Releasing pigs into the forest was a terrible idea.
Feral pigs at Cape Canaveral, FL -- NASA photo
Mast is an old-fashioned word. The term refers to fallen nuts and fruits that are available to wild animals as winter food.
Sometimes we still hear or read about "mast trees". Often the term is used when talking about food sources for wildlife. Personally, I think of mast trees mainly as oaks, hickories, beech, and walnuts.
While browsing through the archives of Scientific American on the Library of Congress website recently, I came across an article about raising pigs on mast.
In 1864 when the article was written, the American chestnut was plentiful, as well as nuts and acorns from the trees I mentioned above. The author, J.T.D. of Springfield, Illinois, also identifies pawpaw, persimmon, haw and the hazelnut as forms of mast.
J.T.D. wrote that hogs who fed on mast produced pork as good as that from corn-fed hogs. He believed that "sweet acorns" were some of the best mast for producing tasty pork. He advised anyone moving to the "West" (west of the Appalachians) to buy land suitable for turning pigs into the forest where they could eat for free.
Sources of U.S. feral pigs
Hogs set loose in the woods by long-ago farmers like J.T.D. are part of the reason there's a feral pig problem in many parts of the United States today. We can't blame the old-time farmers exclusively, though. There are several other sources of today's feral pigs:
1. Early Spanish explorers brought hogs to the New World, some of which went wild.
2. Hogs were released for hunting purposes in several areas of the U.S. about 100 years ago.
3. Some mindless people are releasing pigs into the wild to this day--illegally in most cases -- so they can hunt them.
Feral pigs: Spoilers of nature
Here are just a few reasons why it's undesirable to have feral pigs in the woods.
1. They compete directly with native wildlife for food.
2. They root and wallow in wildlife habitat, wetlands, stands of endangered plants, croplands, and anywhere they go.
3. They eat small animals and the eggs and young of ground-nesting birds.
4. They transmit disease to domestic stock, and even to humans.
Read more here:
Feral Hogs in Michigan
Feral Hogs: Wildlife Enemy Number One (Alabama)
History of Wild Boars
Google search for "feral hogs"
"The power to recognize trees at a glance without examining their leaves or flowers or fruit as they are seen, for example, from the car-window during a railroad journey, can only be acquired by studying them as they grow under all possible conditions over wide areas of territory. Such an attainment may not have much practical value, but once acquired it gives to the possessor a good deal of pleasure which is denied to less fortunate travelers."
2 comments -- please add yours:
There's now a pig population boom. Pigs have quintupled in the last ten years and are still being released in new states by idiot hunters, so they've gone from 19 to 39 states. And they're cross-breeding with European boars to get larger and meaner. Recall that boar spears have a crossbar to keep the boar from running up the spear at you. I'm going to start carrying a baseball bat when I go to the country.
That's probably a good idea. I hope you never have to use it. Fending off a feral hog with a baseball bat would not be fun.
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