The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 115: The Judas Hog

Episode Date: May 7, 2018

The Ozarks, MO- Steven Rinella talks with wildlife biologist Parker Hall, Brandon Butler, Steve Jones, and Janis Putelis from the MeatEater crew.Subjects Discussed: the Judas animal trapping method; saving sea turtles by shooting predators; ways of hunting and trapping feral swine; Hogzilla and other bullshit; swine as disease vectors; the thing about brucellosis; the upshot of banning hog hunting; Parker earns his lifetime membership to the Rocky Mountain Squirrel Foundation; ways of cooking up squirrel; squirrel dogs; and more. Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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And we get tons of questions about wild pigs, and I'm going to give sort of the ends of the, I'm going to give two ends and a middle on sort of the sorts of questions we get about wild pigs. A question about wild pigs might be where someone would write in and send a link to an article, and it would be how somewhere,

wild pigs have turned up and they are causing they're wreaking ecological havoc and what does one make of that maybe like a type of thing people always want to know about wild pigs a lot of people might be like hey what's up are wild pigs good to eat can you get sick from them or what that's another that's the middle part that people want to hear about wild pigs and another common question we get about wild pigs would be, if wild pigs are so bad and they're everywhere and they're going to kill everyone and destroy the whole universe and everyone's overrun with wild pigs, how come no one will let me go hunt wild pigs on their property? Like, wouldn't you think that if pigs are that bad, it wouldn't be so bad to have a stranger on your land hunting but it seems that

they're not quite that bad so that's another question and who's going to walk us through all of this not yannis not me it will be in part the portions that he's comfortable with would be our guest parker hall now parker hall uh, two things, and you can do it however. Three things, you can do whatever order you want. What do you do at work? Who do you work for? And then I would like to get a little bit into how did that happen? Okay.

What do I do at work? I'm a professional email doer and meeting goer toer. Oh, really? Get out of here. We're going to get a view. I already know a whole mess of those. I know a whole mess of those people. I work for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, AFIS Wildlife Services.

So our mission is to provide federal leadership with human-wildlife conflict. So that can range from feral swine or wild pigs. I have to call them feral swine. That's what they call them? Yeah, that's what I call them. That's what they told me. Wild pigs, feral swine, hogs, whatever. It can range from that to protecting airports from collisions with birds

to beaver control in the deep south, flooding roads and bridges, to coyote and predator control in the deep south, flooding roads and bridges to coyote and predator control in the west. So it really depends on where you are in the country as to what the different states do. So wildlife services is non-regulatory. That means we don't make any rules, which is kind of a good position to be in. So anywhere we are, we're there by invitation. We're oftentimes invited to help whatever land management agency, be it a state agency, another federal agency on invasive species. And feral swine's one that we deal with all over the country. So 2014, there was an initiative, an APHIS initiative that provided some funding, set up a national program,

said, all right, there's enough damage being going on with feral swine. We're getting enough people that are having some trouble with them, be it the ag industry, be it landowners, be it the natural resources people that we need to do something about it. So that's kind of how this program got set up. So now that's two, right? What's the third one, how I got here? How you got here just as a person to be here, but I'm already, can we put that on hold for a minute? Sure.

Okay, because I already got a problem. All right. Okay, wild pigs were introduced here in the 1500s by the Spanish. Right. So they took off across the ocean, needed something to eat, right? Okay. Guys were going out. We don't know where we're going across the ocean.

It's far. We better bring something to eat. So they float, float, float, float, float. They hit some land. They go, oh, man, that was good. We're still alive. Hey, we're still going. We don't know where we are. Let's put some pigs on because when we come back, we're going to be hungry again. And so those repetitive introductions from those explorers all through the South and the islands going all the way down through, you know, down to the South America and lesser Antilles and the

Caribbean, all through there, you know, those repetitive introductions finally took hold. Native Americans figured out that, hey, this is better than eating some of the stuff we're eating right now. So they fostered that. And those pigs grew, and they kept them around, and they established populations. So since the 1500s, they've been all up and down so what happened during those hundreds of years when it didn't like there was a shift right because we had hundreds of years of it just being that there's some that there's wild pigs around there's wild pigs around then all of a sudden in my lifetime yeah in mine it's like holy shit yeah. Like, like what, what was that? So, um,

is it perception or is it reality? It's reality. So if you look at a, a natural expansion of any population, be it, be it wild pigs or, or anything, it's kind of like a balloon blowing up, right? You blow in the balloon, it gets bigger, bigger, bigger, and the population spreads. Well, that's not been the case with feral pigs. I mean, you guys are from Michigan, right? There's feral pigs in Michigan. They didn't get there from Florida by chance. They got there in the back of a pickup truck. So it became, you know, uh, I grew up in Georgia hunting hogs. It was fun. It's a, it's a cultural thing in the deep South. A lot of people do it and, uh, you know, but it's been maintained particularly in the deep

South, uh, Texas, California. Did your father hunt wild pigs? Oh yeah. My whole family. And they still do. Yeah. Um, of they still do. Of course they do. But I think it got cool or whatever, for lack of a better term, cool to hunt pigs by television shows. It got put on TV, and people think that killing a 200-pound hog is awesome.

There are very few laws regulating hogs. It differs by state, but they're all a little bit confusing. It's easy to catch pigs. As one of my good friends says, it takes very, very little energy to put pigs in the back of a truck and move them. But it takes tremendous energy to get them back from the wild and put them back into that pickup truck yeah and that's a fact so um i think there's there's a there's probably a lot of ways for people to begin to understand that even if you're not familiar with wild pigs would be just the buck you know what we often call bucket biology

with fisheries where you can have you can trace back to sort of like a single introductory effort of a fish species into some lake and river system and then pretty soon it becomes literally impossible to undo like literally impossible to undo the damage correct yeah yeah so with the pigs i remember well you know but you're assigned to a specific like does your expertise extend beyond where you're oh sure yeah we we do we do a lot of different different things in the state in the two states because what i wanted to ask about is i remember in michigan it wasn't that long ago michigan was putting up some trying to create some legislation around, obviously you can't block people from transporting pigs because it's all the same species, right? Seuss Scroffa is the same thing you buy in a grocery store.

It's all the same species, but they were trying to put some language around what types of pigs could be moved into the state. Can you explain that a little bit? When you talk about that people are moving pigs, right? They're not moving barnyard varieties of pigs, or are they? Well, they're doing all of the above. Like you mentioned, it's all the same species. They can all interbreed. So Spanish pigs, like we talked about before, are the ones that were introduced in the 1500s in the South.

There's been introductions from the Eurasian wild boar, the big hairy woolly ones that everybody thinks about, you know, that came over from Europe. And those were introduced into New Hampshire, Vermont area, and some in California, moved around. People liked them for sport. I know the New Hampshire, Vermont ones were brought in for hunting purposes. Yeah, right, right. But it's just hard to contain them.

Yeah, yeah. It's hard to contain them. And, you know, there's been sales. Hey, you have some of those? You know, a guy comes in and goes, what's it cost? You know, sell me some of those. Well, nobody cares. He loads them up.

Here's 100 bucks or whatever it is and moves them to Idaho and turns them loose. You know, they're incredibly hardy. They're incredibly fecund, you know, 115 days or so. They have a litter. Go a few weeks, get pregnant again. You know, they can have a couple of litters a year. So they're super hardy you know they're they're they're the ultimate invasive species compare that to a deer who puts off

between you know yeah yeah one and two yeah one or two yeah now i want to get back into the into the the long-term story but first i want to ask if this is true people like to say they like to put this timeline around. If you take a domesticated domestic variety pig and you turn it out, that the minute you turn it out, all of a sudden it grows big, gigantic, tosses and gets a woolly coat. Yeah, no. It depends on the species.

Not the species, but the, I don't know if it's the subspecies or whatever. You know, a pink pig that's grown in a pig parlor is a little different than, you know, some of these heritage pigs or whatever. So there's a bunch of different flavors, if you will. But if turned loose over time, they do revert back pretty quick. It's not overnight. You know, a lot of times when hogs get loose, we'll get reports there's some feral swine over there, and they get hungry and go back to the feed bucket in two days. All of those in between.

Sometimes they go off, and if they have litter, then those pigs are generally pretty wary. They're dealing with predators. They're dealing with those— That first wild-born generation. Yeah, that's right. Now, you take a feral hog and put him in the pen and it doesn't take long for them to tame right down. Oh, is that right?

Yeah. I mean, you know, in a couple of weeks, you start shaking the food bucket, you know, it starts approaching a little bit and over time they'll tame right down as well. So you can re-domesticate them. You can. Yeah.

All right, now i'm ready to go back and do what we're gonna do a minute ago is uh and you kind of alluded to it now so you grew up hunting pigs i did yeah i grew up hunting and fishing my dad was a usda aphos wildlife services employee for his career oh is that right yeah so oh so you grew up that's how i was kind of wondering so you grew up kind of knowing that this was a thing a person could do. Yeah, of course. Yeah, I did. But I didn't have the aspirations to be a state director.

I remember thinking as I was going through school, I graduated from the University of Georgia, barely. I think I had a stellar 2.2 or 3. Studying what? Mostly hog hunting at night and crappie fishing. But I did get a degree in wildlife. So I remember thinking if I can ever make about $35,000 or $40,000 a year trapping beavers, I will have reached the pinnacle. So I started off as a beaver trapper in Alabama. And I went through several years of that. You were just doing private nuisance control? No, I was working as a specialist for USDA.

Okay. Yeah, so it was entry level. And that went on for several years. And I got into doing some invasive species work when I was down in the U.S. Virgin Islands doing work down there. Met my wife down there met my wife down there and how were you catching the beavers and and when i was now doing that were you doing like a bear snare foothold so the whole gamut the whole thing yeah all right yeah i know i know those hancock live chats you guys were you guys were getting after him for real. Yeah. That's, yeah. Those dudes from Michigan use those. Yeah.

Never touch one. So, yeah, did some work in the islands and then went to Florida. What kind of work in the islands? Offshore eradication

kind of stuff. You know, we did rat eradications, goat eradications to protect threatening endangered species. On small islands?

On small offshore islands. It's really neat, actually, when you remove a species like a rat or a goat, what the island does, you know, the smaller islands. Man, they bloom like a flower, you know, right back, you know, when you remove those invasives. Did you ever use the Judas strategy? Yes, and I still do. Can you explain that?

Yeah. So if you remember your your your bible stories judas was the one who betrayed jesus and and so that's where the term judas animal comes from so you take that animal capture so and feral swine will take one and put a radio transmitter on on its neck or in its ear um capture it turn it back loose and it'll run back to the other you know sounders which call a group of hogs it'll run back to the other sounders, which we call a group of hogs. It'll go back to a sounder or other pigs, and it'll lead you to those.

