Name: The Feral Pig Problem in Texas
Uploaded: 2021-07-01T17:17:24.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Feral Pig Problem in Texas' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-07-01. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Feral Pig Problem in Texas' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-07-01. Transcript available.

The Joe Rogan Experience.
The pig thing, I'm glad you brought that up, because that is one thing that I
keep hearing
out here from folks, that there's an attitude about pigs that they're
disgusting, they're
just dirty creatures, and they kind of just want them dead.
And I've talked to people that go helicopter hunting, and I go, "Well, what do
you do with
all the pigs?"
And they're like, "You leave them there."
And I'm like, "What?"
Yeah.
That doesn't seem, that seems not just wasteful, but, well, you know, I mean,
there's
a lot to that.
You have to, right?
Because of the, you have to eradicate a certain amount of those pigs, but isn't
there like
a lot of food that you're just letting rot?
There is.
So, I mean, this is the Pandora's box topic for me.
I'm very vested in it.
I just wrote a book about feral hogs.
Steve Vernella, to come full circle on that, he called me the hog apologist.
And it's true.
But to your point, I think that, you know, we'll start there with a feral hog.
Let's explain the numbers, too, because people need to know how fucking crazy
it is here in
Texas.
Yeah.
And, of course, these numbers are not going to be clearly defined.
You know, it's hard to get a census on hogs.
So, the estimate in the United States is around 6 million.
The estimate here in Texas is between 2 and 4 million.
So, probably somewhere in the middle of that, maybe 2.6, that's a number that
you'll see
a lot, maybe around 3 million, but whatever.
A bunch.
So, literally more than the entire population of Austin.
In hogs.
In hogs.
In hogs.
In hogs.
Spread out around the state.
And in the time we've been talking about them, you know, how many have been
born.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
So, they have no breeding season.
They can breed at a very young age.
You know, let's say, five or six months is very conceivable.
And then they have a gestation period of three months, three weeks, three days.
And then they can drop a litter of, you know, anywhere.
Always three days?
Yeah.
So, you can just plan it out?
Yeah.
Wow.
I mean, it's pretty precise like that.
I bet women are very jealous.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I'll be giving birth on Wednesday.
Yeah.
Got it timed in.
I mean, they're able to go back into estrus pretty quickly after that.
And their litter size can be anywhere from, you know, two to 12.
But, you know, let's just say it's, you know, even six is a lot.
So, you've got a 10-month-old animal dropping six babies.
And they can do it three times a year?
Well, twice.
You know, the way that works out.
You know, you've got, I think it's 20, I want to say 26 days that they can go
back into estrus,
something like that.
It might be 23 days.
I can't remember the number right now, after they give birth.
And they're back in estrus.
And if they're living in an area that's got a high population of boars, they're
probably
going to get bred pretty quick.
And so, that's when you see this explosion that has happened.
And so, they're not indigenous to this country.
So, they came here in the mid-1500s.
Columbus brought some to, I mean, just the Caribbean islands.
But the mainland was, it's usually attributed to Hernando de Soto, who dropped
off a bunch
of pigs on his way before he died in Arkansas.
And then there was some other explorers that also brought in pigs, Spanish
explorers that
brought in, you know, domestic, semi-domestic hogs and dropped them off.
And so, what we saw was this real slow build in pig populations.
There was also some Pacific Islanders that dropped them off in Hawaii way
before that.
So, if you're talking about the technical United States.
When did they drop them off in Hawaii?
It's food source.
No, no.
When?
When?
Oh, oh, it was, it was, I couldn't give you a number.
It's way previous to the 1500s.
Wow.
Yeah.
That's wild.
So, that's a weird debate in Hawaii, right?
Because a lot of people are saying they're an invasive species.
Yeah.
And then some folks are like, well, so are people.
Sure.
Because if you think about it, the hogs have been there as long as the people
almost.
There's going to be a lot of parallels.
Yeah.
Yeah, there's a very destructive European animal arrives on our shores.
Yeah.
And now there's a lot of them.
So, you know, you've got these populations exploding throughout time, but
really kind of concentrated in the late, you know, 1900s, you know, like the 80s.
And then you saw people, you know, you've got a guy that loves to hunt on his
ranch in West Texas.
