http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-pighunt9apr09,1,1046360.story
See what you thing about all this.
No guns left in CA I guess so they had to bring in a guy from Down Under!

Mims

That pig problem is minor compared to over-abundanace of swine we have in the legislature.

Don't ever give up on California.....

If we ever get that big quake we've been promised, we'll be a Red State overnight.

By the way, when you get get tired of shootin' them tiny stinky little Texas pigs, we can put you on a good one here in CA. Just give Kyler a call

Regards

Elmo

I would have enjoyed that job..


I have called San Diego, San Fransisco, LA, Bishop and Mammoth Mountain my home at one point in life. The Mountains, Ocean, Low and High Desert were all with in a few hours drive of every where I called home. Politics aside there is no other state that can compete..

SAVE THE PIGS

"The organization advocates pig contraception and sterilization as ways of eradicating the population."

I advocate sterilization of the damn leaf eater that came up with that idea.

Regards,

Terry

I've guided with a few guys that have done those exact eradication projects (actually on the next island over). It would be really fun for the first couple days or even weeks but 27 MONTHS!!... until every single animal is gone! That's a lot of hunting and NOT seeing any game, NONE. While the weather is pretty mild it does get fairly hot in the summer, very windy and the terrain is VERY steep. Months of extremely hard hunting without a single sighting. NO THANKS!

I know on Santa Rosa Island when there were only a few pigs left they systematically hiked rugged canyons for TWO MONTHS without a sighting until finally the last pig was taken.

I've done that sort of work for a few days at a time, but over all I'll stick to spot and stalk hunting them for fun and let someone else pay their bills with that sort of work.

Great hunting with great hunters,
Kyler

Norm Mac Donald is MR pest control here in New Zealand,He took a team of cullers to the Gallaposgus islands a few years ago to cull goats.

I'm with Kyler. It would be great sport for a while when the hogs are relatively plentiful. Not so much fun after a matter of months. Lots of work and drudgery involved.

Rather like the opportunity to dine on fine steak every day; after a while a guy would crave a plain old PBJ sammich.

A classic case of short sightened govt. plan. Instead of paying someone to kill pigs, they could charge hunters a fee & let them take as many pigs as they can for say a 3 day period. The state could make 1,000 of dollars instead of paying 10s of thousand to someone else. My tax dollar hard @ work, again.

If at any time you see my tax dollars at work, tell them to take the day off and come home!

Fred,
I agree sport hunting would be the way to go for the first (easy) 20%, or maybe even 40%, of the pigs on the island. But who is going to take the time and pay for a charter, much less a hunt fee, when the numbers are knocked down. If for example the last 60 hunters haven't gotten a shot... or even seen fresh tracks... what sporting hunter is going to want to spend a long weekend hiking those hot, steep hills with those odds.
I've been involved in writing some management plans in situations like this. EVERYONE wants to be in on easy culling but when it gets tough not too many people are going to be in for the long haul without a good paycheck.

When it comes to the wasting of tax dollars in this equation... why do the pigs need so badly to be off those islands anyway??? Why can't someone run a hunting concession for perpetuity? In various situations I've fought on both sides of that issue too - whether the pigs really do cause damage to the native plants/animals/ecosystems. Those islands are being taken back to the way they were before the white man showed up. Which means everything interesting (including the tremendous Kaibab mule deer and Roosevelt elk from Santa Rosa Island) will be "removed" at the taxpayers expense. There will be no large animals left. Only a few foxes, birds and the occasional gopher snake. Is that the best use for our tax dollars (rhetorical question)? Don't blame wacky California politics in this case. It's the National Parks Service that stepped in almost 20 years ago and told everyone that they had it covered. No one has complained as loudly as the local Californians in this crazy situation, but to no avail. The Feds. do what they want.

(Isn't this the African Forum, I come here to escape this kind of garbage).

Kyler

quote:

MacDonald agrees with that assessment of the bottom line.

"The science on it is good. It's been well-studied," he said. "At least I can tell my kids, when we've finished this project, that the fox has been saved."

Do you think this was a little "tongue in cheek"?

Hmmm I never thought of the last few hundred heavily hunted pigs... maybe I would just enjoy the first part..