So it's real effective. It's really, really effective, particularly in low densities. Okay. Yeah. And where we are right now. Yeah. Yeah, it does good. Yeah, we use it a lot.

So you studied up on wildlife, went into doing beaver work, and then your career kind of took off. It did. It did. And then one day someone springs on you that your jurisdiction is going to be. So this is how I was a state. I was a district supervisor in South Florida and do invasive species. I really enjoyed it.

Did you work on the Burmese python? Yeah, we did work on the Burmese python a little bit, yeah. You hit all the big news story animals. Yeah, they're difficult. That's a difficult problem, the snakes. Is it? Yeah. Do you think that there will ever be a solution, or is this too hard to predict?

You know, they sent a man to the moon, so I don't know. But the thing about the invasive reptiles is, let's face it, they're not going to go past the freeze line for the most part. So they're confined to those habitats and those areas that are akin to how they evolved. So we won't someday be talking about Burmese pythons in Michigan like we're talking about wild pigs in Michigan. I don't think so. Until wintertime.

I've been to Michigan in the wintertime, and pythons won't do too well. So South Florida, and you probably worked on pigs in South Florida. I did. We did a lot of pig work in Florida. Did iguanas. Yeah, sure did. In Florida, we did some more rat eradications, actually, to protect nesting shorebirds.

Predator control on beaches for sea turtles was a big one. What's something that gets after sea turtle eggs? Man, everything likes an egg, right? Raccoons are bad. Feral swine are terrible on them. There's places where feral swine are out on the beach, Saltwater Beach. There are guys who their job is to stay on the beach all night long to make sure feral swine don't come out there and dig up sea turtle nests.

And they're seeing some. Oh, man, they're doing effective control. They're saving thousands and thousands and thousands of sea turtles. I mean, one nest is wrecked by a hog. We've been on beaches down in South America. We've been on beaches where all the turtle eggs have been dug up by jaguars. Yeah. Everything likes a turtle egg.

Yeah. Ghost crabs, raccoons, armadillos, possums, foxes. So you'll select a, you guys would select a beach and just be like, hands off. No, now remember, we're non-regulatory. So we're there by the invitation of whatever entity is responsible for that beach. So Florida's making that call. That's right. That's right.

Yeah. Whatever entity has jurisdiction over that beach asks us to do that work i understand yeah so it's always coming from it's a it's a it's a local ask and you guys provide the expertise to to execute what they're hoping to correct accomplish correct okay yeah so from south florida then what happens to you so from south florida um a position came open as a state director in new hampshire and vermont now like i said i grew up in georgia i'd never been north of tennessee hardly um i was in south florida and that position came open and i talked to my wife about it said here's an opportunity you know so we said yeah that'll be be fine what state was she from she's

from Missouri and I'll get to that in a minute you can deduce but uh went up to um uh got selected for that position and had a wonderful experience in New Hampshire Vermont um working on all all sorts of different like what up there uh a lot of uh black bear stuff was going up oh not non-natives right a lot of a lot of natives there yeah yeah did some moose work you know it's it was uh for for a georgia boy it was a really neat experience and then the um and the black bears are getting trouble with orchards oh yeah the whole thing honey production right down in the you know it's a it's a big tourist economy in the summertime. It's gorgeous in New Hampshire and Vermont.

And, you know, the black bears down there following tourists around eating donuts and, you know, the whole thing. So you guys do a lot of relocations there, I'm guessing? Yeah, a lot of relocations there. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. What else? Did you get involved with any fish anywhere?

No. No, not a fish guy. Other than I like doing fish. Are there wildlife services people who mess with fish? There are wildlife services people that, yes, that do invasive fish work. I think there's one state out west that does. I'm not quite sure. But as a general rule, we don't do.

That's left to the fisheries biologists. Fish are a whole different thing, you know, under the water. And those guys can do math good. Yeah. The fisheries guys. Yeah. What was the common moose conflict? The common moose conflict was the moose walking through where they, you know, they make the maple syrup.

And those guys have great big taps, right? When these tubes coming way down to their tap house. Sometimes they'd have thousands of these tubes coming on, and the moose just walk right through it, you know. Really? Yeah, yeah, and they're like, you know, it's the middle of saps running, and those guys are freaking out, man. All their taps just got yanked off.

So, you know, it was interesting. Particularly for me, I didn't know anything about moose, you know, so it was an educational experience. Yeah, I can imagine. It was a good time. So then from there? From there, the Missouri State Director, Missouri-Iowa State Director position came available. And my wife said, guess what, big boy? I like the Royals.

So, yeah, I put in for that position and um you know i think it was a good move for me and as much that uh i was not from the northeast but it was a great experience and but to get to a um something i was a little bit more familiar with different but a little more familiar sure sure and so you as the state was state coordinator state director state director state director everything again here everything falls under your purview so to speak but you guys are particularly focused they're paying a lot of attention on wild pigs or is that just a small part of the it It's more than a small part in Missouri. So we have what's called the Missouri Feral Swine Partnership,

and that is 11 different land management agencies who are committed to suppressing or eliminating feral swine from the state of Missouri. So it's a pretty good chunk of our program. Iowa does a lot of work at dairy farms for starlings, like those starlings, pigeons, sparrows, those things, the milk and the whole deal, airport stuff. If a deer runs out on the airport at 3 in the morning and a plane's trying to land, you know, we have people there to help assist or move that, you know. A lot of airport work in Missouri.

Avian influenza, so a disease component of our program, sampling for different diseases, which goes hand-in-hand with the feral swine stuff, sampling there. So a little bit of everything. Now, the Missouri Department of Conservation has pretty much driven this program. So we're doing feral swine work by their invitation

and their direction. Now, you mentioned suppression or eradication. Doesn't that cause a little mission confusion? Can't you just pick one? Well, we use the word elimination. Oh, there you go. So there's no mission confusion. No, there's no mission confusion.

Lay the wild pig situation. Give me a little bit of history on the wild pig situation. Give me a little bit of history on the wild pig situation here. In Missouri? Yeah, because it's different than Florida, right? Because in Florida, they've been on the ground for centuries. Right, right.

Is it too early? Timing might be off, but I'd like to definitely know at some point if it's legal to hunt pigs in this state in Iowa. Sure. The timing's off, but you can ask so you weren't detecting you weren't detecting the flow I was going it's not been very clearly defined has it it was good my flow yeah it's a little it's a little herky-jerky

I don't see why we can't get into that right now it's not gonna hurt anyone yeah yeah so it's yeah it's completely legal to to hunt feral swine in missouri where it is illegal to hunt feral swine is on uh missouri department of conservation lands it's it's illegal on uh fort leonard wood it's illegal on army corps of Engineers land. But on private land, right now in the Mark Twain National Forest, it's legal to hunt feral swine. What is the obvious question comes up? Why? If you'd want to get rid of them. Yeah. So let's go back to the first part of when we started talking.

Like what's the lay of the land here? In Georgia, when I grew up, there's no season. There's no limit. There's really no restriction on how you can hunt them with what you can use. You can use guns, bows, bazookas, whatever, and it has been that way. And they only grow. So hunting does not work to eliminate. We use hunting as a tool to manage our native species, not eliminate.

That's why we have limits, and particularly if you can or can't shoot female of any animal because the result of removal of those is population control. And so that's something that Missouri Department of Conservation said, look, we're not going to reinvent the wheel. I mean, there's guys all over the South that's chased them for millennia, and it's the stronghold of feral swine. They're there. Like recreational hunting.

Because of the fecundity and all these other factors, recreational hunting, even when it's unrestricted, doesn't do it. Right, right. So, you know, a recreational hunter goes out, and he has a good time, and he harvests a hog, and he comes back, and they clean clean it up and they have a meal. But it did absolutely nothing for the population. It's fun.

It's great. It's good recreation, but it's an exotic invasive species that should be removed. They're competing with our natives. Yeah. they're competing with our natives okay yeah so the thinking so extend that out and and uh explain the thinking on on restricting hunting well i don't know that it's a i mean it doesn't work it's been proven that hunting does not eliminate a species of any species, recreational sport hunting doesn't. So, you know, I don't know that... Oh, yeah, go ahead, man.

Brandon Butler wants to butt in. Another big issue is creating the demand. So if there's a demand for feral hogs, then there's going to be a desired supply. And by eliminating the opportunity to hunt them, you're hopefully eliminating that. Incentive. Right. So if the Department of Conservation, even though they're setting these traps up, that's another problem.

They're setting up these traps, putting a lot of man hours into it. Parker and his team's doing the same thing. They work really hard to train these sounders to come to these traps so they can catch a mass of these pigs at one time people will find those traps and they'll set up on them like hunting spots and when the sounder comes in they'll shoot one or maybe two and then they scatter the rest and they'll run way off and they'll they'll set up new ranges you blow you blow the plan so you blow the whole plan you waste all that money that's been spent not only on the staff that's out working but on the staff that's out working,

but on the corn they're souring and all the other bait, the materials it takes to make the traps. But as you said, hog hunting is fun. And a lot of people down in this part of the country, I mean, they have dogs. They're really into it. So they're expecting there to be a supply of hogs on the landscape. Well, I'll throw this in from i mean this is something like this aspect of it is something i'm familiar with and janice and i uh have had discussions with an individual who was a hog trapper and at a time in the past had even gone so far as to sell wild hogs to people who he later learned

were using the wild hogs to establish populations of wild hogs in areas that did not have them in order to be able to hunt for them that's going on down here there's there's goes on all over the country yeah there's no they're spreading has anybody ever getting prosecuted for this yeah there's a case going on in the county north of us right now okay where somebody is is a known uh violator who propagator yeah who actually raises these hogs and then releases them trailers them in from other states keeps them in a pen when people are ready to go hunting those people will pay this guy he'll release those hogs and they'll go chase them down on open lands not penned lands on open lands yeah so he'll keep them in a pen until he has clients once he has clients willing to pay they'll release those hound or they'll release those hogs and they'll release the hounds the hounds will chase

them down the one dog goes out and finds them the rest of the dogs come in and hold them that person goes in and likely stabs the hog or or may shoot it but a lot of them are killing them with big bowie knives and yeah yeah we're chasing them down that way so they're they're not only creating a a demand for the recreation of it but there's a small group of people that are creating an industry around it. And you're talking about doing so in a very economically depressed part of the country. So when these guys can get cash on hand for letting you go out and kill some hogs, you know, it's hard to convince them that that's not a good deal. Do you mind real quick laying out, Brandon, do you mind real quick laying out your affiliations? Yeah. So I'm the executive director of the Conservation Federation in Missouri. We work with hunting, angling, all conservation wildlife groups across the state. I've known Parker for a few years. There was a feral hog symposium where state

wildlife leaders came from kind of all over the Midwest. And we did a tour of a state park and then we went on some private property. And that was the first time I was ever really exposed to the real destruction that these hogs do to ag lands and why there's so much money being spent to eradicate them because so much money is being lost by farmers down here as their pastures are destroyed and crop fields can be decimated. It was really eye-opening to me and i've kind of been studying it with parker ever since now parker when you look at uh the the like the voices that most want to so i i kind of understand the voices that are

interested in having pigs is like isolated groups of people who want to have a and they want to have a hunting up some hunting opportunity what are the voices of the people here um that sort of have the best argument against the pigs being here well i understand those people too because like i said i grew up doing it and it's fun and you know right or wrong they've they've uh incentivized it incentivizes it incentivized 2.2 chase or chase lounge earlier right so um so i understand that and but we're land managers right? Or we're stewards of the land. It's an exotic invasive species. It's no different than bush honeysuckle.

