Speaker 1: Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves
Speaker 1: from coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living.
Speaker 1: I want you to stay a while as I share
Speaker 1: my stories and the country skills that will help you
Speaker 1: beat the system. This Country Life is proudly presented as
Speaker 1: part of Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best
Speaker 1: outdoor podcast the airways have to offer. All right, friends,
Speaker 1: pull you up a chair or drop that tailgate. I
Speaker 1: think I got a thing or two to teach you. Hogs,
Speaker 1: pig suey. We're talking about hogs this week, and unfortunately
Speaker 1: their presence on the landscape outside of the confines of
Speaker 1: a pen or a skillet mostly bad. I'm gonna tell
Speaker 1: you how this whole hog iss you started where we
Speaker 1: are now, But first I'm gonna tell you a story. Now.
Speaker 1: I've thought about whether to include this story or not
Speaker 1: for quite a while. It's a little intense for how
Speaker 1: I normally start to show. But our topic this week
Speaker 1: is important, and I want to show you how serious
Speaker 1: folks were back in the day and even recently when
Speaker 1: it comes to hog claims and the hogs that roamed
Speaker 1: on them. Now, this one comes from my brother Tim
Speaker 1: and maybe one day I'll convince him to sit down
Speaker 1: with me and talk, and y'all can hear these stories
Speaker 1: straight from him. But I asked him to write it
Speaker 1: in his own words and let me read it, and
Speaker 1: he did just that. The only things I omitted from
Speaker 1: Tim's version was the name of the man in the
Speaker 1: boat who caused the problem, and the name of our
Speaker 1: family friend who wanted to fix it when it happened.
Speaker 1: Here it is my brother Tim's words in my voice.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy seven, I was nineteen years old and
Speaker 1: had been married a month in February when Dad called
Speaker 1: me to see if I wanted to go squirrel hunting
Speaker 1: with him and a family friend. And we started out
Speaker 1: south of the little Lake on the lower Potlatch Road
Speaker 1: where you go to Vince Bluff, which was a ferry
Speaker 1: crossing during high water and just a place to cross
Speaker 1: the saline River during the low water times. We downloaded
Speaker 1: the horses, saddled up, and turned the dogs loose. Besides Peanut,
Speaker 1: I don't remember what all dogs we had, but our
Speaker 1: friend had brought a couple of his own, so I
Speaker 1: know we had at least three. The river was about
Speaker 1: half bank full, so all the sloughs had water in them,
Speaker 1: and we'd killed several squirrels that morning. As we approached
Speaker 1: the river at Vince Bluff, we hunted up along the
Speaker 1: river from there and got to a place called Little Mill.
Speaker 1: I don't know if there was ever a saw mill
Speaker 1: there or what, but there was a place on the
Speaker 1: bank that pushed out towards the river where you could
Speaker 1: make an easy trip to get down to the river
Speaker 1: from because there was a fairly high bank there. We
Speaker 1: got off the horses to let them rest and take
Speaker 1: a break. We were sitting on the ground about ten
Speaker 1: yards from where we had the horses tied. Our twenty
Speaker 1: two rifles were secured in the scabbards. We just set
Speaker 1: there visiting, resting the dogs and horses and ourselves, and
Speaker 1: we heard a boat coming up the river. It was
Speaker 1: an old man that we all knew. He knew us
Speaker 1: as well, and he had a black and white shaggy
Speaker 1: dog in the boat with him, and the dog looked
Speaker 1: like some kind of shepherd. Anyway, the man seize us
Speaker 1: and pulls up into the pushed out place and went
Speaker 1: down to the river, and due to the river being up,
Speaker 1: his boat hit the bank about even where we were sitting.
Speaker 1: He was ten yards to our front, and we were
Speaker 1: about as directly in the middle of him and our
Speaker 1: horses as we could get. And when his boat came
Speaker 1: to a stop, he stood up with a Remington Model
Speaker 1: seven forty two rifles. I heard the safety click off
Speaker 1: as he faced us and said, I've been listening to
Speaker 1: y'all's dogs, and I know y'all are hog hunting. What
Speaker 1: y'all need to remember is not very far from where
Speaker 1: you're sitting. Someone got killed over this hog plane. He
Speaker 1: had just killed the hog and got caught with it
Speaker 1: and was killed right here close. Dad and our friend
Speaker 1: both said, we ain't hog hunting, we're squirrel hunting. The
Speaker 1: man in the boat said, I don't care what you say.
