If you’re a Michigan hunter who has taken the opportunity to hunt pigs in one of Michigan’s local hunting preserves, hopefully you enjoyed the opportunity.  And if you’re a person who already has pork in the freezer after frequenting one of these hunting preserves – you better really enjoy that pork – because opportunities to hunt pigs within a Michigan preserve could be a thing of the past.

State wildlife biologists are on the verge of listing feral swine as an “invasive species”.  If that happens, those deer and elk ranches – which sometimes provide pig hunts as well – will not be able to do so anymore.

The NRC will be gathering information about this topic this month, but it will not be acted on again until sometime in September.  That should give everyone a few months to ponder how they feel about having wild pigs in Michigan:  By listing them are we losing an opportunity to hunt a different species?  Or are we helping out the entire Michigan ecosystem?

Now…..listing them will not ban all opportunities for a hunter to put some pork in his freezer.  They still have the possibility of running into a feral porker, and as long as they possess any valid hunting license, they can legally shoot them on site; only hunting pigs on hunting preserves would be affected.

Why are they being so hard on the hunting preserves?

Apparently because they see a direct correlation between the areas where these hunting preserves exist, and the locations where hunters have legally killed feral swine.  In a nutshell, the biologists believe that most of Michigan’s feral swine are escaping from the hunting preserves.  As Russ Mason, the state’s wildlife chief put it:

“Where we find the pigs running wild we find (a hunting preserve) nearby. There is one chance in a thousand that there is no relationship between the two.”

How do I feel about all this?

I’m very torn.  On one side I would love to have the same opportunities that Phillip, Rex, and Jeff have – but, on the other side, I can see the pig problem getting completely out of control if it’s not properly handled now; and as much as I would love to have a chance to bag a few porkers, I would hate to see the pigs decimate the landscape so much that it starts to effect Michigan’s whitetail habitat.

I’m sure both sides of the issue are getting taped up and ready to put on the gloves.  We’ll just have to wait to see what the NRC decides.

Note: Want to read more on this particular subject?  You can do so here!

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