It shouldn't be here. It competes with our natives. And I think it's difficult for us wildlife people to go, oh, it's competing with our natives. And there's still deer and turkeys around. That's the thing i think people have a hard time with because they do they'll look and be like okay but texas is known for its whitetail hunt texas has wild pigs that's right texas has the most wild pigs um but you know

you look at the things that deer and turkey aren't the only things on the landscape um agricultural damage um threatening endangered species, water quality. All of these things are being caused from an exotic invasive species that shouldn't be here. So, I mean, we're wildlife biologists. In some instances, you just want to be like, geez, this is what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to protect our native species.

It's just not fauna. It's flora as supposed to do. We're supposed to protect our native species. It's not fauna. It's flora as well. Yeah. Yeah. I know in Hawaii they talk about an unknown quantity, but perhaps dozens of species of wildlife were lost with the introduction of pigs and rats. Yeah. Onto the Hawaiian Islands.

Sure. Because they had a whole suite of, you know, because of a lack of certain types of predation, they had whole suites of ground-nesting birds that vanished. Yeah, gone. You look at the disease issues, too, with the domestic industry we have here. You know, the potential for a disease to get in the domestic industry could be catastrophic to the state. You know, we're one state south of the biggest pork producing state in the country, which is Iowa. So, you know, there's a fear there that wild pigs would, would. Sure. They have, they have those diseases. They carry those diseases that the ag industry has

done such a wonderful job of getting rid of, and it's taken them a long time, and now they're out. You know, they've got those domestic populations, for lack of a better word, clean, and, you know, reintroducing some of those diseases could be a real setback financially for consumers as well as producers. What's funny there, and I don't expect you to comment on this unless you want to, but what's funny there is they have this idea of, I know you call it feral swine, but like common vernacular, where you have this idea of a wild pig introducing disease to a domestic counterpart is sort of the opposite of the fear around domestic deer

introducing disease to their wild counterpart. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it is. That's off topic. Well, we've kind of breezed over like the problems you know that the pigs do and how and why but can we just get into that a little bit more like you talk like you're like water quality but what exactly do they do to diminish water quality and what are they doing to you know kill all these uh crops for all these crops for all these farmers. Exactly. Well, one of the creeks that we were hunting around down here, it looked better this year. Steve and I walked past it. But last year,

this real lush little spring creek, and the spring was really pumping yesterday when we were down there. It was just absolutely decimated with rooting. I mean, you go down there and you're expecting to be in this real serene, natural valley, and it looked like a monster truck had been ripping up and down this spring creek. Now, this is way back in a wilderness, so very few people are laying their eyes on that. But if that was your private property, that would be infuriating to you. So you would call the government or whoever your representative is and say something has to be done about this invasive species that's destroying you know my landscape that would be they're in there feeding and just rooting it all up

and it just turns into a mud and wallow they're just wallowing and rooting and now all that that mud and sediment is running into that stream, which runs into a larger stream, which runs into a river. So it's sending all that sediment downriver. The crop damage is just hard to explain. It's unbelievable. It looks like somebody went in with a brush hog. Sure.

Yeah, yeah. They can do a lot of damage in a very short amount of time. And that's something that is more common maybe in the south than it is in Missouri. Missouri is more, they're more in the Ozarks. We do have some damage, and the guys that have it wouldn't, don't take it lightly. But, you know, we have state and federal listed species that are stored. Heinz emerald dragonfly, they have a, they leave their larva in a specialized little, I forget the name of it. I don't know, it's an eco term, you know. But the hogs go through and root up and eat the larva and they don't reproduce.

Meads milkweed is another species of concern, listed species, that hogs go through and trample and eat and destroy, and they don't come back. So, you know, you look at it. It's not just we still have deer and we still have turkeys, and, you know, they ate some of my corn. But we're talking about, you know, threatened and endangered species. You know, there's only very few of these left in the world. They're being consumed or destroyed by an exotic invasive that shouldn't be here. I don't know if a high-end Zimbal dragonfly flying around this room, I don't know if I could identify it,

but I know that it's a species that once they're gone, they're gone. And that's happening because of these feral swine. And that's an example I use. Whether it's sea turtles or shorebirds or whatever, we have an exotic doing damage and removing federally and state listed species. So how many feral pigs? Well, let's take it this way. How far back in time would you need to go

to when there were probably no feral pigs in Missouri? In Missouri? So I wasn't here then, but they're relatively new. If you went back 15 years, I don't know that you could find too many people. You guys might know this better than me, but you couldn't find too many people that knew where a feral hog was. You go back 20 years, they're very, very rare. They were brought in, and just like I said, they're incredibly cocooned. And you guys see the terrain we're in, man. You turn some pigs back here, they go undetected for forever.

Gotcha. So this is like a fairly new issue here. Oh, absolutely. And how many, is there an estimate on how many there are? No. We're doing some work on that now, but there is not an estimate. Well, how about you put it this way? How many of you guys caught and killed? So the

last year, we caught and killed just over 6,500. In this state? In this state. Just in Missouri. Now, other states take numbers. Many, many,

many more than that. Texas, Oklahoma, those guys, they take a lot, a lot of pigs, multiple thousands of hogs. And in that time when you've taken them, have you guys gotten a sense of where exactly they're coming from? Well, we know where they are. And as much as it's a relatively new, you say 15 years as it's a relatively new you say 15 years it's a relatively new problem uh the missouri department of conservation has really rolled up its sleeves and got to work and asked their biologists their people in the field and done a lot of work and we

know or we feel like we have a pretty good handle on on where those populations are. And it looks like a, it's not a blob, of course, like natural. It looks like a zebra or a checkerboard or it's patchwork. And so. Across the entire state. Across the entire state, mostly in the southern half and mostly in the Ozarks and mostly on public land. Really? Yeah, of course.

Why do you think that is? I have no idea why. Because people can hunt it. Really? Yeah, of course. Why do you think that is? I have no idea why. Because people can hunt it. Really? And so if you were to turn, if you had a truckload of pigs and your neighbor is a guy you don't get along with, you know he's not going to let you hunt those pigs in the back of your truck on his place. Are you going to turn them loose on his place? Yeah.

Of course not. You're going to go where? Yeah, I mean, no. Yeah, right. You're going to go them loose on his place? Of course not. You're going to go where? Yeah, I mean, no. Yeah, right. You're going to go where you can hunt them. So if you lay the map of where feral swine are in Missouri over public ground, it almost marries up perfectly. No kidding. Yeah.

I thought it was real interesting when I was showing parker uh yesterday pictures of the the feral hogs i got on my property he's like well that's a springfield hog and i mean they they've got it drilled down your property is like up against a large chunk of public property one of the the one of the largest contiguous pieces of public property in missouri yeah so they're definitely getting released back in there but he's's able to tell you, like, distinctly where this hog has been shipped in from and where this hog has been shipped in from. Well, I know they look a little different in different parts of the state. And so, yeah, I don't know that I would go as far as to know.

I know exactly where they're from. But, yeah, but they are. They differ depending on where you grab them from, from, different parts of the state and different parts of the country they look completely different so you know it's so they're not homogenized i mean there's like different ones that have different backgrounds sure got them from different places sure i'm loose sure and and something that um people do a lot of times is they introduce domestics into those wild or feral populations to increase the size, body size. Okay. So for hunting purposes.

That's how hogzilla came around. Well, some of those, I remember one of those giant pigs, it turns up, like a hogzilla. I don't know if it was like the, it was like not the original one but one of these giant pigs it turns up where a guy supposedly killed some stomp or wild pig a few days later a guy comes out with photographs of this thing standing in the back of the truck because he sold it to the guy of course yeah he's like that's not a wild pig that's old stella yeah and provides photo documentation on it you get if you get 250 pounds, that's a serious wild hog. That's a big one.

For a wild-born wild hog. Right, right. They're not eating corn from the bucket. They're eating acorns and whatever else they can get down out in the woods. So 250, 300 pounds is a great big one. Now, they get bigger, but, you know, that's a great big adult. So, I want to get into talking about the process of how it all works, meaning you identify a – here's a new blip on the map, okay?

You identify a population of these things. Right. How does it come to your attention, okay? How do you verify the presence? And then what are the steps to take as you sort of walk through like, well, now we got a new gang of pigs we got to deal with. All right, that's kind of a two-part question.

Number one, how do we deal with the new populations? What do we do? So like I said, the Missouri Department of Conservation, Mark Twain National Force, Army Corps Engineers, we have a group of 11 land management agencies that are all out on these public lands. Now, public lands and private lands, we differentiate. We do not go on anybody's land that does not invite us. So farmers or people who have feral swine or wild hogs, they want help. They give us a shout, right? So you can't go on someone's land

the same way you'd be able to go onto their land for emergency purposes or anything? No way, no way. Really? No, no, we can't trespass. We have a form that we have to get them to sign that lets us be on their property. Yeah, I mean, that's good, obviously.

It's not surprising to me. By me, I know that there are certain things, like if you're cooking up some meth on your land, for instance, people can go on there and get that. Wildlife services can't because we're non-regulatory. So that's got to add time. I know that you don't set the policy, but that at times has to be really problematic. And it always will be. So if you're trying to do an eradication, there's three things that have to happen, right?

You have to have a control that works, right? You have to have something that gets rid of whatever you're trying to get rid of. If you're doing rats, you have to have a toxicant that kills them, right? And it has to be effective. Number two, every individual has to be exposed to said control measure, right? And number three, you have to have 100%. That was number two. Number two, everybody's got to get exposed, which is the problem.

