Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus and the Future of Wild Hogs

[Bullfrog]

I've lived with wild hogs my whole life. I was raised to regard them as a trash animal to be held in low regard as a game animal both due to their destructive tendencies and their ease to kill. It was easy to set up a feeder and get a couple of fat sows to start using it with their shoats. In fact I almost never purposely hog hunted until 3 years ago. Before 3 years ago all but a few of the hogs I killed were incidental when I was out deer hunting and a hog showed up. 3 years ago I began managing 1500 acres in north Florida with 12 food plots and as many corn feeders ran year round. I would go out to purposely chase hogs for the purposes of eradicating them off the property and it was then I learned that individual hogs could be as smart or smarter than a whitetail buck. There's a white-faced boar on my property that to this day I can't kill, although he's been shot once broadside with a 7.62 x 54R and he's lived to eat corn another day.

I've said all of this to say that this past hunting season I've been looking over numbers and I've noticed something that bothers me. We've pretty much eradicated the hogs. I guess that's good, that was the original goal. Yet there should always be more hogs moving in, and there isn't. Its like the land is devoid of hogs. The habitat is perfect for them. Its about 40% thick bay swamp and the rest are pine flatwoods, which all borders many many thousands of acres of swamp and flatwoods. We've killed about 21 hogs over 3 years. Of those, 18 were boars. Of the 18 boars, all but 3 were big mature boars. Of the 21, only 3 were sows. We've only had 2 groups of piglets, one group during year 1 and the second group during year 2. There were no piglets this year. That's unheard of. There should be as many sows and boars and they should all be dropping piglets every few months.

I've been figuring that maybe a disease or an experimental control mechanism by the state was behind the apparent decrease in hog reproduction. And then 2 days ago I read about this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/27/pig-virus-wipes-out-nations-hogs_n_5221471.html

10% of the domestic hog population has been wiped out by the Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus in just a couple of years. Apparently the virus, as the name implies, gives the hogs diarrhea. Adult hogs can cope with it but piglets die of dehydration. The death rate for piglets under a certain age is 80%-100%. 32% of sampled domestic hogs have it right now. Its spread through contact with hog feces but biologists are starting to expect that its also spread on the wind. The feds are thinking that wild hogs may also be spreading it but they have no data on the virus' effect on wild hog populations. The virus doesn't like heat so its effects are most noticeable in the winter. North Florida gets hot in the summer but in winter it gets cool enough that a heat-sensitive pathogen should be able to cope.

I would say that PEDv is consistent with the absence of piglets and young hogs I'm observing on my hunting property. Although that's great from a deer management perspective, its horrible for my off-season hunting with my air rifle. Hogs can be hunted year round here day or night on private land.  I've been trying to get into hog hunting in the summer but I've been finding that the old boars that are left are too hard to get within 25 yards for a clean air rifle kill.

Keep an eye on this disease hog hunters. If you start seeing an unexplained drop in your hog population, this might be why.

In more general observation based on other hunting properties in other parts of the state, there just aren't as many hogs around in Florida today as there was 20 years ago, notwithstanding the "attack of the wild hog" type documentaries that Nat Geo and Discovery keep putting out.

[William]

Very interesting and knowledgeable write up, I never heard of this until now, Thanks for the info.

William

[Mr. Sumatra22]

Very interesting.  Thanks for sharing the info.

[geewhiz380]

Thank you very much ! it taught me something i knew nothing of and leanred plenty ..this is bad news for those hunters that wish to hunt and eaat as well ...jorge

[stonykill]

thanks for sharing that Travis.

[supertech77]

interesting to know,explains a lot, also have you seem many Python's in your area, bet they take there fair share of game in your area, the reports are there everywhere now in fl.ever hunt them? been some big ones killed in fl.