First, do no harm

THE OLD BOY in South Arkansas looked over his hayfield. Or what was once a hayfield. For the night before, wild pigs had rooted up a large part of it. And turned a pretty, green, lush field into an ugly brown mud hole. The swine party had cost the old boy plenty. He’d now have to buy more hay to get his cattle through the winter.

About a year later, the old boy’s son walked up on a sturdy deer feeder in the woods, or what was once a sturdy deer feeder. It was sprawled on the ground, torn apart, metal legs every which way, and so were the hog tracks all around it. Those who spend time on hunting leases know deer only get some of the corn that ends up on the ground under such feeders. The squirrels, turkeys, doves, rabbits, and ’most any other non-coyote species on the place get their share. And sometimes more than their share. For example, pigs. They’re hogs.

The old boy’s son has sons of his own now. And one evening the boys came across a herd of feral hogs on the farm. A few of the hogs charged. Thankfully, the kids had been hunting and so were armed, and came through the encounter none the worse for the scare. Which was more than could be said for one of the charging sus not so domesticus.

If you’re an outdoorsman or woman in Arkansas, you’ve seen the damage these wild hogs do. All year long, they tear up fences, destroy pastureland, and make lots of little pigs that grow up to add to the problem. Over the years, hunting these pests has developed into something of a cottage industry. Folks from all over the country and beyond come to Arkansas to track down and shoot the critters. Feral hogs offer hunters a challenge: a wily animal that tests their skills. What’s more, Arkansas is, as they say in the military, a Target Rich Environment.

Now the (mostly) sovereign State of Arkansas, while not wanting to discourage the hunting of these animals, does want to create some new rules about how to hunt, contain and move them. The Livestock and Poultry Commission wants new requirements for fences at hunting lodges, new rules about how to tag feral hogs when they’re moved from here to there, and a ban on moving them around at night.

Some in the hog-hunting business don’t like the idea of tagging a feral pig trapped in, say, Union County and then transported to a hunting lodge in, say, Magnolia. And who can blame them? Anybody who’s ever watched a pig in one of those large metal cage-traps knows it’d be dangerous to climb inside and suggest Porky put on an ear tag-like some sort of earring. The commission and the hunting lodges will have to iron that one out.

But as for the rules about transporting the animals only during daylight, the fencing requirements, and other regulations that restrict hog hunting to those operations in business today . . . they all sound like good policy. Let’s not create other pockets of pig herds here and there. Not even by mistake or accident. The herds already out there are problem enough.

Woo pig sooey? That’s for game day. Surely not even the most fanatical Razorback fan would want to see a wild pig in his yard. Or on his farm. Or on his deer lease. Or in his garden. Or charging his kids. Or . . . well, anywhere dangerously or destructively near. Which is why these new rules are needed.