And number three, you can't have any immigration in from outside sources. So if we get rid of all the pigs in southern Missouri and somebody brings them back in, well, by God, we start over. So those three things have to happen. That's why it seems like eradication can happen on small islands successfully, but it doesn't happen on large land masses it it happens on large land masses when everybody gets united and and recognizes these are bad but you were right and it's a it's a fact it's going to be very problematic in in the future yeah there's a fight going on right now legislatively over feral hogs you actually have legislators down in this part of the state in support of feral hog hunting uh very upset with the department of conservation for

trying to do the right thing and eliminate not only the desire to hunt them but the entire population so it's a it's a political battle there's an actual political conversation about whether or not you want wild pigs or not the only reason you can hunt wild pigs on the Mark Twain National Forest right now is because a certain politician has threatened retribution if it were to be stopped. Gotcha. All right. So back to how does a problem become, like how does a new population become identified? And then what steps are taken to just go address the issue?

All right, so we have a strategic elimination plan within Missouri, within our patchwork. We know where they are. We know the terrain, the habitat, the accessibility, and then we put those resources in that area. Elimination area zone one is our lowest population. We have the most accessibility to it. The terrain is most conducive for elimination, and we're being very, very successful. We are repetitively successful on, if you think about a fire and a little ember goes out in your yard and starts that, those are popping up and that's

what you're talking about. When those pop up, we drop what we're doing and we make sure those populations do not become established. So we have, like I said, 11 partner agencies and all their people are out there all the time on all these public lands and when new sign or sightings happen it gets to us pretty quick um and we've been very successful at suppressing those those new populations like you'll look and there's a new blip on the map that takes priority over some established population that you've been struggling it does yeah and what will you guys do like how do you go in and even begin well it's i mean it's a it's a once we get land access it's it's no different than than any other the control worker did we set up cameras

look at the sign put out bait get them on bait and trap them and remove them as quick as we can so you use trail cameras to try to verify the presence? Yeah, we use trail cameras. And the thing about pigs is you kind of know when they're there. They make such a mess. They're rooting and tracks and rubbing on trees. It's not hard to figure out when they're there. And something we use a trail camera for. Do you ever identify a population of like one?

Oh, yeah. All the time. Really? Oh, yeah. And you can come in. Someone can be could be like hey i saw a wild pig and you can go in and usually you're like a good enough tracker or whatever that someone could go in there and be like yeah it's true no i'm not that good there it's a pig you dump out corn and they come to it that's how you verify sure yeah or that's a way to do it right yeah hey folks exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

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As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com. onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. Yeah. And then what are the ways in which you guys catch them and kill them? We do mostly, probably 90% of our take is trapping. A smaller percent is night shooting, and then another percent is aerial gunning.

So talk about the night shooting. How does that work? Night shooting is used in specific situations. A lot of times when we have single boars, we don't spend a lot of time trapping boars uh we target females because that's our population control the sounders the big groups um so we're targeting them if we have some some boars that are hanging around sometimes we'll do that if we're having crop damage um so if you have a field of corn right if you have a field of corn, right, if you have a hundred acres of corn, it's hard to go pull, pour out a bucket of corn and get them to come in your trap. And every night, you know, that corn's in the dough stage and the hogs are wrecking it, you know, and the landowner, the

farmer's just beside himself pulling his hair out. We use a lot of night shooting then to keep them, keep them out of the, out of the the corn when we get down to the last few animals that is generally how we remove them through night shooting so i was able to go out on one of these night shooting excursions with some of parker's people and uh not to diminish the noble work but man that was pretty fun like we actually were in the bed of a pickup truck, and I was the guy with a thermal imaging scope, and we're cruising the cornfields on the outside of Fort Leonard Wood Army Base, and you're just on farms that you have permission to be on, driving their farms in the winter using thermal imaging to locate these hogs.

And the driver's driving. We're sitting in the back scoping. When you see them, you tap on the top of the truck. They stop. The shooter gets out. Pow, pow, pow. How many might you run into? One field had 30 in it, probably.

That was the biggest one we saw. And then once in a while. And this is working to assist a farmer who's trying to protect a crop. Yeah, the general rule we on those big groups we really try not to night shoot and we try not to shoot where we're trapping because it really messes up our whole system makes them much more difficult to trap these situations are like we said when a farmer is just beside himself in a and you know he's just getting so much damage that that's really one of our only options is to do night work like that.

Okay, so talk about trapping. Sort of like the how of it, right? Right. Like I said, there's a process. And it varies how successful we are by time of year, by location, a lot of variables. It can be very frustrating or very, very efficient. We had a guy last year that works with us, Jason, he caught 62 pigs in one trap. And then I think he had over a hundred just that week. So when they're coming to your corn, where they're not being pressured from outside sources,

we're not being run with dogs, people shooting at them, they're pigs. They're pretty easy to catch. And how long do you got to train them up on the corn? With the system that we're using right now, whenever they get on the corn, we set the trap in a matter of of two or three nights we generally have oh so you're not like pre-baiting them for weeks to get sometimes we do and it depends on the type of trap and it depends on the time of year um so you know it varies it's it's uh it's a wild animal you know it doesn't read the same books that we do so you know you can get them all the first night

um or it could take a month oh so you're kind of going by it you're going by So, you know, you can get them all the first night or it could take a month. Oh, so you're kind of going by it. You're going by how many you know to be in the area and how many you figure are hitting the bait. Right, and the thought. And how regularly they're hitting the bait. Right, and we use cameras a lot for that. So what we want to do is catch, you know,

we're working for elimination. So we don't want to catch the first two pigs that run in the trap, you know. We want to catch the 28 others that are outside. So we take steps to make sure that we get all of those animals in there to remove the whole group, you know. One or two animals doesn't do us any good. It educates the other ones.

You know, it's a lot of investment for a very little return. So describe the trap and how it sort of relates to the bait pile. Well, I'm going to get in trouble for this because each trapper is very specific about how he likes it, as you can imagine. I can imagine. But the long and short of it is we use a round corral trap with a drop door in the front. We use a round corral trap that's elevated off the ground. The whole corral is elevated? The whole corral, yeah.

What's the diameter on that thing? Five 16-foot panels, four 16-foot panels. So whatever the math works out of that is pretty big. A 16 by 16 corral? Yeah, yeah. We use some commercially made ones.'re suspending it on what uh it's a it's a it's real hard to explain with us there's there's a cardinal pole that goes in the in the middle and some arms that go out and the slide that goes up and down it's kind of a reverse so it looks like an umbrella. Pulley, yeah, umbrella-type mechanism.

And they'll walk in under the bar of the suspended trap. It's really neat. You know, the Noble Foundation developed a trap called the boar buster, and we use it a lot. And it's really effective. And I don't know, but somebody needs to do a study. It's not that hogs don't look up, but if they can see through something, I think they go in a lot faster than they do like a regular door, six, eight foot wide door. I don't know if they don't like going through it or what, but the thing, the guys that came up with that technology, man, they revolutionized hog trapping as far as getting hogs to go underneath.

It started out years ago, I think, with the drop nets. You remember those? Yeah. Same concept. This is just a hog trap, a metal hog trap that drops down. And so, you know, it just varies. You know, sometimes a regular door they'll run right in. You just, it's variable. So the drop trap, are they monitoring it through some kind of camera? Right. So the commercial ones are monitored through some kind of camera.

Ours are not because as you can tell this week by your cell phone, they're absolutely useless. You might as well throw it in the river out here. No cell service whatsoever. So ours are triggered manually by a hog. And, you know, it's interesting. We came up with all different sort of trigger mechanisms and different ways of doing it to try to maximize our catch. And one of the guys that worked with us now said, hey, guys, let's put the trigger, the height of the biggest pig that we have on camera

and set it right down on the ground. Oh, there you go. Yeah, and we kind of looked at each other like, well, we haven't been doing that for 10 years. So the first one's in, just like anything, the young, dumb ones run right in, the smaller animals. And generally, the last animal to go in is the biggest, most mature. And so the goal is to have that animal inside.

And generally, when that animal's inside, then all the rest of them are caught. Yeah. So how many did someone get in one trap? 62. 62 inside a 16 by 16 box. They were packed in, yeah. Did it get them all? They got every one of them.

It was super neat. And that was it. And it might have been 68, but I think it was 62. That was it. Gone. I mean, 62 pigs. Gone. In three nights, one guy. What would it take to do that with dogs with stand hunting with sport hunting i mean it's it's that's how i

could get there you're not never uh-uh yeah i see what you're saying now explain the other kind of trap the corral trap that's not suspended. Just got trap doors? Sure, just trap doors. And there's all different styles, and they all work, you know, in their own way. And, you know, some are very effective and some of them not so much. You know, this is a whole other discussion on the trap doors. Some guys are super, you know, it's trappers, man. They all got their own thing. But they're all effective.

You know, once you train that animal to go inside, they're effective. There's multi-catch doors and then the ones you can trigger from your cell phone or ones that are manually triggered and, you know, all variations in through there. When does aerial gunning come into play? Because that's got to be expensive. Well, aerial gunning comes into play in Missouri. In other areas, they do a lot more of it. But the terrain's a lot better for it than in the Ozarks, you know.

Aerial gunning comes into play when we're trying to protect a very remote area. You know, as you can imagine, getting some traps way back in some of these areas. We also use aerial gunning for the last few animals, particularly if trapped shy ones are ones we can't find, we use that helicopter to do that. We did it most recently down in southeast Missouri when the water came up. And when the water comes up and the river floods and all the pigs get on the levee systems, you can be very, very effective.

Oh, that's a good point. Yeah, you pick and choose. And we also use aerial gunning, not just aerial gunning, but aerial surveillance. So when you're thinking about elimination, you have to detect everybody. So we know we may have some pigs in this area. We're not sure. So you can go up and look down in the wintertime and see if there's fresh rooting or not. Like, hey, we flew this whole area, and there's no fresh rooting.

And it would have taken us months to scout it out by ground or by foot. So it's used for other things other than just aerial control. So take a place like where we're sitting right now. Right. There's pigs up there. Yeah. I think we took a picture of a track today. So where is it on the list, right?

Like where is this spot? How would you typify this location we are? We're in a big chunk of public land in the Ozarks. So we're in elimination area. It's pretty heavily roaded up. There's a lot of recreation that goes on. It's bordered by small farms and recreational properties. And there's some number of wild pigs out there.

So is this spot like on hold or is it like on monitoring or is it active control? It's active control. So this is elimination area zone four, I think. So elimination area zone four calls for X number of people. I'd have to look in the plan. But there's guys in this zone that are working this area nonstop. This is one of our areas where we take the most. Iron and Reynolds County.

So you have trappers that are working here now? Oh, yeah. Yeah, all through this area, sure. Okay. Yeah. And they're using all these different things that you've created out where we where we were talking about that creek there's a trap down there oh a government trap yeah oh okay when you talk about someone trapping i thought when you mentioned that i pictured that someone

wanted to catch that pig to bring it up to eat it or move it somewhere or whatever. I got you. So that was like a removal plan. Yeah. Because it's clean now. Yep. Yeah. You mentioned to me some work on, some work has been done on the disease vector issue. Sure. And how it might apply to people.