Speaker 1: I know what you're doing, and you need to remember
Speaker 1: when you're bent over gutting a hog, someone may be
Speaker 1: behind a tree out there in the woods about to
Speaker 1: kill you. Our friend said you need to remember that too,
Speaker 1: the next time you're out in the woods. Now. My
Speaker 1: dad called him by by name and said, my grandpa
Speaker 1: ran hogs down here for fifty years. This was and
Speaker 1: is our hog claim, not yours. The man yelled back,
Speaker 1: it's mine now, and remember what I said. He laid
Speaker 1: that rifle down in the boat, never put the safety
Speaker 1: back on. He grabbed a bank beside where he was
Speaker 1: sitting and pushed his boat out on the edge of
Speaker 1: the river and up the river. He went, I don't
Speaker 1: mind telling you. I was thinking to myself, I got
Speaker 1: to get me a pistol to toad or never get
Speaker 1: off the horse without a gun. Close by, while I
Speaker 1: was thinking that, I heard our friend say to my
Speaker 1: dad as he stood up and made his way toward
Speaker 1: his horse, I'm fixed to kill that sob when he
Speaker 1: comes back by us going down river. Now, that's when
Speaker 1: Dad said, you sat down, now, you ain't gonna kill him.
Speaker 1: My friend just stood there looking at my dad, and
Speaker 1: for a minute he looked like you wanted to say something,
Speaker 1: but he never did, which is remarkable, especially if you
Speaker 1: know this fellow. Now, I do believe if it hadn't
Speaker 1: been for my dad that day, my friend might have
Speaker 1: done the According to my brother Tim, that's just how
Speaker 1: that happened. Now. Let me add a little extra here
Speaker 1: about Tim's story. The old man in the boat referenced
Speaker 1: an incident that took place on the river where a
Speaker 1: person was killed over a hog, and the fellow that
Speaker 1: shot him was acquitted. Due to the stock laws and
Speaker 1: the feeling towards ownership of free range stock at the time,
Speaker 1: and even though it had happened years before that day,
Speaker 1: it would have been a little solace to those on
Speaker 1: the wrong end of the gun, as was the case
Speaker 1: up in North Arkansas in twenty seventeen when a man
Speaker 1: was victed of murdering another fella over hog hunting territory. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: some folks take this stuff seriously, and there were plenty
Speaker 1: more stories just like that one from our part of
Speaker 1: the world, and they're not exclusive to South Arkansas. And
Speaker 1: that was the feeling most everywhere, because hogs were such
Speaker 1: a valuable commodity in each family's survival. Hogs running loose
Speaker 1: were caught with dogs and traps, and the boarders would
Speaker 1: be castrated and released, and the rest would be marked
Speaker 1: and by cutting their ears in a specific way. Now
Speaker 1: each family had their own mark, like a brand for cattle.
Speaker 1: Three's family mark is a crop split on the right
Speaker 1: and half under crop on the left. Now that translates
Speaker 1: into the end quarter of the right ear of the
Speaker 1: hog being cut off. Then that same ear was cut
Speaker 1: right down in the middle for the split. The left
Speaker 1: ear was then cut, removing the bottom quarter of the
Speaker 1: ear in the vicinity of where the hog's earload would be.
Speaker 1: If a hog had one, that was our mark, and
Speaker 1: it was as proof positive of ownership as a fingerprint
Speaker 1: back then, all right, you know what a marked hog
Speaker 1: is and the feelings folks had for him. Let's get
Speaker 1: on with the show. Wild hogs, pine routers, rousians, razorbacks,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call them. Pharaoh pigs have a
Speaker 1: deep history woven into the tapestry of our culture. For me,
Speaker 1: it runs deep in the heritage of my family, both
Speaker 1: in survival and to a degree sport. Also, as you
Speaker 1: just heard a little drama. Thankfully that all ended there,
Speaker 1: but nine generations of reeves have run the salin ry
Speaker 1: of botties in Cleveland County, Arkansas, making victials out of
Speaker 1: the animals that lived there. Arkansas now has an estimated
Speaker 1: whitetail deer herd of one million, but back in the
Speaker 1: day they just about hunting to zero before Europeans lit
Speaker 1: in Arkansas deer where everywhere. Old Hernando de Soto and
Speaker 1: encountered Native American folks dressed in deer skins. The Catto
Speaker 1: people depended heavily on deer meat for survival. Early settlers
Speaker 1: hunted the whitetail deer without restriction for decades. Roads, houses, farms,
Speaker 1: and towns soon encroached on their habitat, and it led
Speaker 1: to a steep decline in deer populations. In nineteen sixteen,
Speaker 1: the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission established the state's first
Speaker 1: deer season, and in the nineteen twenties created deer refuges.
