A Preponderance Of Porkers

Florida's wild hog population is here to stay.

The hogs are incessantly hungry, plowing the forest floor with their tusks for any and all things remotely edible. More swift and stealthy than their domestic cousins, they are masters of evasion, exacting great effort from those who would hunt or trap them.

Like most of Florida's population, they come from elsewhere and have no hope of achieving native status. For the wild hogs of Florida, these are indeed interesting times; and if the past 500 years are any indication, they will survive just fine.

Pig-Headed And Popular

The roots of the wild hog population of Florida reach back to the early 1500s when Spanish explorers Ponce de Leon and Hernando de Soto brought with them swine to sustain the food stocks of their expeditions. The taste and the virtually effortless husbandry of this intrepid breed of pig quickly found favor with the Native-American population, who aided greatly in its spread throughout Florida.

As settlers moved into Florida from points north, their northern stock added to the existing gene pool. Because hogs are extremely adept foragers, the cost of keeping hogs was negligible, a great advantage to the struggling farmers in Florida's early days.

Free-range herds of hogs thus went forth and multiplied. When the farm's smokehouse needed filling, the farmer would round them up with the aid of his dogs. The luckiest and craftiest hogs eluded this agricultural dragnet, surviving to populate the woods with their porcine progeny.

Now, in the wide-open spaces of central and southern Florida, the hog hunt is that swatch of camouflage in the social fabric of Florida outdoor life and culture. It is a tradition handed down from generation to generation - the multiseasonal delight of man and the determined purpose of his dogs.

And it is the thrill of the hunt that added yet another European flair to the genealogy of Florida's free-range refugees. As the vast, wooded tracts of Florida began to draw the attention of moneyed northern hunters, enterprising guides introduced the decidedly ill-tempered Russian Boar to the gene pool.

Breeding Habits

All this interbreeding served to provide the genetic and population baseline for what is now known as the feral hog. In a collision of DNA that spawned a lean, wary and wild animal with the inbred fertility of its domestic counterpart, one University of Florida Web site estimates Florida's wild hog population has grown to somewhere between 500,000 to one million strong.

In conditions where forage is plentiful, the average sow (female) will give birth to between four and eight piglets. Quick to mature and proliferate, the females among these will give birth to their own young in a year's time.

Ideal hog habitat is in the low country, where days can be spent plowing up the soft ground for tender vegetation on which to dine. But true to their reputation, hogs aren't picky eaters. Anything from carrion to the eggs of turtles and snakes are welcome additions to the wild swine's menu.

They are a maternal creature. One sow will oversee the feeding of the young ones while their mothers venture off to feed. This is the "nesting" period, a time when the females will choose a safe location - near food and water - to rear the youngsters.

The boars (males) are solitary creatures and tend to limit their involvement with the ladies to breeding, usually a spring and fall ritual. Although both sexes can be dangerous if cornered, it is the boars that claim the fiercest reputation.

They possess a formidable set of canine teeth that resemble tusks, and these grow throughout their lifetimes. The lower are the more prominent - a feature favored by hunters who pursue the boar for trophy. The upper canines are less pronounced, and serve to keep the tusks honed to saber-like menace.

The boar makes full use of these weapons during the mating periods, where he engages in combat with other males for dominance and breeding rights. He is protected from mortal injury by a shield of skin that thickens as he ages. Hunters have reported finding bullets and other such projectiles in the shields of fully mature boars while skinning them.

Given its hardiness and its penchant for proliferation, it's no wonder that the wild hog is popular with Florida's hunters, but like its tusks, its robust nature cuts both ways.

Hunting And Trapping

It doesn't require the practiced eye of a wildlife biologist to identify the presence of hogs in the forest. A hungry tribe of them can lay bare the understory as if it is tilling it for planting. It is a behavior known as rooting. And although this is regarded as a desirable quality in its truffle-sniffing French cousin, it can damage heavily the forest ecosystem.

This is because the grass, acorns and other tender morsels that inhabit the forest floor serve to feed white-tail deer, the Osceola turkey and a host of other forest denizens. The hog's insatiable appetite, when multiplied beyond what the forest can sustain, often closes the restaurant for all.

And wild hogs do not insist on forest fare. Should a tasty agricultural opportunity present itself in the form of sod, corn, peanuts, beans or virtually any other food crop, it will be consumed with hog-wild abandon, a behavior that - according to the USDA - costs Florida farmers millions of dollars each year.

There are currently two ways Florida's land managers are addressing this problem - hunting and trapping.

Trapping is employed on lands where hunting is prohibited. Using stout wire cages, trappers capture the hogs for relocation or slaughter. Unfortunately, the rising costs of trapping, coupled with a low demand for wild hog meat, has driven many trappers to seek business opportunities elsewhere.

Hunting continues to be the primary means of controlling the hog population. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FFWCC) manage 140 wildlife management areas on 1.1 million acres of public lands, and much of this massive acreage is the province of feral hogs.

Mindful of the popularity of hog hunting and concerned about the growing burden of hogs on the environment, the FFWCC has significantly eased the restrictions on the daily size limit and bag limit allowed to individual hunters.

Also the FFWCC has expanded the length of the hog hunting season, allowing the state's prodigious pig population to be hunted during all seasons with the exception of Spring Gobbler season, this according to Tony Young, media coordinator with the FFWCC in Tallahassee.

Private land owners face no restrictions whatsoever. On privately owned land, wild hogs are classified as livestock, an assignment that makes any number or size of them fair game 365 days per year. "And there's no hunting license required when hunting hogs on private land," said Young.

Even at the mercy of the most skilled hunters, Florida's population of wild hogs is by no means in danger of extinction. Like the mythical Fountain of Youth, Ponce de Leon's lesser contribution to Florida's legacy is here to stay.