Another dead calf. Another deep hole. Another strafe-bombed pasture. Welcome to a farm where the wild pigs roam.
A plague descends nightly on Carl and C.J. Jackson’s land as scores of wild pigs emerge from adjacent river bottoms, intent on rooting row crops and bulldozing fields. The level of destruction is stunning. “It’s taking us to a breaking point,” Carl says. “We’re getting close to wild pigs making it impossible to farm and when you add in deer damage, the costs are crazy.”
Multiple modes of trapping, electric fencing, and thermal shooting—yet the wild pigs thrive. “All of those help, but’s there’s no real solution,” C.J. explains. “The pigs are part of our farming reality. The only question is, ‘How bad will they get?’”
In an era when wild pig depredation is common in agriculture, the father-and-son farming duo have endured a freakish level of damage, periodically losing entire crop fields. “We’re at a place where if a piece of farmland becomes available, our first question isn’t, ‘What about soil or drainage?” C.J. adds. “It’s, ‘What about pigs and deer?’”
Calf Killers
In a realm of heavy timber, Spanish moss, and big gators, the Jacksons run 200 cows and grow 800 acres of corn, soybeans, and wheat on leased, sandy ground in Wilcox County bottoms that rub the Alabama River in the southwest quarter of the Yellowhammer State.
Against the ink of rural nightfall, in the glow of a thermal ATN scope mounted atop an AR-15, C.J. counts 25 wild pigs—multiple sounders of sows and piglets, and several boars—laced through his cattle herd. Beyond the simple differences in size and morphology, the pigs are easily distinguished from cows: The pigs are never still.
Churning out a steady chatter of grinding, grunting, huffing, and squealing, and wearing coats ranging from classic black Russian to spotted whites and reds, the pigs are on a hunt for groceries—capable of foraging roots to feasting on row crops to eating tree nuts to consuming the remains of dead mammals to functioning as predators. The pigs are vacuums—daily eating 3% to 5% of body weight. “Typically, we see 200 lb. sows and boars that get much, much bigger,” describes 28-year-old C.J.
Extraordinary diggers, wild pigs sport an hourglass nasal bone floating in cartilage that provides backing for the snout pad, enabling them to lean in with stout neck muscles when rooting pasture and farmland, leaving a pocked, ravaged appearance across the flipped ground. (Yet, the same backhoe-like snout is also highly sensitive to smell, picking up scents from 5-plus miles away, or several feet beneath the soil.)
Pasture and hay field damage on the Jackson’s operation is widespread—and deep enough to trap livestock. “I’ve lost several calves to the pigs,” C.J. says. “They root grass and sometimes go down 2’ deep. The calves get stuck on their sides in the hog root holes, can’t get back up, and die. The turning of the ground by the pigs is something you’ve got to see with your own eyes to truly understand.”
Repairs to rooted acreage are incessant, a steady drag on the flow of production, Carl concurs. “That ground has to be smoothed back over—money, time, and manhours. Try bailing hay across a root when you’re stuck in first gear when you should really be going about 7 miles per hour.”
“People who think you can trap or shoot your way out of the problem don’t have a clue,” Carl adds. “I know for sure we’ve got hundreds of pigs around us, but it seems like thousands. These creatures have intelligence and adaptability like nothing I’ve seen in my lifetime, and they come back smarter every time.”
“They Destroy Everything”
The wild pigs watch and wait for the opening bell of planting season.
Strip tillage on 30” rows doesn’t fare well under a wild pig’s feet, and replants are a given for the Jacksons. “In winter, the pig pressure drops,” C.J. notes. “They root covers, but nowhere to the extent of cash crops. But at planting, they’ll show up, every time. They can go down the row and get every seed in a straight line for half a mile.”
Once a crop is up, the pigs press harder. “They’re bad on corn like nothing else,” he says. “They don’t root in a pattern, but they’ll take out a row, move over a row, and knock down three more rows and keep it random. In just a couple days, you’re dealing with five or six acres with 50% stand. Do nothing and the damage explodes.”
“They destroy everything,” C.J. continues. “They don’t only consume a crop like deer.”
Strong words, considering deer take a sizable bite of C.J.’s grain yields: 75 deer munching in a 100-acre field is not unusual on his ground. “We’ve got relatively small deer, but tremendous numbers, and deer predation is terrible, especially in soybeans on the ends.”
Corn also takes a deer hit, Carl echoes. “There are so many deer that we’ve had them eat the small stalks, then the silk, and then the kernels when the corn was drying. We cull with permits and that’s a big help, but although deer damage is very significant, it doesn’t compare with wild pigs. With the pigs, we either stay active or we’re out of business.”