Speaker 1: By the mid thirties, however, there was only a few
Speaker 1: hundred remaining in Arkansas now. My family, no doubt played
Speaker 1: a part in the almost extirpation of deer from the
Speaker 1: state on the micro scale as it related to the
Speaker 1: area where I'm from, as did every everyone else who
Speaker 1: was struggling to scratch out of living on the edge
Speaker 1: of the American expansion. We also shoulder some of the
Speaker 1: responsibility for the current situation when it comes to wild hogs.
Speaker 1: Pigs have been here since introduced by wait for it,
Speaker 1: wait for it, Hernando de Soto in fifteen forty one.
Speaker 1: It's believed that that well meaning, that adventure seeking spaniard
Speaker 1: let some of its hogs get loose, and from that
Speaker 1: moment on, the poor science courage on humanity has been
Speaker 1: at the root of a lot of problems, both environmentally
Speaker 1: and socially. Once a breeding pair gets loose, lookout hogs everywhere.
Speaker 1: It's literally that simple. Check this out. Female paral hogs
Speaker 1: can be ready to start making bacon as young as
Speaker 1: three to four months age, the majority of waiting till
Speaker 1: e're about a year old, but not all of them.
Speaker 1: sALS come in season every eighteen to twenty four days
Speaker 1: until they're successfully bred. Then an average about four months later,
Speaker 1: congratulations Earth, one to fourteen more little piggies are dropped
Speaker 1: on your landscape to do their evil bitting, the average
Speaker 1: doing that twice a year, all of them every year.
Speaker 1: It's estimated that it would take a mortality rate of
Speaker 1: at least sixty six percent to keep the population of
Speaker 1: hogs in check, just to keep it where it's at
Speaker 1: without letting it grow anymore sixty six percent. Arkansas is
Speaker 1: one of the top ten states with the largest wild
Speaker 1: pig populations. They're reported in all seventy five counties, with
Speaker 1: as many as four to five million total in the
Speaker 1: natural state, and they'll eat anything they can find. They're
Speaker 1: the catfish of the landscape. Anything and everything is on
Speaker 1: the menu for the plant or animal, alive or dead. Frog, snakes, deer, fongs,
Speaker 1: turkey posts. It don't matter. They can catch it, they'll
Speaker 1: eat it. Don't let them fool you either. They're quick,
Speaker 1: They're vicious and adept catching their own groceries on the
Speaker 1: hoof as they were rooting them up out of the ground.
Speaker 1: I remember seeing them catch live chickens off the ground
Speaker 1: with the quickness and speed of a cutting horse. Now
Speaker 1: those live chickens got caught in a chicken house, todd
Speaker 1: across the field over a fence and chucked in the
Speaker 1: hog pen is a mystery to me. The important part
Speaker 1: of that story is that they'll get you if they
Speaker 1: want to get you. Now. Recently, I was watching an
Speaker 1: Arkansas Game and Fish Commission meeting that was recorded on
Speaker 1: May the sixteenth of this year, and among the items
Speaker 1: presented that day was an annual report by Ryan Farney,
Speaker 1: the Farreal Hall coordinator for the Game and Fish. It's
Speaker 1: been out for two weeks and as the particular moment
Speaker 1: in which I'm looking at it, it's only been viewed
Speaker 1: one thousand, nine hundred and fifty six times on the
Speaker 1: YouTube channel owned by the Game of Fish. Good gosh,
Speaker 1: there was more folks than that at last March is
Speaker 1: Black Bear Bonanza. There's some good info in these meetings,
Speaker 1: and those of us that liked to ramble around or
Speaker 1: even have a general interest in what the Game of
Speaker 1: Fish is doing, owe it to themselves to watch it
Speaker 1: when you have a chance. But Ryan gave a great
Speaker 1: presentation on the state of faral hogs in Arkansas. The
Speaker 1: numbers were quite staggering for me, and I've been around
Speaker 1: woods hogs all my life. We've already established the fact
Speaker 1: that they were important to folks, some more than others.
Speaker 1: But the facts that during the times when deer numbers
Speaker 1: were thin and money was tight, hogs were a valuable commodity.
Speaker 1: They were a main source of protein in the advent
Speaker 1: of being able to cure and store me to downright
Speaker 1: necessity for families living in the country like mine. But
Speaker 1: they'd always been pretty well held in check. Their numbers
Speaker 1: were fairly levelized by the folks that handled them, and
Speaker 1: it wasn't until the nineteen eighties that hog hunting got
Speaker 1: popular and hog numbers started to increase. Now that mirrors
Speaker 1: the pinnacle of turkey numbers, at least here my state.
