A Recent Call From A Farmer With A Feral Pig Problem

Have you ever wondered about the actual damage that feral pigs do? I mean, it’s something that gets talked about a lot in farming circles and feral animal control circles like I work in, but if you’re not someone in these circles, I’m guessing you haven’t really seen the damage they do. If that’s you and you’re interested, this article is for you.

I recently had a call from a farmer who told me he had a few paddocks that were completely torn apart by feral pigs and he wanted us to come and have a look and see if we could sort them out.

Here’s literally what we saw:

As you can see, despite the damage, this is damn near perfect pasture, which takes an enormous amount of work. This kind of pasture doesn’t just happen. This is years of ongoing hard work and attention. 

You can see in that image how the layer of pasture has been completely dug up. This is just one small photo from a few paddocks where this damage was extensive, completely ruining these few paddocks.

The sad reality is that it doesn’t take a lot of pigs to destroy a paddock and make it completely unusable. This in turn not only causes loss of grazing country but also economic loss, risk of spreading disease like brucellosis and swine flu, and soil erosion, just to name a few impacts.

It didn’t take us long to identify where these feral pigs were likely coming from. Turns out there was a large, unused paddock that was full of blackberries and tussock grass, so there was plenty of cover. Blackberry vines are like a magnet to feral pigs as they can tunnel under them and create nests where they can have their young and live in relative safety.

After a discussion with my offsider, we decided the best plan of attack was to come back later that night and have a good look around these paddocks and see if that’s where the feral pigs would come out of. If so, we’d certainly catch up with them. Thankfully that turned out to be the case.

This small mob was just one of the mobs we were able to dispatch that night.

Turned out to be a very successful job. After dispatching a few good mobs, no more feral pigs were to be found, so we had a good look around a few other adjacent paddocks and managed to dispatch a good number of feral deer. 

This is exactly where having the right tools for the job makes such a big difference. The advantage that thermal spotters and scopes, and suppressed semi-auto firearms allow, is huge. This in turn gives us the best chance of a successful job and the best value for money for our customers.

Debriefing with the farmer the next morning, he was incredibly happy to hear the results of both the feral pigs and feral deer that were cleaned up. Hopefully those results will give those torn up paddocks a rest and a chance to recover.

Now it’s time to get home and rest, clean up our equipment and get ready for the next job.