All right. Can you sketch out some of the, because it's a thing people say, right you sketch out some of the because because it's a thing people say right oh pigs are full of diseases sure um like what uh trichinosis you mentioned you got a dose of that right yeah yeah they have trichinosis um they have pseudorabies people can't get pseudorabies but your your dog can get pseudorabies, and you hear about that happening a lot. Brucellosis, people can get brucellosis. Cattle can get brucellosis.

Cattle can get brucellosis. Can brucellosis move from a pig to a cow, do you know? I think there's brucellosis, psuas and brucellosis for the bovines. And I'm not sure the veterinarian guys explain it to me, and I don't follow it so much. But I know that, I don't know if the suess, maybe the suess can go to the cows, but it can't be passed on or something like that. But it could definitely go to the domestic pigs. Yeah.

That's probably one of the ones they would like to not get into the food system. Right, and so those guys are all, the ag industry's always testing their herds, right? And they're always clean, clean, clean, clean. And if they get a positive, that whole thing gets quarantined. And transport stops, whether it's in-state, out-of-state, whatever the regs are, transport stops. Yeah, so for listeners, if you follow her every year

you'll hear a big story about um people fighting over whether bison they're leaving yellowstone national park um the issue there comes down to this thing we're talking about with brucellosis depending on who you ask. I'll actually lay this whole thing out real quick as much as I can. So when the snows pile up in the late winter, you'll have buffalo migrate out of Yellowstone National Park. And they'll come out into various private lands, national forest lands, and go about their business. There's a fear that these animals will reintroduce a Eurasian cattle disease back to cattle.

So cattle that were brought here to the U.S. had a disease called brucellosis. Brucellosis was passed to buffalo, and there's infections in the park but then in the meantime they eradicated it from domestic cows so now the cattle producers in wyoming and montana enjoy what's called brucellosis free status they don't need to do the constant rigorous testing because there's no cases and they haven't had a case in a while what they're very afraid of is the minute one of these buffalo comes out, rubs noses, or no, it's actually passed, they'll drop a fetus and animals will lick and eat each other's afterbirth. One of these things is going to pick the disease up, and all of a sudden the cattlemen of these states

will no longer enjoy brucellosis free status and i think that it actually this is something that should be fixed really it actually goes state level so a guy in the south you know the guy in the extreme south of montana or the extreme north of wyoming could get brucellosis in his cattle herd, and it affects a guy 400 miles away up in some other corner of the state. Some people say that the brucellosis thing, in terms of buffalo, some people say it's all bullshit. And what it really comes down to

is a conversation about grazing rights. So that's just, and they say that this brucellosis thing is sort of a proxy in place of this other argument about, is this grass belong to cattle or does this grass belong to these wild ass animals? And so, people fight that out all the time. But until sitting here with you right now, I had no idea that there's wild pigs of brucellosis. And so, they're a reservoir, right? I had no idea that there's, with wild pigs, a brucellosis issue. Right, and so they're a reservoir, right? We can get it out of domestics, but you cannot get it out of the wild population.

So it's always there. It's always a threat. It's always an issue. Can you explain, you mentioned something yesterday that there's like a closed system with domestic pork. Sure, yeah. them with domestic pork sure yeah so um you know back in back in the day everybody raised uh their hogs out in the pasture or uh woven wire fence you know hog wire we called it electric fence or feeding the restaurant right the whole thing and you you heard as a kid hey uh cook your cook your pork cook your pork dough whatever cook it cook it. Well, you don't hear that so much anymore because in order to meet that demand, those

pigs have been brought inside and raised in confinement. It's much easier. You don't have to worry about the disease. You don't have to, you know, you can monitor it and measure it and move your animals through. Control their diet. Of course. Yeah. The whole thing. So, so when they're in there, they, they're not, you know, rubbing noses or whatever with feral swine, you know, transmitting disease out there on the ground or picking up those different nematodes or whatever it is, we can get it out. Now, there's kind of a movement to go back to more of a free-range, pasture-fed type of pork, which is kind of a neat thing, I think. But those diseases are going to start popping back up.

You're going to get trichinosis. People are going to get those different things because they're not cooking their pork um so and that probably incentivizes people especially well to control the wild to control the feral swine sure yeah you know increased chance of exposure yes yeah absolutely you know in the u.s uh right now, I can't remember what, 90-some percent of trichinosis cases are transmitted through black bear meat. Yeah. Yeah. No one's found a way to get it out of black bears.

No. No. So those disease issues are a reason that we often get the question, why don't you guys donate the meat? You know, there's a number of reasons we don't donate the meat of the hogs that we capture. Number one is a disease issue. You know, we work for the federal government. Could you imagine if we donated a bunch of Trichinosis-laden meat? Sure, to somebody and they eat up with trichinosis i mean it's that's that's a nightmare plus you don't want to be giving people trichinosis gee whiz what are the handling risks

you know each each state uh game and fish puts out a handling risk you know wear gloves you know if you have cuts on your hands and wear gloves. Don't clean it. Wash your hands good afterwards. Cook your pork thorough if it's a wild hog. Cooking will kill most all that stuff. But 100% of the people are not going to 100% cook their pork. Another reason we don't like to donate them, so to speak, is it gives them value. And once someone starts receiving free pork,

what's the incentive to get rid of that pork? Or want it gone? No, I could see that it would create, earlier we were talking about mission confusion. It would create mission confusion for sure. Yeah. So do you feel that, I know this is going on all around the country.

But do you feel that it's plausible that in 10 years we'd be like, wow, turns out, you know, Missouri, for instance, no longer has wild pigs. Yeah. No longer has wild pigs. Yeah, so in 10 years, I don't know if we'll have wild pigs or not, but I will say it's relatively new in 10, 15 years. So the populations are not as dense as they are in other parts of the country. Once again, the Missouri Department of Conservation rolled up their sleeves and said, we're going to fix this and they've put the resources and into fixing that and I believe our population even within this short infancy of the program is starting to shrink so what's going to happen

in 10 years I can't tell you but I know that we're doing good in the areas that we're working. They're getting harder to find. We're getting more opposition from the people who want them, which is, in my mind, a good thing because they're going, oh, oh. You know, it's harder for them to hunt them. They're not able to do what they have and move them and transport them and all those things they've done for, you know, untouched for the last 10 years. So, yeah, I think in 10 years our six elimination areas are going to – or maybe four elimination areas. Yeah. How much is all this costing everybody?

I mean, like these decisions by people to take these, you know, decisions by people to break the law and cut loose feral swine, right, winds up being sort of an enormous burden on people. So the starter, say, the starter money was from the APHIS feral swine initiative, and it was to the tune of $20 million. And so that has been, like I said, seed money or starter money. Each state runs a little bit different program depending on how the state wants it handled or what they do. But so starter money was $20 million. Now, people have developed cooperative relationships like we have in Missouri. You know, the Mark Twain National Forest puts in a lot of money. Missouri State Parks, like I said, Missouri Department of Conservation, Army Corps of Engineers, they're all throwing

money into a pot for USDA, APHIS Wildlife Services, to hire trappers and do that work. So, you know, all across the state, just governmental agencies, there's no telling us the multi, multi, multi millions of dollars, not to mention the private people who are doing those types of things, you know. I remember years ago looking at a map of the U.S. and it showed where you could raise cattle without supplemental feeding.

And it was surprising. Surprising like the places you can't raise cattle without supplemental feeding. Have you ever seen a map? Has anyone drawn up a map of where is it possible that wild pigs could get established when you factor in climate issues? I have a hard time picturing that northern Wyoming wouldn't faze them. The brutality of the winter? They're in Quebec. They're all in Canada.

It doesn't faze them. They're tough as nails. That's why they're such a bad invasive. Yeah. Wouldn't faze them. Because I've seen pictures of them in Siberia. Sure. Running around in the snow, which looks crazy.

Yeah. You feel like Northern Wyoming's harsh climate, huh? I remember that Colorado feels it's plausible plausible i think they've already had them in there yeah but there's there's a difference in and maybe you can speak to this maybe parker speak this because there's a difference like the michigan ones the michigan cases might be in these like isolated cases where some guys run in some little fake hunting place where you go and pretend that you're hunting a pig right and he gets some escape like a dozen get away so almost like oh my god michigan's got wild pigs but it's kind of like very isolated gets mopped up pretty quickly you know it's not sort of this

where you just have these populations that are naturally reproducing, going on for many generations, spreading around. You just get these like isolated blips. And so, yeah, I have, I don't know. I'm not like a wild pig guy. I've enjoyed hunting them in quite a number of locations. But, yeah, it's hard for me to picture that in Wyoming, it's open country tons of snow extremely cold uh it's just hard for me to picture that you would that it's possible that a that a sounder would get a foothold and start naturally reproducing and not just be well it was wiped out what's the question

can you wipe them out or could they live there yeah you're right i can i asked two different things sure sure i mean you know so the northern wyoming i've never been there um i'm guessing it's open uh a lot of rolling prairie i i don't know aerial gunning would be extremely extremely effective okay and and yeah it would be... So easy to eliminate, but... Sure, but could live there perfectly fine. As evidenced by the fact, like I said, they come from Siberia.

Right. I know they... My counterpart in North Dakota, they do feral swine work coming in from Canada all the time. Oh, it's coming from the north. Yeah, the influx is from the north. North Dakota gets feral pigs coming from Canada. From the north, yeah.

Yeah. Really? Sure. Yeah. What are they doing up there? Somebody put them there. No, but what are they eating? They're pigs.

They'll eat anything. You know? Roots, tubers, eggs, whatever. So there's wild pigs crossing the international border. Sure, yeah. Huh. All right, that answers that question. Regularly.

So that's how we're going to get them in Montana, too. Right next door. So you keep tabs on kind of what's going on in the whole country. Well, no, I don't keep. I know what's going on, you know country well no i don't care i i know what's going on you know just by my counterparts and the projects they're doing yeah so in the states i only know one for sure i think off the top of my head but like indiana has outlawed the hunting of the pigs do they feel over there like that's working for them they do and it states that outlaw hunting have recognized that hunting is and i i

wish there was a different word than hunting i don't even like to say hunting but it's pursuit of barnyard animals i i don't know yeah um they've recognized that is what exacerbates the problem. That's why they're there. That's why people move them. That's what they want to do. Now, those states that don't have that culture, they can go, we've banned wild hog hunting. Everybody goes, all right, whatever. We don't know what you're talking about.

