| Legal and Management Agendas | ||
| Introduction Range Legal and management agendas
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The problem with feral hogs is that wild animals belong to the state, and livestock belong to the individual landowners. Swine under Texas law are livestock but the ferals are free ranging for the most part. So the hogs are treated as if they are owned by whatever property they are standing on at the time (Bach & Conner).
To better explain the problem, lets say that rancher A has a riparian bottomland that the hogs enjoy spending their days in and rancher A is realizing some monetary profit from hog hunters hunting on his bottomland. Rancher B raises angora goats in a savanna upland right next to rancher A’s property. Rancher A and B do not get along due to the fact that B’s daughter left A’s son standing at the alter to run off with the midget from the circus. Rancher B keeps waiting for his nannies to bring their kids up to the watering tank at the house but only 20% ever show up. He rides down to the savanna and finds where rancher A’s hogs have pushed through his predator proof fence and eaten all his kid crop except for a little tuft of mohair caught in a bush that is surrounded by hog tracks. So whose hogs are these anyway. If they belong to the state because they are wild then I’ll just get the state to dispatch these murderous hogs, "Rancher B thinks". The state tells him that they cannot because they are living on Rancher A’s property. "Rancher B says", Well that means that Rancher A owes me a kid crop from his hunting lease hogs that ate up my grocery money. Both ranchers meet at the fence and bring their scatter-guns with them because they’re old and can’t see very good and don’t want to miss. Words are said, tempers flare and they both prove to be good shots. When the smoke clears the hogs eat them both up and wallow on their guns and nobody ever knows what happened to the two old Texas ranchers. Do you get the picture with what the problems with hogs are now?
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