DALLAS — Mike Taylor has no love for feral hogs. He shoots them regularly on his 30-acre property in Anderson County and sees drivers hit them all the time on Highway 287 in East Texas.
“I know they’re a huge problem, and I’m not sure what the answer is,” said Taylor, who is police chief in Italy, Texas.
Taylor is open to most options — but not one.
“I just don’t feel like poisoning is the way to do it,” he said.
Previous poisoning efforts have focused on warfarin, an anti-coagulant that causes hemorrhaging. It’s certainly lethal to pigs but also potentially dangerous to other animals or humans who come into contact with poisoned pig meat.
Now the federal government is embarking on a new pilot project to reduce hog populations — one that uses a kinder, gentler poison, officials say.
Field tests of bait laced with sodium nitrite — usually used to cure bacon and sausage — are scheduled to begin early this year in West Texas and in the summer in parts of Alabama. Expansion could follow if the tests are successful.
“It’s the nitrite that’s so lethal to the hogs,” said Nathan Snow, a research biologist with the National Wildlife Research Center in Fort Collins, Colo. “When it’s consumed, it’s quickly metabolized, and it’s particularly lethal to pigs because they have fewer enzymes to fight the sodium nitrite.”
That quick metabolism is also what will help save anything else that might come in contact with contaminated hogs, Snow said.
“By the time the pigs are dead, there really isn’t much left of this toxic bait except for some parts of the stomach and intestines — which people aren’t likely to consume,” he said.
Hunters who come across pigs that have consumed the bait probably won’t find them in any shape to hunt.
“The odds of a hunter coming across them alive and upright is very slim,” Snow said.
An effective way of dealing with the hogs — which number about 1.5 million in Texas and cost an estimated $52 million in damage to state crops — has been elusive. Trapping and sport hunting have been somewhat effective in mitigating damage, but researchers say reducing population growth means eliminating at least 70 percent of the hogs each year.