So it's a very effective way to get some really important legislation introduced. Everyone I know that used to move fish around from lake to lake and river to river, if you told them it was illegal to fish that species of fish in that lake, even though it didn't have any yet, they would have been completely de-incentivized. Of course. To dump them in there. Why would you do it?

Sure. Unless someone's like, I'm just a rule breaker anyway, man. And a rule breaker, I'll break the rule of putting them there and then I'll break the rule of hunting them. Yep. Goes back to the public land thing. If you got a bucket full of whatever fish and that guy's like, don't ever come to my pond.

And this neighbor over here says, everybody can fish. You're right in the pond, man. You know? Same thing. and this neighbor over here says everybody can fish right in the pond man you know same thing hey folks exciting news for those who live or hunt in canada and boy my goodness do we hear from the canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes and our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join, our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know,

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Where are you going to go next? Where am I going gonna go next where am i gonna go next yeah i'm going home to finish my turkey season no but i mean what's your next like what like in a career like yours what happens next you did new hampshire yeah florida yeah yeah yeah no i'm digging miss, I'm digging Missouri. I'm pretty mad at the pigs right now. So we'll stick it out here a while and see what happens. And how many guys do you have out right now? Not right now, but I mean, how many guys are working the pig problem? So we go back to the partnership. And it's being looked at nationally as a good model on how to eliminate feral swine. And those different agencies, about half of them actively have people out on the ground

doing hog trapping. And we work together seamlessly. MDC, Missouri Department of Conservation, USDA, Fish and Wildlife Service, Mark Twain National Forest, Army Corps Engineers, all those trappers know each other. They're all in communication. They're working around them. So, you know, I have 20, 25 or so going, and MDC has however many they have in Mark Twain. So, you know, as far as people doing actual trapping in the state, there's quite a few.

So you have 25 trappers right now what's a good uh year for those guys uh a good i guess it'd be a bad the higher the numbers would be the worst year but let me phrase it different so you got one guy you got one guy if they kill three pigs they're they're high-fiving and going to get beers because, hey, they killed three pigs out of 10 to 30% of the population. The other guy across the state killed 600, and he has no idea. He's just working as hard as he can. I see. Yeah, it depends on where you are, man.

There's legendary pigs. Hey, we finally got her. We finally did, and the word spreads. Like some female. Right. Like how long had she been a like yes like how long had she been a legend like how long has she been invading year you know a couple years you know and and um you know you you'd kill her offspring and she'd still be knocking around you know and can't shoot her

can't trap her yeah yeah super super smart and then finally you get her, you know, and it's, yeah. And once you get them, you know, you got them. And that's why it's so important not to just remove a few because of the fecundity of hogs. Man, you got to get them all and you got to be relentless and you got to stay on them. And, you know, 90% of our effort goes into 5% of the population. It's that last 5%. I see. That's the same thing. Remember when Steve Kendrick was talking about getting rid of those nutria?

Yeah, same thing. He's like, man, it was easy to get the first 95%, but, man, that last 5%, man, they had to come up with all kinds of different techniques. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, people are talking about off-the- the wall stuff and you're going to try it try it yeah yeah we got to get her what's like one of the most off the wall strategies you can think of that someone used to get a pig i i don't there's been all sort of bait lure attractant

concoctions made up um i the generally they're killed by night shooting those last holdouts and and generally it's the guys that make the decision i'm going nocturnal and i'm not i'm not going to see the light of day until i do and they stay up all night and they just become the night predators you know yeah and those guys are the i mean it becomes personal with them you know it's like i've been after this animal for you know and wanting to do a good job and and some of our people are so super dedicated and generally that's generally that's what gets them the nocturnal you know guys being able to scratch an area off the map scratch it off the map there's something to be said for that.

You know, hey, that dot's gone now, or that blob's gone. Yeah. And the blobs are shrinking. And we're doing stuff statewide. And the feedback you get from the landowners, man, it's just awesome. Be able to help them with that problem. Yeah. Can I ask you something that has nothing to do with pigs?

Yeah. You were saying that you grew up, well, I'm going to segue into it, because you grew up with pig dogs. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I did. But that's not an effective tool to even use in these situations. I say this.

Hog dogs are the most efficient way to wake up in the morning and say, I'm going to go catch one pig. Now, if you show me a pig dog that can catch 62 at once, by God, I'm singing the song of the hog dogs, but no. But even when you got it down to that one, if you were looking at it, that's not really the way to go about it in missouri that's that's something that that we've decided not to do in in other areas they do utilize that tool and it can be effective okay yep when you got one you can't when you're down to the last one right you can use it so but you all said you grew up with squirrel dogs yeah

and then you imported squirrel dog technology i did i knew a place that isn't using it right and and it is um i'm did you bring your squirrel dogs in new hampshire no i caught them by surprise i did not they have those uh you probably know about it, red squirrels, man. Those things are no good, the red squirrels. I know those well. Pine squirrels. Yeah, pine squirrels. You wouldn't want to taint a good southern squirrel dog on a red squirrel, so we stayed away from that.

You can eat them. People say they taste like turpentine or whatnot because they eat a lot of pine. Basically, it's a squirrel that just happens to be very small yeah it's just a small squirrel there are guys yeah but there are guys in alaska that will go out in the winter and hunt pine squirrels to eat pine squirrels have at times had fur market value so there's been times when um for paintbrush and other usages when you could get like a buck for a pine squirrel and there'd be guys you know in the old days not the old old days but yeah you know during the night you know periods during the 1900s when they're worth a buck a piece and people

go stack up hundreds of them that's good money and make money on buck a piece pine squirrels yeah but food wise even where i grew up when you if you were out hunting squirrels we hunted gray squirrels and fox squirrels you would when you saw a pine squirrel you wouldn't go after it but they'd be intermixed you know yeah yeah i don't know the dog would differentiate between those i don't know how they'd respond to it i don't know either but you know the pine squirrels are feisty yeah like they prey on snowshoe hare leverets oh yeah they did a mortality study on snowshoe hares and i think they found that uh of the 20 like they of the ones they lost they found 27 of them or some sorry they did this mortality study you know the

ones they were able to put tracking devices on 27 27% of them turned up in squirrel middens, pine squirrel middens. Really? They hammer them. I did not know that. Yeah. Huh. Bird eggs, snowshoe hare babies, all kinds of stuff. They're kind of like a cross.

I think of them as a cross almost between a mink and a squirrel. Yeah. Like in their sort of ferocity. And the beeping, chirping, they do. Yeah, they'll come get right in your face. Yeah, they do. Yeah. They'll come right down and get in your face and get in your house.

Yeah. There's a whole, yeah, different temperament, man. Yeah. They're kind of like electric with energy, you know. Not as majestic as a gray squirrel. Well, no, not as majestic. But tell me about bringing squirrels. So in Georgia, everybody has a squirrel dog, you're saying? Yeah, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, East Tennessee,

there's a lot more squirrel hunting with dogs that goes on there. I think squirrel hunting is probably pretty common all up and down the East Coast where the gray squirrels are. Yeah, but not with dogs. Not with dogs so much. on there i think squirrel hunt is probably pretty common um all up and down the east coast you know where the gray squirrels are yeah but not with dogs not with dogs so much more when you bring squirrel dogs yeah so you make a lot of friends man when you bring squirrel dogs in missouri because people want to go hunt with you oh yeah it's great fun but are the squirrels not used to it like does it did you find a difference man, these squirrels are just not expecting this. No.

So the squirrels are responding to the dogs the same here than they do where they've had many, many years of exposure to dogs. Yeah. I don't know that they know it's a dog or a fox or a coyote. They just know that it's something that could eat them and they want to get away from it. Okay. Yeah. So it wasn't like the land of milk and honey when you first showed up with your dogs well it's the land and milk of milk and honey and as much as there's a lot more

fox squirrels in missouri than than in alabama or or georgia you guys are mostly on eastern grays mostly yeah some of those big southern fox squirrels we call them cat squirrels you know those great big ones you know all varied colors uh well the fox squirrels here are mostly red and they seem to be i don't know if they're not as intelligent as the gray squirrels and they sit out where the dogs really can see them man and they hang their tail down like a flag and it and it makes it easier to pick it drives the dogs nuts yeah yeah they can see them so man i've never thought have you ever thought that like a like a sort of temp like a sort of less cageyness difference between greys and fox squirrels i was delicate on that there's a difference there's a distinct difference of caginess of caginess. Now, I know that the micro habitats they like are different.

Correct. For sure. Yeah. Then there's areas I've hunted where it's all one. There's areas I've hunted where it's all the other. But where I grew up, there was intermixed. And it might be that down in the ravine bottom or whatever, you get down there

and it'd be a lot of grays down there. Then up top, up in the beach trees up top and it'd be a lot of grays down there then up top you know up in the beach trees up top you see a lot of fox squirrels but you wouldn't think anything of looking up tree and seeing one of each yeah and i've never detected like that one was i used to think we like the fox squirrels better because they're huge yeah and the gray squirrels at times we like them better because they're more of a novelty but over my life gray squirrels became far more prevalent you you could i don't i have no idea what that's attributed to why you just watch that shift happen to become in that area where i grew up to become like not nearly the fox girls as we had gray squirrels. Right. And I don't think it's just because people were selective pressure from hunting. Oh, no.

Hunting has no, I don't think, is very, very negligible on squirrel populations, if any. But up here, you're hunting where people aren't hitting them hard, though, right? Yeah. You know, I hunt and have never seen another squirrel hunter in there. I don't know that. I think parts of the state, people hunt them a little bit, but where I am in central Missouri, I've never seen another squirrel hunter,

let alone a dog squirrel hunter. Now, I've got to. You hunt public land? I hunt public land, both public and private, yeah. What's a good day? A good day, I think our best day this year was maybe 18 or so. How do you guys cook them? Well, I killed 211 this year.

And so I've cooked them every way I can. My wife has had it with me and squirrel meat. She's sick of it. She's done. And, you know, my children, Grace and Brody, they got the 20 gauges, and they follow me around and do a great job. But like I told you guys, I've eaten a lot of lead shot this year, a lot. So you're waiting for the kids to get old enough to be able to use 22s.

I am. I am. And when your wife bites down into the number the number six it's not counting when you do you bite then spit it out and go oh it's shot you know she looks at you with it you gotta kiss the cook that's right she yeah yeah mama gives you the evil look so yeah but on lead it's not bad it's like you know i know half people i know have lost teeth busted teeth on steel shop lead you know i mean you don't want to be eating it but it's not it's not as horrible for your teeth as it is eating waterfowl right but what are you guys fry it yeah we fry it cook it down and pick it what do you do yeah we cook it down and pick it

um man you name it make gumbo uh jambalaya uh we make everything you just barbecue it oh sure of course yeah barbecue it yeah you have 200 squirrels in the everything you're just barbecue it on oh sure of course yeah barbecue it yeah you you have 200 squirrels in the freezer you're coming up with different uh ways to cook them and it's what are your kids feelings about it as far as eating it yeah i'll scarf it down particularly my little girl grace she she knocks it down they love. I think it's one of the most underrated meats in the woods. It's delicious. And there's no one who eats it when it's properly prepared. It's delicious.