Speaker 1: And with the hog numbers increasing, the turkey numbers did
Speaker 1: just the opposite. I was listening to an interview of
Speaker 1: doctor Steven Ditchkoff, a leading authority on the topic, down
Speaker 1: at Auburn University, in preparation for this episode, and doctor
Speaker 1: Ditchcoff said, hogs move slowly from one area to another,
Speaker 1: but on the interstate they move at seventy miles an hour.
Speaker 1: Now what he means by that is folks are catching
Speaker 1: them in other places and moving them to areas where
Speaker 1: they can hunt them. And then folks ought to be
Speaker 1: in jail. Now, when I was a kid growing up,
Speaker 1: seeing hogs in the woods wasn't uncommon in certain places.
Speaker 1: The areas with hogs in Southeast Arkansas were all historically
Speaker 1: the same places that they'd always been, But now they're everywhere.
Speaker 1: Tim has them in his yard at night, rooting up
Speaker 1: the world like there's no tomorrow. He's trapped them, shot them,
Speaker 1: and just like the jelly of the month club, hogs
Speaker 1: are the gifts that keeps on give it. As we've
Speaker 1: already said, a hog normally has two litters a year,
Speaker 1: but if she times you right, she can dominate another
Speaker 1: bushel of infestious pork chops at the end of the year,
Speaker 1: just as the females in her first litter are prepping
Speaker 1: to drop theirs too. That's a lot of hogs. Now,
Speaker 1: you don't have to be a brain scientist or a
Speaker 1: rocket surgeon to see that if we're going to have
Speaker 1: a chance of getting ahead of them, that hunting them
Speaker 1: the traditional way ain't the answer. It's an enjoyable pastime
Speaker 1: for sure, and I love it and I support my
Speaker 1: friends that do the traditional way that we've always done
Speaker 1: it with hog dogs, But as a sound tool of conservation,
Speaker 1: it doesn't even rest her on the scale of effectiveness.
Speaker 1: Arkansas Gaming Fish partner with numerous state and federal agencies
Speaker 1: through a conservation incentive program and are helping private landowners
Speaker 1: battle the problem. There's a lot of information on the
Speaker 1: program on the Game and Fish Well website, and for
Speaker 1: those that don't live in Arkansas, well, first I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: but secondly, check with your state's Department of Natural Resources
Speaker 1: or Game Commission and see if you're part of the program.
Speaker 1: You can just about bet that if you have a
Speaker 1: team competing in the SEC or from a state next
Speaker 1: to one that does. You've got a program that covers you,
Speaker 1: so big deal. There's hogs in the bottoms. Who cares
Speaker 1: if some folks turn some loose to hunt them on
Speaker 1: the weekends. Why should I care? Well, here's why. As
Speaker 1: we've already found out, once they get started having piglets,
Speaker 1: there's no way to get ahead of them. And I
Speaker 1: mentioned turkey is at the beginning, saying that they started
Speaker 1: a downward trend as soon as hogs started, there's upward.
Speaker 1: That's just my opinion and observation. I can't back that
Speaker 1: up with anything other than what I saw on the landscape.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's a coincidence that here's something that ain't farl
Speaker 1: Hoggs hack turkeys in three ways. They consume their eggs,
Speaker 1: they compete for resources and als of the habitat. That's
Speaker 1: three out of three. Vince Lombardi, the legendary coach of
Speaker 1: the Green Bay Packers, was famous for not wanting to
Speaker 1: pass the football. He said, there are three things that
Speaker 1: can happen when you throw a pass. Two of them
Speaker 1: are bad. There is no one out of three with faril,
Speaker 1: hogs and turkeys. They're all bad. Sixty four percent of
Speaker 1: a farrel hog's diet is massed. That's not only affecting turkeys,
Speaker 1: but deer, quail, squirrels, and every other native game and
Speaker 1: non game animal in the ecosystem. One study showed that
Speaker 1: farrel hogs accounted for twenty five percent of turkey nespidation.
Speaker 1: That was higher than any other known nest robbery, including
Speaker 1: skunks and coons. Some control studies showed hogs hitting eighty
Speaker 1: percent of nest predated. These rascals have got to go now.
