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Researchers are trying to mitigate the spread of wild pigs in Canada

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Re: Researchers are trying to mitigate the spread of wild pigs in Canada

#81

Post by wankle »

haram_masala wrote: post #10
mkoubaa wrote: post #3

selling wild game appears to be illegal in Canada like it is in the US. Ostensibly the reason is because of risk of illness but it's likely also due to lobbying by farmers. I think there's a solution staring at us in the face here

Most of those pigs are, by western standards, inedible. With the exception of the very young adults (and the piglets), their meat is tough and has a very objectionable gamer/musty/garbage-y flavor. Texas is contending with a similar problem, and if Texans can’t find a way to eat them, you know that meat is worthless.

> very objectionable gamer/musty/garbage-y flavor

Speaking as a gamer, I can relate.

Re: Researchers are trying to mitigate the spread of wild pigs in Canada

#82

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

motohagiography wrote: post #76
darkwizard42 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah here is the issue, feral pig meat isn’t really pork the way most people know it. It’s gamey and often parasite ridden.

Maybe the solution is to kill the parasites, through detection and processing technology, and spraying habitats. If we really can't eat them, the other solution is to use chemistry to make something that feral pigs get addicted to and that they will give up food, sex, and nursing their young in pursuit of, and which is a human controlled substance we can manage. Drop enough of it in their habitats that they can alway…

It’s very difficult to kill the parasites of precisely one species with broad applicability.

Also, your goals and the goals of environmentalists seems to be quite different here. You’re suggesting farming them, but environmentalists don’t actually want them there at all.

Re: Researchers are trying to mitigate the spread of wild pigs in Canada

#83

Post by GravitasFailure »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #41
chasd00 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if you can shoot them from drones? That could be interesting.

(Assuming you mean a small drone a citizen could be licensed to operate): Do drones have the ability to stabilize the recoil from a gun powerful enough to kill a pig? You could certainly air drop explosives on them but that connotes serious risk to the environment and extremely inhumane injury or death to the pigs. I wonder if some kind of dart could be used to euthanize them, though it would likely cost more than bu…

>(Assuming you mean a small drone a citizen could be licensed to operate): Do drones have the ability to stabilize the recoil from a gun powerful enough to kill a pig?

The FAA defines drones as being up to 55lbs, so yes. Most of the off-the-shelf octocopter cinema drones could probably handle an appropriate firearm with some minimal modifications. Now, whether the FAA and ATF will throw a tantrum over a remote control weapons platform like that is a different story...

Re: Researchers are trying to mitigate the spread of wild pigs in Canada

#84

Post by clbrmbr »

darkwizard42 wrote: post #69
motohagiography wrote: post #65

The solution is to eat them. It's humane and it's free range pork. Let rural butchers test and certify the meat and sell it to local restaurants as a super premium product, then leverage the now all electronic game tag system for supply chain management. The only thing standing in the way of solving the feral pig problem is the attitudes of the urban governing class toward people capable of hunting and our histrionic…

Ah here is the issue, feral pig meat isn’t really pork the way most people know it. It’s gamey and often parasite ridden.

Gamey me I can handle. But parasites? Count me out.

Re: Researchers are trying to mitigate the spread of wild pigs in Canada

#85

Post by dgb23 »

darkwizard42 wrote: post #69
motohagiography wrote: post #65

The solution is to eat them. It's humane and it's free range pork. Let rural butchers test and certify the meat and sell it to local restaurants as a super premium product, then leverage the now all electronic game tag system for supply chain management. The only thing standing in the way of solving the feral pig problem is the attitudes of the urban governing class toward people capable of hunting and our histrionic…

Ah here is the issue, feral pig meat isn’t really pork the way most people know it. It’s gamey and often parasite ridden.

I'm pretty sure I've eaten feral pigs before. I remember it as being good quality. It's common to eat game in autumn where I live. Especially in rural areas.

I think this might be one of these cases where meat consumption might be ethically sound and good for the environment.