People are blown away by it. Sure. Have you sous-vide any? No. You might be on to something. Maybe so. I'm going to send Parker honorary membership to the Rocky Mountain Squirrel Foundation.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're going to have Parker honorary membership to the Rocky Mountain Squirrel Foundation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're going to have to start an eastern branch of the Rocky Mountain Squirrel Foundation. Yeah. Do you like the fox squirrels? Or when you go out and hunt them, if you shoot a couple of each, are you stoked that you got a few fox squirrels? No, man, I want the gray squirrels. I like the gray squirrels.

No, I like the gray squirrels. For eating? The dogs, yeah, the dogs like the fox squirrels i want the gray squirrels i like the gray squirrels like the no i like the gray squirrels the dogs yeah the dogs like the fox squirrels oh you think a gray squirrel eats better than a fox squirrel oh yeah oh for sure really yeah you guys don't well no because you can't argue eat them enough you can't argue the size man what what are i know but the flavor and the toughness uh issue i think huh see that's another question for you because what i've been starting to do uh is i'll try to grade them which i think from what i think are young squirrels if i have a pile i mean if i only have three then whatever they're all going the same bag but if i've got 10 i'll be like all right those are like the four old tough bastards with yeah you know nuts as big as your thumb those are going into the crock pot right and then i'll try to be like all right those

are look younger and i'll cook them whole on the grill and they can be eaten that way i'd almost trade you a mess of headshot young gray squirrels for almost anything else in the woods i mean it's those are the primo those those give other stuff to receive those? For sure. Oh, yeah. Even a turkey breast? Yeah, probably a turkey breast. I'd trade a turkey breast for a limit of headshot grade.

I'm just saying that. Those are strong words. Are you familiar with the chef uh are you familiar with the chef jamie oliver no english kid not kid i don't know how old he is well he's just got this marinade some recipe book i had of his he's got this marinade where it's like lemon and thyme and pulped up thyme and lemon juice and yeah olive and whatnot. But what I started doing was taking the squirrels and taking a fork. So skin the squirrel, right? Piece it out.

And then take a fork and that back leg, I would jab that fork. Yeah. A jillion times. 20, 30 times in that back leg. Just completely perforate. Because once you're eating, you never know. It's not like it's full of holes right it comes back together sure perforated a bunch of times and then take the back the back straps and prick them a ton of times and then marinate them and just cook them on a

grill it's unbeatable so nothing like slow cooking just cook them on a grill and then and then eat the meat off huh that was i've never done a fox squirrel like that though you need to and then report back yeah because once i got on to doing that recipe i was only in gray squirrel areas yeah because i was doing that when i was hunting in new york state in new york state a lot of eastern grays yeah are you i am now Western grace. Are you a step on the tail and yank them off, skinning? No, I ain't. You don't tail skin? No, I don't. And you're from the American South.

I am. I know a lot of guys who do. You do the pants and shirt? Yeah, I do the pants and shirt. But I think as I get older and my strength goes, I'm going to have to tail skin. But I pants and shirt them. I can go right through them pretty good.

And you use a Feister or a Kerr dog? I use a Kerr dog. It's a smaller Kerr. Just one dog? I just have one dog. Now, I have some friends who I've introduced into it that we hunt together. And they're getting dogs too oh yeah there it's it's total i and i was telling my friends at the department of conservation there's the three

squirrel dog men now i'm sure there's others i just don't know them you know in missouri and i'm coming for them to extend the season yeah a little bit longer so do you think you're going to grow to regret introducing that piece of technology and not just keeping quiet about it of course not and you know why no it's the kids it's great great kid hunt i mean you don't have to be quiet you can walk around you can teach them uh gun control walking through the woods crossing fences safety all of those things it's enjoyable they're not freezing their pet is there so they get to pet their dog um i i i got my squirrel dog i grew up doing it and and i got it for the children and it

is i i won't regret that it's a house house dog or an outside dog? Well, I'm ashamed to say it, and the people that know me are going to, it gets in my wife's bed. It follows her around. Now, not my bed. We sleep in the same bed, but I don't claim it as our bed. I'm like, get that dog out of my bed. I've got it you know when i am going to get a squirrel dog i went and picked it up from a buddy in alabama that grows them uh has some nice squirrel dogs uh had a pen built you know the whole thing ready nice kennel i thought was good

even put it up off the ground so the dog wouldn't be on the gravels uh had a hay bale i was gonna put and that's not been in the pen once our friend kevin murphy is telling me that he recently heard of a squirrel dog selling for twenty thousand dollars i must be a good squirrel dog you'd like to think won't you yeah i don't know that i've seen one that good so you just got yours yeah when you have a squirrel dog uh what's the minimum amount you can hunt it and still have it know what's up still have it know how to do it depends on the dog you know but you know the more you hunt any dog the better it is for sure um but let's say you live in a state where you can't hunt squirrels for five months out of the year

you can still put them up, can't you? Just not shoot them. Okay. The dog doesn't get tired of that? No, it's in them. It's like a retriever. That dog went on the floor there. If you took a tennis ball, it'd probably bring it back to you until he died.

He doesn't know why. He just wants to do it. So you can train, you can run squirrels, and if you don't shoot the squirrel out of the tree, the dog doesn't get mad. He still thinks he had a good time. Oh, he's loving it, yeah. My dog particularly doesn't care. Some of the dogs really want to get the squirrel.

My dog, once the squirrel's dead, it could care less. The drive is to tree another squirrel. Yeah. Let me tell you something graphic right now. Okay. Our friend Kevin Murphy, his squirrel dog, one of them,

eats the head. Yep. Is that common? That's very common. I had a dog, Jack, that only wanted, we called him Head Juice. They only wanted to eat the head.

I don't know what that is. That just runs in squirrel dogs. They just want to crunch their head. All right. Yeah. I thought that dog was sick. Now I think it's just a normal dog. Yeah, it's common.

And then did it just come out of the box wanting to hunt squirrels or did you have to try to teach it something? No, you don't have to teach it much. No, you mess with it and show it squirrels and bring it along. But, yeah, it's in them, you know. It's like a retriever or a pointer or whatever. You know, they're bred to want to be tree dogs. And so that's what they do.

The hard thing for me is to differentiate between yard squirrels and woods squirrels. So, you know, mom and the kids like seeing the squirrels in the yard. I got to wait for them to leave to thin those down. You know, the dogs looking out the window just quivering, you know, going crazy. You know, so, but it's fun. And then do you keep a dog for hunting ducks too? I don't. No, just the squirrel dog.

Just go over and pick up ducks yourself. Yeah. If I'm lucky enough to hit one, yeah. Do you view your, because you grew up hunting and grew up around that, do you view your work now as like an extension of that or does it just feel like completely different? It's like it's just there's work and then there's what you do for fun. It's just there's work and then there's what you do for fun. It's completely different, but the reason I have this job is because of my love for the outdoors and hunting and fishing.

And so what I do now, the enjoyment I get is seeing that my work is going to the benefit of of the outdoors or yeah benefit of native wildlife sure the ecosystems and those those yeah so this is just an extension of of liking to do that do good trappers when you have a trapper working for you do all the good trappers have a a hunting and fishing background or can you just or do you find people can just get it and figure it out even though they didn't grow up doing that kind of stuff both yeah yeah yep yep there's no um a lot of times the guys who grew up and gals grew up doing it a little bit more familiar with it but you know we've had some people with no background whatsoever and we introduced them and trained them and it turned out really top notch yeah sure and then you mentioned

that so you found that um you have men and women that work on the the trapping teams right yeah and then uh do the people that trap, do they want to stand with it for years, or is it like summer technician kind of jobs? Both. It's kind of like you love it, or after you get a belly full, you kind of want to do something else. There's people who have done it their entire career, and that's all they want to talk about, and it totally consumes them.

There's people who do a good job and say, okay, I've caught enough hogs or whatever, coyotes or whatever it is, and they move on or they move up into more of a biologist role, and they work on different things. It's just natural progression. Is it hard to fill the positions the reason i'm asking all these questions is i could picture a lot of people that listen to this would be like man that's the job for me yeah yeah it's it's not hard to fill the position at all um but it's very hard people want that work it's very hard to get people to stay everything turns into a job right um and so so they think they're going to be out just yeah yeah pig hunting good times and if you hunted if you hunted if you hunted and

then we don't hunt them we we do control work if you hunted pigs every day you got up and you went to work at eight o'clock and came home at five o'clock and you hunted pigs all day long you're gonna get real tired of that real quick yeah not nearly as fun no yeah you got any more questions yeah i did have one just now um shucks can you come back to me yeah because i'll tell you something one uh i started trapping muskrats with my brothers when we were young. I was 10 when I caught my first muskrat. And I got an all-manner, you know, I trapped everything, fur trapping. And stuck with it until I was 22.

When I set my last, you know, when I set my last trap with the intent of making money on it. Now and then I'll go catch something for making, you you know fur hat for me or my wife or whatever but uh when i found out about there was such a thing as like animal damage control work for a while i thought that that was the job i was going for like i would have been would have in some other version of events i've been one of the people sending an application right to check pigs, trap pigs. It would have been immensely appealing to me

when I was in high school. I had a sit-down interview once with a private guy working in Colorado. And we started just chatting. I was working in retail. He's like, you know,

we ought to have pizza or something. There was a pizza joint right next door. So I met him for lunch a few days later. And I was jacked up. I was like, yeah yeah dude this sounds great you know i'll learn all about this and he's like yeah it's you know most of it's during uh like september october november and i

was like hold on that's hunting season i can't be doing that you know what was he after it was probably mostly a lot of beaver work you know be, beavers messing up, you know, chopping down people's pretty aspens in their backyards along all the creeks in Colorado, a lot of that. Probably some coons. What kind of retail were you doing? Selling retail clothes, outdoor clothing shop. Oh, yeah. But remember my question, coyotes are kind of a new animal here in Missouri, right?

No, they've been around for quite a while. Like more than a couple decades? They new they're new tons of other places i didn't know so they've been they've had a foothold here for a long time yeah yeah they've been here for for quite a while so people that were kids here in the uh 60s 70s they were they had coyotes. They've been here a long time. Interesting. Kind of figured this was part of the eastern migration. But I can still follow that up with, do you have many conflicts with coyotes that you guys deal with? We do have some conflicts. Not as many as some of the western states, the sheep growers and some of the cattle places. A lot of ours are urban conflicts.

