Ohio house passes restrictive hog hunting bill

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biednick

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House Bill 503 | 135th General Assembly | Ohio Legislature

www.legislature.ohio.gov www.legislature.ohio.gov

This is a couple weeks old now, but the house unanimously passed a bill that introduces some pretty severe restrictions on hog hunting in Ohio. It's pretty clearly aimed at preventing the commercialization of hog hunting. It makes it illegal for anyone but a landowner, lessee, or their agent to hunt hogs. It imposes a prohibition on possessing, importing, breeding, or releasing hogs. It imposes a reporting requirement for anyone who has hogs on their property. It makes feeding wild hogs illegal. There's some other prohibitions in it too, but they're all things that would generally be covered under what I listed. It's been handed off to the senate and is in committee now.

Personally I think it's a good step in managing Ohio's hog population. As much as I enjoy hunting and eating hogs I recognize eradication is the proper management goal for any invasive species. Commercializing hog hunting creates a perverse incentive, and this law would keep that from happening in Ohio. Taking money out of the equation removes the biggest incentive to keep hogs around. It's not a total ban like other states have passed, but it should help keep money from becoming a major factor in how hogs are managed here.
 
biednick said:

House Bill 503 | 135th General Assembly | Ohio Legislature

www.legislature.ohio.gov www.legislature.ohio.gov

This is a couple weeks old now, but the house unanimously passed a bill that introduces some pretty severe restrictions on hog hunting in Ohio. It's pretty clearly aimed at preventing the commercialization of hog hunting. It makes it illegal for anyone but a landowner, lessee, or their agent to hunt hogs. It imposes a prohibition on possessing, importing, breeding, or releasing hogs. It imposes a reporting requirement for anyone who has hogs on their property. It makes feeding wild hogs illegal. There's some other prohibitions in it too, but they're all things that would generally be covered under what I listed. It's been handed off to the senate and is in committee now.

Personally I think it's a good step in managing Ohio's hog population. As much as I enjoy hunting and eating hogs I recognize eradication is the proper management goal for any invasive species. Commercializing hog hunting creates a perverse incentive, and this law would keep that from happening in Ohio. Taking money out of the equation removes the biggest incentive to keep hogs around. It's not a total ban like other states have passed, but it should help keep money from becoming a major factor in how hogs are managed here.
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Wrong! The state will see the likely tax revenue generated for their personal objectives and will commercialize it soon.
 
Coldfinger said:
Wrong! The state will see the likely tax revenue generated for their personal objectives and will commercialize it soon.
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Unless the state decides to open their own hunting preserve and starts breeding pigs to stock it they're going to have a real hard time doing that. We have a very small population of hogs here, to the point most folks never see them even if they're looking for them. Hunting truly wild hogs isn't really a thing here, so there's not an opportunity for the state to make money off them as a game animal. If anything they're reducing tax revenue by reducing sales at shooting farms. I imagine many of them will just start offering domestic breeds of pigs for people to shoot though.
 
A lot of farmers in PA lease the land. And usually don't allow hunting. And most farmers will not be going out at night to hunt pigs when they have to work early the next day. They will have a hard time controlling hogs on their own property if they get bad. And left unchecked. Just something to think about. I think it would have been best to leave well enough alone till there was a major issue. IMO
 
M1A1ABRAMS said:
A lot of farmers in PA lease the land. And usually don't allow hunting. And most farmers will not be going out at night to hunt pigs when they have to work early the next day. They will have a hard time controlling hogs on their own property if they get bad. And left unchecked. Just something to think about. I think it would have been best to leave well enough alone till there was a major issue. IMO
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The question is how much damage must be done before it's a major issue for them? I don't have 5k acres of beans, corn or peanuts planted in an area of the state where there are hogs but talk to people who do. They are sore about it to the point they have talked about taking care of them in ways that would be very detrimental all around.
 
eastbank said:
in some states it a money thing for land owners to charge to hunt them, but if you have ever seen what they can to to a field of crops in a matter of hours is amazing.
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Exactly. They can recover some of the cost of the pig damage, but rarely all of it. And the hassle ain't worth it.

The vast majority of Texas ranchers would eliminate pigs if given a chance.

Depending on the ranching, they usually cost more that they make. Farmers get hit the worst.

I'm not as familiar with land use outside TX, although, I suspect it's going to be similar.

The vast majority of Texas ranchers lease their land to Deer hunters. Pigs go with that deer lease. Deer and exotics drive the cost of the lease. Pigs are just an added bonus.

The average lease cost in Texas is too much money for a rancher to pass up. I thought I'd never lease my ranch, until I saw what good properties go for. My hunters do not want the pigs around. Neither do I.

The guys who sell pig hunts based on the weight of the pigs are buying their pigs from trappers or from pig buyers. They are fenced operations. Obviously, these guys like pigs. But they are a tiny % of land owners.
 
Just from reading a bunch about pigs on hear and elsewhere TOTAL ERADICATION IS A FALLACY.

If there is some small population in Ohio it seems bring all efforts to get them as fast as possible.

You only hear of people who live in pig country say to whom who don't is YOU DONT WANT THEM.
I live unfortunately in NJ and we do have a very minor pig population now maybe 800-1000 guesstimate. Very localized too. But even though I think it would be so cool to be able to go out anytime of the year any time of the day or night and go hunt would be orgasmicly satisfying, I know better that we truly don't want them.

Ohio, imho which means nothing should put efforts to ERADICATION as fast as possible. Listen to people who know how fast their population can grow. It's crazy.
 
eastbank said:
in some states it a money thing for land owners to charge to hunt them,
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Our real problem on the money side is farms raising and releasing pigs for folks to shoot. Of course they're not truly wild, but they have the same genetics and cause problems when they get out and breed with other escaped pigs. One of the more well known shooting farms is right in the middle of one of the biggest pockets of pigs we have. It could be a coincidence, but most folks assume that group started from pigs that escaped that farm.
 
I guess my big question on this is - can anyone name a state where hunting pigs IS allowed that has ALSO eradicated them? I don't know of any state that's managed to do that. But I haven't gone out and looked for the info. Maybe Ohio's approach will work, maybe not. I'm thinking about how leaving it up to private land owners could be problematic.....it could leave big pockets of land where the hogs could go for refuge if the landowner doesn't want to kill them. And what about public land? If they're on public land who is the landowner/lessee/agent? Is anyone going to kill them there?

Anyway, if eradication is the goal they might as well try a different approach from other states. I just listened to a hunting podcast that was talking about how lots of hogs have been moved around into new areas by hunters who want more stuff to hunt....seems like this bill is trying to get at that? Also who knows if whatever podcast ding-dong has good info, so I always take that with a grain of salt. I feel like some of those guys just love the sound of their own voice.
 

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