According to the book 1491, the European conquest of North America was done and dusted by the time Columbus sailed the ocean blue. The indigenous people had already been more or less wiped out, their various cultures destroyed. According to Charles C. Mann you can blame/thank/note Hernando DeSoto’s pigs. The Spanish conquistador brought domesticated swine with him during his travels in the New World. They escaped, multiplied and colonized; spreading disease and death throughout the continent. It was nothing less than an aporkalypse. The pigs currently invading Dallas are their descendants. They’re not welcome. But PC uber alles, baby. The pestilential porkers are . . .

“trapped and removed . . . in a humane way.” And then sent to a slaughterhouse to be humanely electrocuted and processed. For just $284k for a three-year gig—not including cameras, computers, cell phones and slaughterhouse fees.

Meanwhile, as wfaa.com reports, a Houston inventor’s hoping to tap into the “humane” pig-killing biz with a financially self-sustaining solution.

Don Gresham, owner of Goin Fencing, designed the large pen with 24 panels and wireless technology.

“A sensor sends you a picture when an animal comes into the trap,” Gresham said.

There is also a mobile app available.

They’ve trapped 45 hogs in one night and they are close to capturing 10,000 hogs nationwide.

The pens cost range from $2,850 for a basic unit to $10,000 for the ‘Cadillac version’. The animals are sold to processors for meat.

“Spend the money,” Gresham said. “Make the hogs pay for your hog trap.”

Only one hog has ever escaped, according to Gresham.

“We call him ‘hog-dini,’” Gresham said. “He got out twice.”

Texas allows hunters to kill wild hogs [note: nothing to do with the movie of the same name] year-round without limits. Unlike Dallas, the state takes a more free market approach, offering bounties for dead pigs. When the Department of Agriculture put up $60k for ex-swine (four-legged), hunters harvested more than seven-thousand feral hogs. Not nearly enough to slow down the population growth of the animals that eradicated native Americans but hey, it’s a start.

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48 COMMENTS

  1. Let it be open season for a few months in city limits, oh and lets send some dogs after these pigs before we shoot them!! Too soon? lol

    • i second that, besides the trinity river is on the south side of dallas nobody will even notice the gun fire.

  2. It wasn’t just because some hogs escaped. Europeans, I believe they were either Spanish or English, are known to have intentionally given at least one Native American tribe blankets that were used by people who recently died of small pox knowing full-well what the outcome would be to the Indians who had no immunities to European diseases.

    • The poisoned blankets were a 1700s thing, what RF is talking about occurred before 1492 and until 1550.

      • I started to read 1491 and got bored, er bogged down and quit. Can someone explain how if Columbus discovered the Caribbean islands in 1492 some Spaniard released pigs onto the continent before 1491? I’m confused.

      • Exactly; apples and grenadines. I want to read 1491. I’ll see if my hostile local library would help me out with that, except that I can never seem to show them enough proof of local residency to get a library card.

        It’s as if they think their job is to keep people from using the library. Really strange, anal people!

        • I showed my library my drivers license, that had my local address on it. That was very difficult.

          I know you’re a conspiracy guy, but I’m pretty sure you can relax your OPSEC/PERSEC enough to get a library card.

    • That was the British. They were given to allies of the French during one of innumerable French and English conflicts.

      • It probably never actually happened. The best evidence that we have from the historical record is a letter from British general Lord Jeffrey Amherst discussing it as a hypothetical during the French and Indian War period. One thing to keep in mind is that most Europeans did not have immunity to so-called “European diseases.”

        • No, but they did have far better survival rates.

          We’ll never know about the CBW aspect, but Gods know the accidental carnage su¢ked bulls’ horns.

  3. Wait, what? The narrator said “because firearms aren’t allowed in the city limits…..”

    Um, WRONGO! It’s the discharge of firearms, not the existence of firearms that is prohibited by city regulations.

    • I heard the exact same thing at 1:14 and had to rewind it and listen to it three times to make sure I was awake and heard it correctly!

  5. “The pigs currently invading Dallas are their ancestors.”

    Unless we are dealing with some time-traveling pigs, I think you probably meant “descendants” and not “ancestors.”

  6. So….quick math:

    $60,000 / 7,000 hogs ~= $8.50/hog

    $2,850/trap / $8.50/hog = 335 hogs to pay for the trap

    By extension, at approximately $0.60 per round for 44 magnum, you show about an $8 profit per hog. So where’s the incentive of the trap?

    But then I’m not thinking of the children….

    • Properly used, a large trap will get an entire sounder of swine. You have to get them all. A pig can get pregnant at around 8 months and then 3 months, 3 weeks and 3 days later you have a new bunch of pests. A trap is much more efficient than shooting them, though not nearly as much fun.

    • It would be a lot less than 335 – the idea of the trap is you can sell the porkers as meat animals and get the on-the-hoof pricing from a slaughterhouse.

      • I could have sworn there was a rule where you couldn’t sell the wild captured hogs for commercial meat? Thought I read it while going through the Texas Hunting manual.

    • It’s been a while since I read the book, but I thought the central premise of 1491 was that the natives were far more advanced than the traditional picture of them allows, and that contact with Columbus’ expedition is what precipitated their decline. By bringing disease with him, Columbus started a chain reaction that weakened the native central American empires, making the job of the later conquistadors much, much easier. The pigs probably helped quite a bit, too, but they came later.

      In any case, the only real evidence of pre-Columbian European contact with North Americans is the Norse expedition to Newfoundland, and I’m pretty sure they didn’t bring any pigs.

      • yes, exactly. and that the reason we picture Indians as nomads is because they were refugees, about a generation or two removed. most of the plains tribes actually weren’t plains tribes when the big C landed.

  10. Just set up a feeding spot (trash and other sheet that pig love) and get a hot black powder load and that thing destroys pigs. I’ve kill four in one go around

  12. One of the things that drives me nuts about Central Texas is that it is almost impossible to hunt without paying to do it. I don’t have a problem with charging people to hunt, your land, your game, you set the price and the market bears it or not. What I do have a problem with is you, Mr. Rancher, who charges me $1,200 a year for the privellege of hunting deer and doves on your land then getting the state to pay a bounty on a pest (hogs) that damages your land and kills your calves, then charging me to come onto your land to kill your pest. You can’t be free market when it comes to game animals and hunting but want what amounts to a state subsidy to eradicate the pest.

  13. I find the new proposed tax hike on firearms and ammunition as an attempt
    at further regulation by Dems. oddly more interesting then hunting pigs
    from the air.

    YMMV

    • Really depends on what the hogs are eating. GIGO works for hogs as well as for computers, so I am told.

  16. if we gave killed/slaughtered feral hogs (that were processed properly) to Food Banks, Soup Kitchens and other charities, how long before some liberal screamed bloody murder about it? “Oh no, we can’t give them wild pigs while the evil rich eat Jimmy Dean! It’s inhumane!”
    Many a day growing up, i have eaten certain things and didn’t give a damn what brand name was on it. it was food and i was thankful.
    I think large traps that could capture entire groups AND allowing hunters to go after them is a great idea.

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