Feral pigs are hard to contain. They are smart, greedy, dangerous. They seem to be very similar to us humans in many regards, just less dominant overall, but the pigs we are talking about here also multiply very fast.

There are very few animals who can fight large feral pigs, and even fewer who have good chances of not getting severely injured. Pigs come in packs and they can assess situations much better than typical prey. They can fight off wolves or scare them away, especially when they have a numbers advantage. So the typical wolf strategy often doesn't work. Wolves might have the stamina and composure, but the risk/reward isn't there.

I don't think the article mentions it, but pigs track the schedule of human hunters. They know roughly at which times they will show up, so they carefully try to pick up the hunter's sent and track where they go in order to plan safer paths through the wild. So even if you hunt them actively, it's not an easy task at all.

Re: Researchers are trying to mitigate the spread of wild pigs in Canada

#86

Post by maxerickson »

LinuxBender wrote: post #9

People in Canada and the northern U.S. should report any sightings of feral pigs to their local conservation officers and to the Squeal on Pigs program Why do they have a link at the end of the article asking people in Canada to report the pigs to the Montana government? [1] Are the US and Canada putting in a temporary agreement to allow Montana hunters into Canada to thin the herd and if so are they bringing disease…

The brochure there says that hunting is banned. Whoever is authorized to do the culls is apparently trained to eradicate entire groups, so that they don't further disperse and/or learn to avoid hunters.

The eradication in Montana appears to be relatively successful.

Re: Researchers are trying to mitigate the spread of wild pigs in Canada

#87

Post by dgb23 »

mkoubaa wrote: post #66
haram_masala wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of those pigs are, by western standards, inedible. With the exception of the very young adults (and the piglets), their meat is tough and has a very objectionable gamer/musty/garbage-y flavor. Texas is contending with a similar problem, and if Texans can’t find a way to eat them, you know that meat is worthless.

Yes but we can process the shit out of the meat and add msg etc. It doesn't have to be bbq

That's what I'm thinking too. There are a lot of products that are made from highly processed unidentifiable meat stuff.

My dogs certainly wouldn't object to feral gamey pig meat either. I sometimes think the more disgusting the food the more they like it...

Re: Researchers are trying to mitigate the spread of wild pigs in Canada

#88

Post by tmoertel »

ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #72
wolfram74 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a problem that can be solved with enough chili powder? I'm not a terribly picky eater or familiar with wild game, just have a lot of confidence in gastro science.

How much chilli powder does it take to kill parasites?

Does cooking not kill the parasites?

Re: Researchers are trying to mitigate the spread of wild pigs in Canada

#89

Post by dgb23 »

dmbche wrote: post #25

Who would've thought that breeding pigs to both reproduce and grow to maturity faster could lead to a massive invasive species issue that has seemingly no solution? Maybe we shouldn't be breeding animals to eat - but that's just me.

The pigs we breed stem from basically a single species that already had the properties of very fast reproduction and very flexible diet. They were already like that, which is why we breed them. Other species have been tried without success.

During the middle ages, our domesticated pigs were basically feral pigs that lived on farms and in towns, even in cities, as a bio garbage disposal. There are a lot of fun facts you can dig up there.

The these pigs in America are imported, yes but they became wild again very fast and are basically the same species as before domestication.

Re: Researchers are trying to mitigate the spread of wild pigs in Canada

#90

Post by therealjumbo »

mkoubaa wrote: post #3

selling wild game appears to be illegal in Canada like it is in the US. Ostensibly the reason is because of risk of illness but it's likely also due to lobbying by farmers. I think there's a solution staring at us in the face here

The original reason for banning sales of wild game meat in NA is because species were being driven extinct or extirpated due to hunting. https://www.grandviewoutdoors.com/big-game-hunting/should-yo...

Unfortunately allowing selling of specific species we don't like that reproduce easily would probably just lead to private land owners promoting habitat and food for that species on their land. That's what's happened in Texas on a lot of private ranches due to the popularity of pig hunting. Texas is mostly private land, unlike Montana which is mostly public but still.

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