SWH - Back when I lived on the Monterey Peninsula (CA) I hunted hogs in the coastal mountains with handguns. By day by spot and stock, at night with a pards pack of pit bulls. We were quite successful either way and took a fair number of them all those years. The hogs were in specific areas back then along the middle 2/3rd of the CA coast, and at a few inland spots is all. Now they are pretty widespread in a fairly large area in CA.
Besides the news stories and rag articles they are even doing TV programs about the invasion now days as the hog population in this country is increasing and spreading at an alarming rate. And it goes way beyond crop and property damage in some places where they are now a safety threat to children and adults alike. All the companies that have cropped up for hire to help land owners out I see is an unnecessary expense. I did legal ADC for LO's most of my life, and the only "pay" I asked for was the opportunity to hunt, to help the LO out by harvesting enough that they didn't have to poison, that saved them money and prevented collateral damage to other species from the poison. Lots of hunters would be happy to do the same without pay, and under contract with the LO would be doing so legally.
Even so its high time that the lawmakers, property owners and hunting groups get together on the same page and make a concerted effort to eradicate as many as possible through hunting and other means. It would make a difference and provide a lot of meat to charities.
I well remember such "team" efforts carried on decades ago to seriously thin out other invasive species that had "bloomed" into exceptionally large populations, and I participated in some of them. Jackrabbits, coyotes, rattlesnakes and Gila Monsters roundups are the ones I was a part of most often (although there was others for larger species) We removed the jacks by the thousands, coyotes and rattlers by the hundreds and the later by the dozens. Jacks were simply shot, tossed into trucks and the carcasses burned. Coyotes were donated to tanners. The others collected unharmed and relocated far and wide to good habitat away from human populations. Kind of funny... several of the jack hunts were at our local International airport where they were being sucked up into engines. F&G and airport security managed the shoots. The hunt dates/times were published in the local paper so anyone who wanted to could come out to help shoot them - with simple instructions to look both ways before shooting across a runway (yes, times have changed - LOL). Imagine visitors flying into that airport on the weekends these hunts were staged to see hundreds of people in between the runways packing and shooting shotguns. LOL Point is these organized team efforts did make a huge difference, were safe, a great hunting opportunity and didn't stir up any "tree huggers" because they were sanctioned by lawmakers, F&G and land owners. I'm sure if somebody would organize something similar today (with organized and so insured firearms groups) there would be an endless list of volunteers to participate in them no matter in what state/county. It wouldn't erradicte the hogs, but it would make a bigger dent in them than these "for hire" groups are accomplishing.
FWIW-YMMV
