Wild Pigs of NoVa, The Rest of The Story

Copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers

There was a lot that I wanted to include in my article today in the Washington Post about wild pigs, but it just didn't all fit in.

This was my first piece writing for the Post and it marks an interesting moment for me. Three years ago I was the subject of the news, being featured in articles in the New York Times and the Washington Post. Somehow I've leveraged that over time into writing for the same newspaper.

One of the things that my editor and I struggled with was how to express where the pigs are coming from in a journalistically responsible way. Unlike blogging, I couldn't state something as fact just because I was confident in it. We needed something more solid, which meant getting quotes from biologists about specific evidence demonstrating that pigs have been dropped out in the wild by rogue hunters.

Here on my blog, I can just come right out and tell you that this is not in doubt at all. As a hunter myself, I know that the vast majority of American hunters hate having wild swine around. But most of the new introductions of wild pigs are the fault of rogue hunters. Everywhere I've gone in the last few years I have been hearing about this from biologists (most of whom are also hunters). They can almost never get a conviction, but word gets out.

I had hoped to go out with a biologist to trap pigs in Northern Virginia for the article but it turned out that the trapping program up there has been suspended. DGIF has not been given a budget or even a mandate to deal with the problem. Their focus presently is on educating hunters and landowners about the problem.

Trapping works very, very well. I observed a lot of trapping being done while I was writing a book and hunting pigs in the Hill Country of Texas last November and I was amazed at how effective it was. I do not believe that it is possible to remove an advanced infestation of pigs through hunting alone -- trapping needs to be part of the remedy.

If the pigs around Catlett, Virginia are not trapped and hunted aggressively then I think that it is probably only a matter of time until their descendants are in the DC metro area. A northward expansion should tend to be favored over other directions in the long run. I say this because as the pigs move north they will encounter fewer hunters. Moving south and west from Catlett, there is more rural land with hunters and farmers who will prey on the pigs. As the pigs head north they will find less resistance. Any new suburban neighborhood that they appear in will probably go through at least a year of hand-wringing and debate before finally deciding to attempt some sort of half-assed eradication program. Even then, there will be well-meaning suburban people who find great purpose in providing the pigs with safe backyard havens where they do not allow them to be hunted or trapped.

You don't find so much of that attitude as you move away from the DC metro area.

If the pigs do make it to Rock Creek Park then they will probably be there indefinitely, barring some disease that wipes them out. DC will be unable to muster the will and the means to get rid of wild hogs. The rules will be made by people who know little about nature and nothing about hunting. By the time anyone is allowed to actually kill one of them, the population will be so firmly established that it will be too late.

Our best bet is to fight them now around Catlett and Manassas before they expand to areas where politics will prevent them from being dealt with. It isn't too late to get rid of that Catlett population.

As to the taste of wild pork, I enjoy it very much. I no longer eat commercially-raised pork at all (for ethical reasons). The wild pigs that I have butchered and eaten have been leaner than commercial pork and some cuts of meat from them require different cooking. The wild pork ribs that I cooked over a fire pit this past weekend needed to be basted twice as often with barbeque sauce compared to the domestic pork ribs beside them (from a family farm pig that I also personally slaughtered). This was to keep the meat from drying out.

A wild pig that you shoot or trap is not necessarily of the same age that a domestic pig would typically be slaughtered. Older animals tend to be tougher, since more collagen has built up in their muscles. This doesn't mean its bad to eat. You just need to handle the meat differently. Either dry-age it or cook it slowly with plenty of moisture.

You won't get as much bacon from a wild pig, I am sorry to say. It is thinner, but you can try cutting the strips diagonally for wider bacon. If you are butchering it yourself then you probably won't have pork chops and other cuts of meat that require special saws and butchering equipment. But you can get plenty of good meat out of them using nothing more than a knife and perhaps a meat grinder.