A couple of cats getting aborted. Yeah, you know, seeing them running around. And, you know, coyotes can live anywhere, and they do pretty good anywhere they are. So, yeah, most of ours would probably be urban. You know, they like to, for wildlife services anyway, they like the airport environment. So we take some off of airports and those types of things. But not as big of an issue in Missouri as it is in other states.

The Missouri Department of Conservation does some coyote work. It's not really our arena. Got it. Yeah. Brandon, you've mostly been hanging out, but do you have any concluders? Any final things you wanted to ask about? Nothing to ask about. I think just as a concluder,

I wanted to just kind of emphasize how complicated conservation is, and people always attribute hunting to conservation, but I think in the case of the feral hog, that's the opposite. And I'd encourage people, especially here in Missouri, to not embrace that culture because it puts in jeopardy the cultures that we truly should embrace, like deer hunting and turkey hunting and squirrel hunting, our native species that belong here on the landscape. And these hogs don't.

And if you participate in that, you're abiding by something that is having a negative reaction on those heritages that we hold so dear. Yeah. You're throwing away or jeopardizing some deep traditions. Yeah. And a functioning landscape. Yeah, it's hard to manage these forests. You know, we don't just let the forest go anymore. There's a lot of work that goes into keeping these habitats healthy. destroy species like the dragonfly you were talking about, Parker,

and ruin habitat for other game species that we have such immense value on, not only recreationally in this area, but economically. It's a bad thing all the way around. I wish it was possible to get a better sense of what kind of dent they put into turkeys as a ground nesting bird. You know, we hear people making the claim that, you know, that they eat a lot of the eggs. But I don't know if there's, Parker, has there been a study done on that that you're aware of? Oh, I'm sure, yeah, there's probably several studies.

But it is, let's face it, it's a hog. It's an invasive species that doesn't belong here. So if it eats one turkey nest, it's too many. Sure, there's a negative impact on all of our ground nesting birds. I mean, they root on the ground. They take those. You think about it, not only turkeys or quail, for instance, or some of those other small birds that nest low in the lands, you know, in the forest understory.

You know, hogs are having an impact on those as well. So, like I said, it's an exotic invasive. So, one's too many. It doesn't belong here. It's not from here. Yeah. What's funny is that the people that are trying to bring pigs in and promote pigs as a hunting thing usually sell it as how they're helping with the pig problem. Right.

You see it all the time, man. You can go online and there'll be places advertising, Texas is over,run with hogs. Come down. Come down. Then you realize it's a fenced operation and they're actually

buying pigs. Right. Yeah. But people like that narrative. Sure. I think it's, well,

I think it's, I got a bunch of theories on it. A thing I've found is that, and this is my concluding thought, a thing I've found with people this is my concluding thought a thing i found with people people who become curious about hunting not people who grew up in hunting culture and hunting communities but people who didn't grow up around it and they become curious about hunting and they

want to find a way to know it's okay like they desperately want to go but they need to be told it's okay those people are drawn to pig hunting that's right because they feel like oh you mean i can do this and know absolutely certain that i'm doing the right thing because they're not they're not already educated on the fact that by participating in licensed hunting you're contributing immense amounts of resource into wildlife habitat management enforcement you know disease control they don't they don't get that right they need to know that like that they're going to go like by taking a life they're helping everyone out right and so again and again when i've spoken with people who are like man come on go hunt Like that they're going to go, like by taking a life, they're helping everyone out. And so again and again, when I've spoken with people who are like, man, I kind of want to go hunting, thinking about doing hog hunting.

Because I understand how they're like a non-native. You just hear it all the time, man. Yeah. It's really gotten out there in my lifetime as this like, as a thing. Yeah. Yeah. as a thing yeah yeah and the first time i ever stepped foot the first time i ever hunted in a place that had the possibility of having a pig we were hunting deer but i sat up in my tree saying the whole time praying a pig came sure sure i was way more interested in that than i wasn't a deer i was like my god a pig running around in the woods yeah how wonderful that would

be having no idea about the bigger picture right issue right and you know you're we're helping we're helping we're helping but you know it's a i go back to the tv um deal and you know they passed up three sows and and 14 little little shoats to shoot one mature boar which does absolutely nothing as far as population control goes you know it's it's just it's it's uh it's in some instances just uh it's uh it's farce you know in some instances i think i have a friend whose family runs cattle in northern california and uh one day i was asking her father who lets me hunt wild pigs out there and he complains about him but one day i was asking her father said, if you could wave a magic wand and have them all be gone, would you wave it?

He thought about it for a minute, and he's like, no, not all of them. That's right. He wants it his way. He wants just not quite so many. Yeah. But not all of them right right so as much as he curses them and shows you where they're all hanging out and shows you what they did bad here and what they did bad there there's some part of them that just you know well i think for a lot

of people it just comes down for like a net to a natural empathy to animals right like you just can't look at it and be like, oh yeah, even though I know all this about how bad they are, wipe them out. It'd be great if they weren't on this continent anymore. Yeah, there's maybe some thing, maybe there's some little nugget of goodness.

Residual, like some kind of nugget of goodness in people that just a thing we've learned is that wiping things out isn't generally like and it's true generally speaking not a good idea you know and i think people carry that in and they don't and they're not interested in the nuance of it but it's funny to watch them wrestle with it for a minute you know he's like you can't be greedy yeah but in missouri the goal is clear it is it is gone and then what's the low what's the most likely source let's say no one brought one in that's my last question no one's trucking

them in no one's trucking them in they're're still walking from somewhere. Right. From where? We have them in Oklahoma. Okay. We have them in Arkansas. They can walk in from Arkansas. We have them in Tennessee. Illinois has done a good job. So our southern brethren.

Before I was born, my old man was hunting wild pigs in arkansas mine too so it's never going to be that it's just not a problem it's just going to be something that requires constant monitoring right and you know it's in and some states they're they're a game animal and they've embraced that so you. So it varies all over the country. California, man. You got to buy a tag. That's right. That's right. There's no limit on how many tags you buy.

You got to buy a tag. I don't think there's any limit on that. Chances are they're not ever going to be all the way gone from California. But, you know, man, I'll tell you what. People there love them. Hunters. And it's kind of like it's been going on a long time. People have been hunting pigs there a long time.

There's people that that's kind of their main thing they hunt. And some of the funnest pig hunting, I hate to say this to you, but some of the funnest pig hunting I've done has been in California because you can spot and stalk wild pigs. Sure. Yeah. You glass them up. It's fun.

Crawl up on them. Yeah. There's no arguing that. All right. Well, thank you very much for joining us. Good luck, Kim. Steve Jones is here the whole time. We never even introduced him.

I didn't give him a concluder because he hadn't said anything. I know. Because we never introduced him. But I think he might. Wild Game Chef jones has been joining us listening in well i had can you start out by plugging you you you post materials about wild game yeah i've got a website that is killer noms.com it's just kind of a small little uh hobby website nothing nothing monetized or professional, but I just started kind of recording

the things that I was learning about cooking wild game and I just enjoy. I checked it out. It's good. I'll vouch for it. There's some good information on there. Killernoms.com. Excellent cook. Thank you very much. You got an opportunity to come and sing karaoke for Pavarotti here, so

I couldn't pass that up. So, okay, did you have a thought or question for our guest? Yeah, I don't know as much about the hog problem as Parker and Brandon, but I have been reading about it, and I write about it. I'm an outdoor writer also.

And I would say, even though I've enjoyed a few hog hunts, I've had some of my actually best hunts I've had in my life have been hog hunts, but there is no doubt in my mind that this is absolutely the only correct way to deal with a serious conservation problem. If you approach it from a conservation or land ethic perspective, there is no other choice but eradication. So you're able to look at it and hold both ideas in your head at once.

Absolutely. It's nice to hunt them, just nice to eat them, but they got to go. Absolutely. They got to go. Go hunt them where they're natural, where they're not an introduced exotic. But if I could change one thing, because I talk to a lot of hunters, everything that the USDA APHIS is doing is great. Everything that the Missouri Department of Conservation is doing is great, except they haven't sold or explained the idea about why they have banned hog hunting on their own MDC lands, Missouri Department of Conservation. And that people that aren't fully coached up on all the details, it is counterintuitive.

They do not get it. Brandon and I talked to a pilot a couple of weeks ago who was coming in for a landing. There were a couple of feral hogs on the runway. And he was railing at us about why would the Department of Conservation say you can't shoot the pigs? You know, that's just counterintuitive, even though it's the right thing. I just wish they were doing a better job of explaining and selling it to the public. They've had several of these podcasts and webcasts and call-in type of things. And I think getting the word out, I disagree with you in as much as they're trying.

But to get everybody educated, people have to educate themselves to some extent. And you're right, it is counterintuitive, and it's a difficult thing to sell. But I think the program's in its infancy. If you think about it, we've been trying to eliminate feral swine for really three years. Hardcore. And I think as time goes on, I think the word will get out. Everything takes time. And that messaging, and you guys know this probably more than I do, that messaging, you just hammer it over and over.

And finally, it takes hold. It's like putting your seatbelt on kind of thing. Put your seatbelt on to your kids. Put your seatbelt on. Put your seatbelt on. Finally, they're putting their seatbelt on, and you didn't tell them. They're telling you, hey, put your seatbelt on. Hey, hogs are bad.

Hogs are bad. Hogs are bad. I think it probably will eventually lead to a certain amount of kind of like public shaming. The more it gets out, the more guys that are engaged in it their bodies might be like you know man yeah we should probably cut it out yeah that's that's working both ways though there was just a propaganda meeting down here led by a local state representative bringing together people you know talking about the arrogance of the department of conservation

and the fact that they would ban hunting. Look at our Department of Conservation is now siding with anti-hunters. I mean, the propaganda machine is another huge roadblock to making this happen. And now, of course, everybody with social media can spread just complete half-truths and mistruths. And, you know, it's fighting two battles. It's fighting the ecological battle

and it's fighting the social battle and trying to get people to buy in to what needs to be done to protect the resources. Yeah. Good job, Steve. Thank you. You stirred up a whole bunch of, you're like a pig wild in the spring. Stirred up a whole bunch of silt and mud. All right, man.

Thank you very much for coming on. Thanks a lot. I know it's probably taken away from your main thing you'd like to be doing. Not too much. Not right now. We can't turkey hunt after 1 o'clock. That's right. We've got to get that changed.

Yeah. After 1 o'clock and squirrel season should go on after February 15th. For how long? Till the day before turkey season. Okay. Well, that would mean it's only closed for a month, right? Correct. Let's just go all year squirrel season.

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