back then was $1.00, but it did get to $2. - in the 60's Fred had both girls with him and ran over a coyote, and each girl got $1. each.
But back to the crow story.  Fred said he and his brothers "gathered" crow's bill and when they would take them to the courthouse, to collect the bounty, they had them strung on a baling wire.  The person that paid the bounty would ask how many there were, because they smelled SO BAD they would just pitch them in the waste basket and pay the bounty.  One year, he said they sold enough to buy his older brother, Russ, a new pair of overalls and his Mother a 100 pound sake of flour.  That was a lot of crows bills, I would think.
There was no bounty on any thing other than coyotes and crow's bills, because the pelts of the other animals were sold to the fur buyers.

[sixdogsmom]

They might have been better off to look for Clorox bottles: I remember getting 5 and 10 cents each for them, 2 cents for pop bottles. And the smells we encountered on all those junk piles; PRICELESS! HAHAHAHAHA!