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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

#151
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The solution is to eat them. To quote a certain president: sounds good, doesn't work. Over here in Poland despite having open season for boars all year round and eliminating 185k specimens due to ASF a few years ago there are still a lot of them. The meat is great - leaner than pork and gamey, but it's also expensive - 2-4x more than pork. I mean, they disrupt ecosystems with their omnivoracity and propensity to mu…

We ate almost all large animals on the planet to extinction with just stone tools. If we wanted to wipe the pigs out it can definitely be done with automatic rifles.

An automatic rifle is a "machine gun". Hunters, by and large, don't hunt pigs with machine guns.

The term you seek is semi-automatic rifle, which is a rifle firing one shot with each trigger press. These are what hunters use.

In North America some persons are allowed to use machine guns to shoot pigs. But doing so is a challenge from both an efficiency and a safety standpoint:

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/texas/ar...

Except among mass killers, the machine gun is hardly the tool of choice for hunting (any animal including humans).

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

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is nonsense. No farmer or rancher in Texas wants feral hogs, and no one in Texas tries to promote feral hog populations. We have something like 4 million feral hogs. The problem is that avid 1 hunter can take out 20-30 in one night, but they don't go out to do it every night, and there's not enough feral hog hunters to make a dent. Feral hogs cause enormous amounts of damage, and there's no hope of hunting or tr…

If I’m a hog farmer and I can make 200 smeckles for a standard hog or get paid 400 smeckles for each “feral hog” I hand over then logically I’ll just start breeding the feral ones instead. The market finds the most profitable solution, not necessarily the best solution.

You foolishly extrapolate to a market that has never existed (in Texas at least).

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

#153

Siberian tigers are proficient predators of wild boars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_boar >>A single tiger can systematically destroy an entire sounder by preying on its members one by one, before moving on to another sounder. Siberian tigers are endangered due to poachers seeking to meet the demand for tiger body parts in traditional Chinese medicine, and could be well protected by Canadian conservation author…

I mean I absolutely want tigers to be set loose in the countryside but I feel like that’s going to then end in people shooting tigers out of helicopters with a machine gun. If people are willing to move on from the idea that we have to try and keep animals exactly where they were and preserve habitats (that we then wipe out) then we could probably save species like that. Tigers would do great in a nice forest full of…

NIMBY.

Tiger meat is too tough, not tasty enough and there aren't enough recipes for preparation. I credit this to a scarcity of tiger hunts. Step 1 in every recipe ("kill the tiger") is always a bitch!

I'd much prefer being overrun with feral pigs than feral tigers. Bacon!8-))

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

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A cobalt source for the home ? That's plainly nuts. In Europe they dealt very successfully with trichinosis by inspecting pig carcasses. But I have no idea if you can take a muscle sample from a porker you shot yourself to your local large-animal veterinarian to see if it's trichinotic. (In rural areas they just might that service - back then in my home village we had that pharmacist who was a devoted mushroom hunter…

Obviously food irradiation is done at specialized processing facilities where hunters would send their kills, not at home. Here's a clue for you: it's already the case that most hunters don't process their own meat. > That's plainly nuts. You're the one who said it, so right back at you buddy. Stop pulling absurdities out of your ass and attributing them to other people to have something to disagree with.

> specialized processing facilities where hunters would send their kills

Have you ever met a hunter? They do not send their kills to "specialized processing facilities" they send their kills to their buddy Jim who butchers it in his shed. Maybe they know a commerical butcher that will do it for them, and even then it's the butcher down the road. Specialized processing facilities, that's hilarious.

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

#155
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Regular” pork has parasites too, that’s why you wanna cook it to the “safe” temperature.

Not really. Compared to the number of domestic pigs, parasite infections (like the deadly for humans Trichinellosis) are almost inexistent. And domestic pig meat is tested for parasites nevertheless. With all that I feel uneasy eating raw meat, although salami and prosciutto are very tasty and sometimes I submit to temptation. Feel like running the Russian roulette everytime although the probability of an actual para…

I thought cured meat was safe for consumption.