And he says to his friend in East Texas, he's like, sure as hell, I'd like to
be able to shoot something out here year-round, buddy, in East Texas.
He's like, wow, man, I got some pigs.
And then, you know, traps a couple, throws them on a trailer.
And now you have 253 out of 254 counties in Texas have hogs, feral hogs.
Wow.
And they're spreading all across the country, too, right?
Yeah.
There's a downward migration from Saskatchewan, you know.
Really?
And those are escaped domestic hogs.
But, I mean, let's also define what a feral hog is.
It's a pig that's just on the wrong side of a fence.
I mean, once they get out, that's a feral pig.
So I like to say it's a domestic pig.
Or a feral hog is just a pig without an address.
You know, they just, as soon as they get out of that pen, they're feral.
And I will readily admit, I mean, not even on purpose, but we have shot while
hunting pigs that had ear tags.
You know, meaning that at one point, that was a farm pig.
It's not anymore.
And what it's doing is it's breeding like crazy out there with a feral boar.
And it's just creating more feral pigs.
So, like I said, once they're on the wrong side of the fence, they're fair game.
Well, we should explain to people what happens to pigs, right?
I've talked about it on the podcast before, but if people haven't heard that
episode, there's a physiological change that happens to pigs when they get wild.
So when you're saying that these are pigs, they're wild pigs, people are like,
wait, but they're boars.
Boars are different than pigs.
They're not.
It's all called sous scroffa, right?
Correct.
Correct.
And once they escape, within months, their hair can become shaggier.
And we're talking about the same pig, you know, not its offspring.
Right.
Their hair can become shaggier and their snouts will elongate in order to allow
them to root more effectively because that's one of their primary ways of
feeding is rooting.
And that's the most destructive way.
I mean, they can dig three feet down in soft dirt and they're getting roots,
they're getting insects, they're omnivores.
And they'll go after anything.
And so once they get out, they go feral quick.
They get street smarts, too.
I mean, they go nocturnal.
I mean, they're smart, smart animals.
And so you add all this together, you know, the herds that were initially
brought here for food and then further domestic herds.
And then you have escapees over hundreds of years of, you know, settling in
this country.
And you've got escaped domestic hogs.
Then you've got hogs specifically brought in for hunting, namely your Russian
boars, your Eurasian boars, which are kind of the big hairy razorbacks.
How much different are those?
Is it all?
It's still the same species, right?
Yes, it is.
And they're, I mean, they're, they're, it's like, I believe, and, you know, not,
I don't want to stand by it, but I believe it's just like a subspecies.
There's one more Latin name after Suscropha for the Eurasian, but freely interbreeding.
It's not like, I mean.
They're not hybrids where they're not.
Well, they make hybrids.
Right.
But the hybrids are viable.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
So it's not like a hybrid, like a liger where they can't.
No, no, no, no, no, nothing like that.
And so then you've got some, some kind of specific areas.
California had a lot of Russian boars brought in, and there's certain areas in
Texas.
The Powderhorn Ranch down near Port O'Connor was one that had some brought in
specifically and deposited there.
Is the difference in the flavor or the way they look, like the flesh?
It would be really hard to determine that now because most of them over the
years have interbred with your standard feral pig.
And so purebred populations of those hogs are very hard to find.
It's debatable whether the Powderhorn Ranch population is purebred Russian boar.
I've read different things about it.
Some say that it's not.
Some say that it is.
It's a high fence?
It's got a high fence around it and has had one since the 1920s, I believe.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
And so whenever they brought in the boars, those are the same breeding
population.
Right.
They think.
But, you know, a fence doesn't mean shit to a pig.
You know, they go under it, you know, any way around it that they can.
Flood waters come up.
They can swim.
You know, it's, so it's not known.
But there is one sequestered population of feral hogs in the United States.
And that's on Osaba Island off the coast of Georgia.
And so that was an Iberico hog brought over here by the Spanish.
You know, pointy hats, long brown robes.
They dropped some hogs on that island.
And that island has sustained a population of purebred Iberico hogs to this day.
And it's called Osaba Island.
And they have an Osaba Island hog, which is a purebred Iberico hog, which is
the same hog
that produces the $150 a pound Serrano ham.
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