PUXICO, Mo. -- The constant threat of habitat and wildlife destruction from invasive feral hogs on the Mingo National Wildlife Refuge and neighboring lands makes controlling their numbers a top priority for refuge staff, but it's going to take a lot of people and agencies working together, refuge manager Ben Mense said, to make a difference.
"We're not sitting on our hands and not doing anything," emphasized Mense, who noted over the last six to eight months he's heard some discontent from neighboring landowners with a "misconception that we're not doing enough to manage pigs on Mingo."
In fact, Mense said, work to put the brakes on the spread of hogs at the refuge actually has increased.
Specialized, high-tech traps are being utilized in more areas across the refuge, as is thermal-imaging equipment. In addition, hunters have been allowed to kill hogs incidental to other game being hunted, plus a full-time hog specialist from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has been on site since early in 2016.
The amount of time spent on the hog problem is significant, Mense said, with himself, assistant refuge manager Corey Kudrna and biologist Brad Pendley dedicating a large portion of their time and budget to it. The refuge also has hired a part-time trapper to assist in its eradication efforts.
In addition, USDA's Randy Farrar has spent roughly 2,000 hours, working both day and night, on the refuge, plus on the nearby Duck Creek Conservation Area and private lands.
Dealing with the hog problem, Mense said, also takes a considerable amount from his annual budget.
"This is a priority for us. We don't like the hogs any more than any landowner," Mense emphasized. "We're making such a big effort to do what we can to control them on the refuge."
Only since the record flood of 2011 at nearby Wappapello Lake, when high water pushed large numbers of pigs eastward onto the refuge, has Mingo really had a pig problem, Mense said, and because of its vast, mostly undisturbed acreage, the area now has become a haven for the hogs.
"They're over the whole refuge now," said Mense.
Damage has been found on levees, hillsides, food plots, sensitive wetlands ... "pretty much everywhere," he said.
Mense also noted the refuge's turkey population has decreased over the last few years, and he suspects hogs are destroying their nests.
"Our snake population has always been a concern with the hogs, too," he said.
"There's no way they're not competing with deer and turkeys for food," added Farrar.
Still, that doesn't mean eradication efforts so far haven't been at least mildly successful, Mense said, and he credits a strong partnership between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the USDA and the Missouri Department of Conservation.
"We've killed a lot of pigs," Mense said, "but it's going to take a partnership effort between us and landowners" to be successful.
Landowners have been very good about notifying refuge staff about hog sightings and issues, Mense said. Those neighbors with hog problems are encouraged to call the refuge.
"We have help available if landowners need it, Mense noted. "If they have a pig problem, we can get them help."
High-tech Trapping
On the refuge, trapping is the primary method used to capture and kill hogs, and the recent flooding has helped concentrate the pigs on high ground, improving the method's success.
According to Farrar, at any one time, there may be seven or eight traps being used on the refuge, with up to 100 pounds of soured corn or other bait at each site.
"I'm always looking for sign and constantly moving these traps," Farrar said. It's what he describes as "staying ahead" of the hogs.
"I get them on bait for at least three days, sometimes longer," Farrar said, "and I usually have them caught within a week."
Because feral hogs are intelligent and quickly become shy of anything new in their environment, Farrar prefers to use a high-tech trap design, which is suspended in the air, is less visible than previous models and is dropped when hogs are inside its perimeter.
"The drop traps are three times more efficient," said Farrar, who noted the old-style, gated traps were difficult to get numbers of hogs into, especially the larger sows, which shied away from them.
Two "Boar Buster" traps currently are being used, which are remotely operated. When a cellular-enabled game camera mounted on a nearby tree detects motion, it sends live video or photos to Farrar, and when the entire group of hogs, known as a sounder, are beneath the trap, a simple tap of a button on his cellphone causes it to drop, capturing the pigs.
It's great technology, Farrar said, but it's very expensive, at about $6,000 for each trap. That's why he and other USDA trappers developed a less expensive version on the refuge they call the "Mingo trap."
Using many of the same materials, with some unique design twists thrown in, the Mingo trap costs only about $400 each. It's only downfall, Farrar said, is it still is triggered manually by a trip wire and may not capture the entire group.
Cellular cameras still are used with the manual traps, but they only allow Farrar to know if hogs are using the bait site and if he's captured them or not.
When hogs are captured, Farrar or refuge staff arrive before daylight to dispatch the animals. In the dark, Farrar said, the pigs are much easier to approach, and there's always the potential for taking one which didn't make it into the trap.
Each year since hog trapping began on Mingo, Mense said, the numbers taken on the refuge have steadily grown as they've become more efficient in their efforts.
"Since Randy started in 2016, we've killed about 750 pigs," Mense said. "We wouldn't have nearly the pigs trapped if Randy wasn't here."
The hope now, Mense said, is to get additional funding for more traps and more manpower to battle the hog problem.
'We're looking for additional money for traps and additional trappers," he said.
Thermal Imaging
Besides trapping, Mense said, thermal-imaging equipment mounted on a rifle is used to kill some hogs at night, a technique typically reserved for boars which travel alone.
FLIR, a type of thermal imaging, also was used recently on a nighttime aircraft flight designed to help determine the refuge's overall hog population.
"Those images are currently being analyzed," Mense said, while noting he hasn't yet seen "enough data to see if the population of hogs on Mingo is decreasing or not."
He's hopeful, however, because the number of hogs taken by hunters on the refuge last fall saw a sharp decrease from previous years.
From 19 hogs taken by hunters during the 2012-13 season and annual increases to a high harvest of 55 in 2015-16, the number last year fell to only 15. That, Mense believes, is a testament to the ongoing eradication efforts.
Under current regulations, hunters can kill hogs on the refuge only while hunting for other game species, and they must use methods legal for the game they're hunting.
Hunters cannot go out specifically to target hogs, Mense said.
That restriction has been somewhat of a contentious issue, with some neighbors and hunters calling for an all-out managed hog hunt on Mingo.
That's not going to happen, according to Mense.
"We've steered clear of a managed hunt for a variety of reasons," he said.
Primarily, he said, we "don't want hog hunters to start that culture" on the refuge. "It would be too easy for people to start dumping pigs."
The logistics of such a hunt, he said, also would be difficult, and the hunt likely would not be successful.
"We don't feel having a hog hunt would be that successful," Mense said, adding that "hunting pigs is not as easy as it may seem on the Outdoor Channel, especially on Mingo. Hunters could saturate the area and only take a few. Even in our managed deer hunts, 80 to 100 hunters only take a very few."
The bigger problem with a managed hunt, Mense said, is it would only "push the problem somewhere else," meaning the hogs would scatter to the refuge's neighbors.
"When they scatter, it really messes up our trapping efforts for a long time," he said.
That, Mense noted, is exactly the same reason the Missouri Department of Conservation banned hunting hogs on its conservation areas last year. What was happening was after finding hogs, then habituating them to bait sites and traps, hunters would move in and scatter the animals, effectively killing all the work which had gone into trapping them.
Trapping, Mense said, will remain the primary method used to remove hogs from the refuge. Staff has become much efficient at successfully catching pigs, and to date, more than 1,300 have been killed there, plus nearly 300 more from adjacent landowners.
"We know there's a big problem," Mense said. "In order to have success, we need help from everyone from other government agencies to private landowners. Everyone needs to be on the same page.
"It's definitely a long-term problem, and we're committed for the long term."