09-23-2011, 04:48 PM
I want to say something about how the pig control works in my area, even though it isn't Puna, still East Hawai'i.
What happens is that a pig family will show up and start ravaging the garden and the whole yard. There are stream gulches here that are real tough for humans to negotiate, but the pigs do it easily. They hang out in the gulches by day and rampage and destroy by night.
A hunter will get called in, but it's not exactly fun sport hunting. Because it is private land, he has to be very careful. All the neighbors have to be warned that a firearm might be discharged at night, so that no one calls the police thinking someone just got shot in a domestic dispute.
Sometimes the hunter will set snares, but he has to check them daily, and the snares can also catch household pets, so that's not good. (One animal here that was snared had its guts eaten out by rats as it dangled, after that I said no more snares on my land where that could happen to my pets.)
With all that effort, the hunting is not very effective, and the damage to the vegetable garden and landscaping is always heavy.
There is no way to keep pigs or deer roaming only in areas that hunters are free to go and not on private property. Nobody wants strange hunters roaming at will through their back yards, especially at night. So basically it turns into an eradication process that each home owner has to negotiate with a hunter and so many nights of having potential gunfire around the house.
There is nothing desirable about it, and having deer would be much worse!
I have nothing against the pig hunting culture here, but if people imagine that the pig hunters keep any sort of control over the population -- how can they? They can only hunt in designated areas, whereas the pigs have no such limitations for foraging, and neither would deer.
What happens is that a pig family will show up and start ravaging the garden and the whole yard. There are stream gulches here that are real tough for humans to negotiate, but the pigs do it easily. They hang out in the gulches by day and rampage and destroy by night.
A hunter will get called in, but it's not exactly fun sport hunting. Because it is private land, he has to be very careful. All the neighbors have to be warned that a firearm might be discharged at night, so that no one calls the police thinking someone just got shot in a domestic dispute.
Sometimes the hunter will set snares, but he has to check them daily, and the snares can also catch household pets, so that's not good. (One animal here that was snared had its guts eaten out by rats as it dangled, after that I said no more snares on my land where that could happen to my pets.)
With all that effort, the hunting is not very effective, and the damage to the vegetable garden and landscaping is always heavy.
There is no way to keep pigs or deer roaming only in areas that hunters are free to go and not on private property. Nobody wants strange hunters roaming at will through their back yards, especially at night. So basically it turns into an eradication process that each home owner has to negotiate with a hunter and so many nights of having potential gunfire around the house.
There is nothing desirable about it, and having deer would be much worse!
I have nothing against the pig hunting culture here, but if people imagine that the pig hunters keep any sort of control over the population -- how can they? They can only hunt in designated areas, whereas the pigs have no such limitations for foraging, and neither would deer.