By TIM ALEXANDER
Illinois Correspondent

FULTON COUNTY, Ill. — An Illinois conservation police officer (CPO) said it’s open season on feral hogs (Sus scrofa) for rural landowners in Illinois facing problems with the invasive, crop-destroying and disease-carrying wild swine.

“All you need to shoot them in Illinois is the permission of the landowner where the hunting is taking place,” said Dan Sandman, Fulton County (central Illinois) CPO.

Sandman’s comments came on the heels of several confirmed cases of feral hogs in Texas testing positive for E.coli that can spread to both people and livestock. Of seven feral hogs tested in February, six of them had strains of E.coli that would have caused illness or death in livestock, and four carried strains that would cause illness in humans, according to Mike Bodenchuck, Texas state director of the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s Wildlife Services.

“It’s pathogenic E.coli that is the problem,” Bodenchuck recently told the Texas predator management board. “The reality is that it’s not just bacteria, it’s bad bacteria.”

A $1 million grant has allowed the Texas wildlife services department to employ more air power in its fight against the estimated 2 million feral hogs in the Lone Star State, according to the Abiline Reporter-News. Since January, helicopters have been used to hunt and shoot the hogs, which are polluting watersheds with E.coli in addition to carrying diseases such as foot-and-mouth disease, pseudorabies and swine brucellosis.

The hunts have produced results. The Dallas Morning News reports that feral hogs are no longer eating young sea turtles on Matagorda Island, and panhandle peanut farmers have seen their production rise by 181 percent with fewer hogs to contend with. The Texas agricultural department indicated that feral hogs wreak around $400 million in damage to crops annually.

Though feral hogs are not as big an issue in the states comprising Farm World’s readership, the tusked, rooting beasts have nonetheless inflicted isolated damage to crop fields and raided livestock pens in Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Michigan, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio and elsewhere in the Midwest and south-central states. In the Spoon River area near Bernadotte in Fulton County, a small population of feral hogs have been present for “many years,” according to Sandman.

“I’ve been working Fulton County for eight and a half years. They’re there and I know it, but I have never seen one,” he said.
According to a recent study from Southern Illinois University’s Department of Zoology which focused on the distribution, habitat use and body morphology of feral hogs in Illinois, clusters of wild hogs occur in Fulton, Hardin, Johnson, Lawrence, Massac, Pope, Randolph and Union counties.

“We suggest that the goal of resource managers in Illinois should be to contain or eradicate existing feral hog populations,” wrote study leader Dr. George Feldhamer. “If current practices continue, feral hogs have the potential to eventually increase in density and distribution throughout much of Illinois.”

Farm World could find no reported cases of feral hogs testing positive for E.coli in its readership states, but that doesn’t mean they cause no other problems. Aside from doing damage to crops, feral hogs are a concern to both the domestic swine and sheep industries, experts warn.

“The American Sheep Industry Assoc. (ASI) supports the efforts of (Texas wildlife services) in protecting our nation’s livestock and property,” stated Peter Orwick, executive director of ASI, in a news release. “Feral hogs are not only a public health issue because of the diseases they carry but they also feast on field crops and are efficient predators, and – when given the opportunity – will prey upon young livestock such as lambs.”

For additional information on the legality of hunting feral hogs in your state, contact your area conservation or natural resources officer.