This weekend (February 28, 2020) is a field weekend for the Brant Scouts. They are running our small mammal arrays and will be building herp arrays tomorrow. This evening while setting traps the students noticed a sounder of about 11 feral hogs foraging in the next field over. Once the team finished setting traps, Dr. Brant moved closer to see if he could get a better picture. He got to within 50 yards of the pigs before they decided he was close enough and retreated to the woods behind them. Dr. Brant showed his students the damage these hogs could do to the pasture. When he turned around, he saw another sounder of 13 hogs wandering through the trapping array (which the team had just finished setting).

Brant Scout Hunter Lynn presented a poster at TSM discussing her camera trap research on this property. She reported ~1000 pigs in 2019 based on pictures. While this is undoubtedly an overestimation due to double (or even triple) counting, seeing 24 pigs in a few minutes illustrates exactly how many feral hogs are on the property. Maybe 1000 is not too much of an overestimation.

Now let’s hope the pigs don’t mess with the traps or herp arrays!