Wild bear which is a popular hunting game here has a very high trichinosis occurrence, but regular cooking methods render it safe. My understanding is that high temperatures kill all parasites, but if that’s not the case I’d love to learn about it.

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

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is nonsense. No farmer or rancher in Texas wants feral hogs, and no one in Texas tries to promote feral hog populations. We have something like 4 million feral hogs. The problem is that avid 1 hunter can take out 20-30 in one night, but they don't go out to do it every night, and there's not enough feral hog hunters to make a dent. Feral hogs cause enormous amounts of damage, and there's no hope of hunting or tr…

If I’m a hog farmer and I can make 200 smeckles for a standard hog or get paid 400 smeckles for each “feral hog” I hand over then logically I’ll just start breeding the feral ones instead. The market finds the most profitable solution, not necessarily the best solution.

There is no market for feral hogs. Sure, casual hunters may pay to get to hunt a bunch of feral hogs, but professional hog hunters get paid a lot for it (they use helicopters, to give you an idea of how much farmers and ranchers will pay for that service). The value of a feral hog's meat on the market is zero.

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

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just hunt them. You can't eat them all without going to huge expense having all-terrain refrigerator trucks to pick them up with. Vultures and other animals and just nature will take care of the carcasses. That's what people do here in Texas, where we have the largest wild pig population in the U.S., and it's a big big deal. There are hog hunting festivals. I've only ever seen videos of this, but this is one of those…

The open hunting season in states like California and Texas actually creates a perverse incentive among hunting guides and private land owners to deliberately introduce and maintain feral pig populations, in order to act as supply for their business. It’s widely accepted among wildlife ecologists that hunting has minimal control effect and might actually be causing more spread. https://www.aphis.usda.gov/wildlife_dam…

That shows how little you know about this. In Texas you can hunt feral hogs all day every day of the year and you don't even need a license. That's how much of a pest they are. There are more than enough feral hogs in Texas to last a lifetime of hunting and then some. No one releases hogs into the wild in Texas so there's more to hunt.

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

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The open hunting season in states like California and Texas actually creates a perverse incentive among hunting guides and private land owners to deliberately introduce and maintain feral pig populations, in order to act as supply for their business. It’s widely accepted among wildlife ecologists that hunting has minimal control effect and might actually be causing more spread. https://www.aphis.usda.gov/wildlife_dam…

That shows how little you know about this. In Texas you can hunt feral hogs all day every day of the year and you don't even need a license. That's how much of a pest they are. There are more than enough feral hogs in Texas to last a lifetime of hunting and then some. No one releases hogs into the wild in Texas so there's more to hunt.

From the USDA source I cited:

“While recreational hunting for feral swine is popular in many states, it is generally not considered an effective management option. Significant population reductions typically do not occur and feral swine behaviors or movements may be altered such that they impede other removal operations (e.g., trapping). Hunters usually target large males instead of females, which has little impact on overall population reduction. Additionally, recreational hunting creates incentives to maintain feral swine on the landscape and move feral swine to new areas for increased hunting opportunities, which has largely been attributed to the expansion of feral swine across the United States. Although controversial, several states have outlawed hunting in attempts to better manage feral swine populations. Research has shown that feral swine removal via hunting is often negated by the use of bait to attract feral swine. The supplemental food source increases fecundity and population growth despite hunter harvest.”

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

#160
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've eaten wild board and it's gamey but tasty, a relative often does salami from a mix of wild board and axis deer. But I understand that feral and wild boards are different.

I've had Wild Boar in Borneo with the tribe that was many years ago the "head hunter" and "poison blow dart" tribes we know of from yore... Super fatty, greasy and gamey. Washed down with the alcohol they drink in thee Borneo Jungles, which is a certain leaf fermented in human spit. An experience, yes. Not one I'd seek out again, but a great memory.

That sounds awesome.

Wild boars here don't have almost any fat, neither does deer.

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