In 2013, Carl put electric fencing charged by 10,000 volts around three of his most heavily hit fields—a partial pig deterrent. “The electricity keeps the family groups out, but not the boars,” he says. “The big boars crash right through it. In those three fields, we couldn’t grow a crop if we didn’t have the electric fencing because of the pig pressure. Period.”
“A single pig will get in and knock down 30 stalks of corn and bite just four ears,” Carl notes. “Or he’ll root an area as big as a living room in one night in soybeans. Potentially multiply that by hundreds of pigs over time and the math is a nightmare.”
“We could go out literally every night and kill pigs,” Carl adds, “but there’s only so many hours in a day and only so much you can do against such an adaptive creature. For example, if you shoot a sow and the piglets get away, they don’t die. Instead, they can get adopted by another sow. I’ve seen sows with three different size piglets with my own eyes. That’s adaptation like nothing else.”
Shangri-La
In the early 1980s, wild pig presence covered 25 counties in Alabama. Today, every county in the state has wild pigs—a total population estimated at 250,000 that inflicts $55 million in agriculture damage per year, according to ACES. (Nationwide, the U.S. wild pig population, per APHIS, stands at 6 million-plus and inflicts over $1 billion in annual agriculture damage.)
Wilcox County, heavily timbered with ample bottom ground, is a wild pig Shangri-La. In Carl’s lifetime, Wilcox County has moved from rare wild pig sightings to wild pig roadkill regulars.
“Supposedly, some Russian boars were released nearby in the 1960s and 1970s to kill beavers,” he says. “Those same pigs never moved and thrived in the swamps. Then they exploded outward. Combine that with intentional releases from some hunters and the population went wild.”
In the early 1990s, Carl spotted the first wild pigs of his life—a pleasant curiosity at the time. “I thought they were kind of cool, just like another animal to hunt. I’d have never believed it if someone had told me destruction was following right behind.”
Bay of Pigs
Wild pigs reproduce at an exceptionally high rate, with sows often delivering two litters (six piglet average per litter) in 15 months. Females are reproductively capable at five to six months. Most wild pig biologists place the “control” bar at roughly 66% to 75%. Therefore, if a given region has a wild pig population of 100,000, then 66,000 to 75,000 must be killed each year—to keep the population at the floor of 100,000.
Trapping is an effective tool, but by no means a turnkey solution, C.J. describes. He uses net-style Pig Brig traps and electronic door traps, sometimes bagging entire sounders. “The traps work well, but the pigs still come back in waves and suddenly we’re covered.”
“Trapping, electric fencing, and shooting are what we have to do, but it’s two steps forward and three steps back because we’re not hurting their overall population. We either work to keep the pigs at bay or we don’t farm.”
Kill On Sight
Wild pig and deer damages are factored into the Jackson’s farming budget: yield loss, labor, equipment, and a tremendous load of time.
“When you see the damage up close, sometimes on a daily basis, it’s so disheartening to work so hard, pay the rent, pay the input prices, and then have a dern pig eat your seed or root your hayfield,” Carl says.
“Our wildlife expense is factored in our cost per acre to farm,” C.J. explains. “Let me put it this way: It’s a very significant number.”
At 28, how does C.J. see the wild pig equation in the future? “I hear about potential toxins and baits, but I’m not too hopeful. I don’t think anything will pan out long-term to make an overall difference.”
“There’s one guarantee in the future and it’s not toxins, birth control, or a wipeout disease,” he continues. “No, the guarantee is the pigs are here to stay. It’s only a question of their quantity and effect. Personally, I don’t see their numbers going down.”
Carl concludes with unvarnished advice: “I realize every state has its own hunting laws and views, but the only common-sense solution is to take out the pigs whenever possible. Kill on sight.”
For more articles from Chris Bennett (cbennett@farmjournal.com or 662-592-1106), see:
American Pie Reborn: How An Iowa Farmer Saved Buddy Holly
Corn and Cocaine: Roger Reaves and the Most Incredible Farm Story Never Told
American Gothic: Farm Couple Nailed In Massive $9M Crop Insurance Fraud
Priceless Pistol Found After Decades Lost in Farmhouse Attic
Cottonmouth Farmer: The Insane Tale of a Buck-Wild Scheme to Corner the Snake Venom Market
Power vs. Privacy: Landowner Sues Game Wardens, Challenges Property Intrusion
Tractorcade: How an Epic Convoy and Legendary Farmer Army Shook Washington, D.C.