Speaker 1: I touched on it earlier, but I was surprised at
Speaker 1: how much of an issue it is. I can also
Speaker 1: see how it can get misconstrued with a narrow mindset
Speaker 1: on how all this works. But cutting a few hogs
Speaker 1: loose to chase on the weekends is exactly how all
Speaker 1: this has got to where it is now. Now, y'all
Speaker 1: hang on with me through this part. We've got some
Speaker 1: forgotten to do. Ryan Farley's Band of Untouchables pulled genetic
Speaker 1: samples from the hogs that were taking off wildlife management
Speaker 1: areas in Arkansas. By the way, that's twenty three thousand
Speaker 1: and eighty one over the last ten years from these hogs.
Speaker 1: They've identified six distinct populations. Only one of those was
Speaker 1: exclusive to one spot. Now, those hogs live on Fort Chaffee,
Speaker 1: a US Army installation famous for seed tics Cuban refugees
Speaker 1: in Elvis's first military haircut. Now, why is that significant
Speaker 1: in the grand scheme of hogs Arkansas? I'm glad you asked,
Speaker 1: because access is extremely limited. Folks ain't just running around
Speaker 1: at Fort Chaffee for the fun of it. Trust me,
Speaker 1: I've been there. It ain't fun. I'm the one that
Speaker 1: can testify to the seriousness of the seed ticks Elvis
Speaker 1: and the Cubans were before my time. Anyway, limited access
Speaker 1: means hogs aren't being brought in there or taken from
Speaker 1: there to other areas. Of all the other areas tested,
Speaker 1: sixty percent were found to be from other places, and
Speaker 1: the distance had to be significant. The Arkansas information said
Speaker 1: that over two hundred kilometers would raise a flag because
Speaker 1: the genetics of place found in a hog would only
Speaker 1: remain for three generations. And since we've already learned that
Speaker 1: one hog can theoretically have three generations in one year,
Speaker 1: that's pretty compelling evidence that either these pigs can fly
Speaker 1: or someone has given them a ride down the road.
Speaker 1: Sixty percent sixty percent of the efforts used in controlling
Speaker 1: the feral hog issue were because of translocated hogs. Come on, man,
Speaker 1: we need to do what Barded five said and nip it,
Speaker 1: nip that in the bud. But they can't do it
Speaker 1: without us, and we can't do it without them. We
Speaker 1: got to decide right now, and I'm not just talking
Speaker 1: about us here in Arkansas, but everywhere. We got to
Speaker 1: decide if we're ever going to have turkeys like we
Speaker 1: used to, or even have a remote chance of getting
Speaker 1: our quail numbers up to a respectable level. We got
Speaker 1: to act now. Michael Rosemann and I bumped a covey
Speaker 1: of birds last February when we were rabbit hunting, and
Speaker 1: I about fainted. It had to be thirty in that
Speaker 1: covey and was the first wild birds I'd seen in years.
Speaker 1: One place you won't find quail now where you used
Speaker 1: to is in southeast Arkansas, where I grew up. They're
Speaker 1: delicate creatures to begin with and are fighting a number
Speaker 1: of environmental factors. But a rising tide of dead hogs
Speaker 1: raises all the ground nest and bird boats. Dang mistretch
Speaker 1: that analogy to death. But you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Fewer hogs, more turkeys and quail. That's it in a nutshell. Also,
Speaker 1: I want you to understand that I love hogs. They
Speaker 1: hold a cherished part of my memories and the stories
Speaker 1: of hunting them with my father and our family dealing
Speaker 1: with hogs both wild and domesticated or innumerable. But right now,
Speaker 1: at this moment, knowing what I know about the situation
Speaker 1: we're in and in neighboring states, if I could mash
Speaker 1: a button and get rid of every feral hog in
Speaker 1: the country, I'd mash it twice just to make sure
Speaker 1: I got em all. Brent, that was harsh. Well, these
Speaker 1: are harsh times. And who knew there was such a
Speaker 1: storied history of hogs at Arkansas well, with the University
Speaker 1: of Arkansas's mascot named the Razorbacks, just about everybody, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's probably true. That's going to do it for me
Speaker 1: this week. I appreciate y'all listening and all the wonderful feedback.
Speaker 1: It's not all doom and gloom, and I don't want
Speaker 1: to end on a bad note. But we can all
Speaker 1: work together. We can solve this hog problem. We're just
Speaker 1: going to have to work, and we're going to have
Speaker 1: to work hard. Please share our podcast with someone who
Speaker 1: you think might enjoy it really helps in connecting us
Speaker 1: with the like minded folks. Check out our other podcast
Speaker 1: in the media or family when you can. There's something
Speaker 1: for everyone in one of them and guarantee it. But
Speaker 1: until next week, this is Brent Reeves signing off. Y'all
Speaker 1: be careful STI