For the last few days I've been hunting pigs outside of Savannah, Georgia with Kiera Butler of Mother Jones magazine. We've got all sorts of video that I'll have to sift through and edit into something when I get home. This evening we're going cruising for armadillos and crossing our fingers that it won't be too cold for them to come out of their burrows.My own blogging of this trip has been light, partially on account of the fact that Kiera has things covered pretty well on the 'Blue Marble' blog over at Mother Jones. Her coverage of day one includes yours truly demonstrating how to gut a hog. Day two was less gorey but is still a good piece of writing. Day three is still in progress and tomorrow morning I'm headed home.
The photo here is myself and Kiera sitting in a tree stand yesterday. Kiera was hunting with my .30-'06 after we had an technical issue that morning with the 7mm-08 that she had started out with. I made the error of not telling her how very important it is to never put the muzzle down into the mud or dirt and not having a cleaning rod handy to get the mud out, I just handed her my other rifle. Hunting out of tree stands is usually not my style, but this was how they did things on this piece of property that Baker Leavitt generously allowed us to hunt on.
Yes, Kiera did actually buy an apprentice hunting license and learned the basics of shooting. She has not just been an observer on this trip but rather a full-fledged participant.
6 comments:
Awesome.
Great! I'm hoping to learn more about hunting and eating feral swine. I'm going to give it a try in nearby Michigan.
Hey,
I was thinking. If only a few people hunt certain populations of these invasive species, it's only going to strengthen the species. If we want to stop these animals before they assimilate healthily into the ecosystem (at the expense of other species), we'll need a hunting party and ignorant rednecks bent on the extermination of biodiversity. We'll need irresponsible hunting. How are we gonna do that?
@Sam,
The traditional mainstream America hunting culture practices conservation as an almost knee-jerk habit. The problem with pigs has been convincing hunters to really kill a lot of them as opposed to hunting them in a sustainable way.
I'm not 100% what you meant in your comment, but I'm guessing that you were saying that light hunting pressure will result in adaptation by the animal. That's a very big question and I think that your answers would be different depending on the species.
If the hunting pressure is light then almost by definition it shouldn't have much of an evolutionary effect on the prey in the short run. It has often been said that evolution tends to be a story of extinction that is narrowly avoided.
Light or sporadic hunting pressure can be a problem with pigs on account of them learning. I think that its best to hunt a population of invasive pigs in a given area with as much hunting pressure as quickly as possible so that as few of them as possible receive the benefits of an education.
Looks like a fun trip, but you didn't say if you all had any success? I've always wanted to go hog hunting but the only place they are in any numbers is in the eastern part of my state. Sounds like it's time for a road trip.
Sam, it's way too late to stop pigs. They are firmly established.
And Jack, I agree that conservation is a knee-jerk reaction - I would never knowingly kill a wet sow, for example (though that may be more of a reflection of empathy for piglets than a desire to conserve the resource).
But I think main reason hunters don't kill more pigs is that it doesn't take many pigs to fill your freezer and feed your family.
That and the fact that here in California, they're extremely difficult to hunt on public land, so you have to fork out hundreds of dollars to hunt them on private land. And the private landowners, having figured out that they can make money off of pigs, are now managing pigs for hunting, not trying to get rid of them.
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