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Wmwendler
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« on: September 07, 2012, 10:01:08 am » |
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I've seen a decline in a few places where food is scarce here in my neck of the woods but I would say its not likely from die out but the hogs moved on to other places where food was available weather or crops or suplimental livestock/deer feed wich increase in alot of place during the drought. Some of the land I occasionally hunt around roans prarie, carlos the hogs were not as thick in those parts, no crops and no cow feed when the cows were sold. The biggest hit was in reproduction, they just did not reproduce most of last year. We killed allot of dry and open sows which is a very rare thing most of the time. They just did not have the body weight to breed back. On most places I hunt,food could be found enough to get them by and on those places they held a steady population through the drought last year. Allot of hungry hogs made traping easy which removed a few more than normal. But over all hogs that were trapped and hunted I beleive were replaced by hogs moving in to find food. So even though they werent recruiting young ones the population stayed steady. I was really worried that if we had a hard winter we could loose some hog due to starvation but the bumper clover crop created by fall rains and a mild winter really saved allot of hogs from decline last winter. One area actually increased in hogs. Crops too poor to harvest were left in the field and one large ranch that normally runs allot of stocker cattle on grass, fed a record ammount of ground feed which the hogs helped them selves to. The heat and drought kept me from hunting much. And the hogs got thicker. I spentt all spring and summer trying to keep those hogs out of my uncles corn down there. I was supprised at first that they hogs got that thick there but after I thought about it it made sence. Over all in Texas I think the population declined. More so in the arid areas and areas without much intensive agriculture. But they can bounce back fast if they have the resources. And in some places allready have from what I've seen.
Waylon
Waylon
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