Russian boar in Tennessee

[Bob Wright]

There is a herd of Russain boar in the mountains of East Tennessee and North Carolina. Sometime in the 1700s a wealthy count from Europe settled in the mountainous region of North Carolina. (At that time North Carolina extended to the Mississippi River, Tennessee being carved out of that area in 1796.) This landowner missed boar huning so much he imported a herd of Russian boar for his own private hunting preserve. In time the herd grew and became firmly established in the region. It is my understanding that that herd was used to establish another herd on Catalina Island off the coast of California.

There is a huntable herd there to this day and hunting wild boar is popular. My (late) brother's in-laws always had wild boar as part of the New Year's Day feast.

Bob Wright

 

[XUSNORDIE]

They have become established in WV also. Difficult terrain to hunt for me anymore....hunting in the areas mentioned is nothing like pig hunts in TX.

A lot of people are profiting off of it as well.....especially in TX. Pigs are a problem for a lot of folks. I'm curious as to what type of ROI the hunts bring in and how much it gives back to fixing the damage caused by the pigs. Some of those hunts are pricey! Especially the ones using helicopters (not for me).

 

[Coyote56]

Boar?
We have a bumper crop of deer, turkeys, coyotes, and enough bear to make it interesting..no sightings of boar that I can attest to though. Is this herd more toward the north?

 

[contender]

I grew up knowing all about the Russian Wild boar here in our mountains. And how occasionally someone would hunt them.

However,, over the decades (centuries?) the original Russian boars bloodline got bred down to where many years ago,, NC changed the laws concerning hunting them. They removed the wild boar from the big game list,, saying they were no longer a definitive species,, and just classified all wild hogs as just that. Wild hogs.
Now the pigs we have are just a mixed breed,, and you will occasionally see a pig with some of the features of the Russians in them. But not too often.

 

[Wvfarrier]

As invasive and destructive as they are, they should be eradicated

 

[TULLYMARS]

Been over thirty years since I visited the area, but Telico Plains in east TN. had a fair number of the Russian strain pigs. Beautiful area but really rough terrain

 

[Mobuck]

Feral hogs are a problem in numerous areas and actual 'wild boar' that have returned to the wild seems an even worse scenario. Hopefully, the Tennessee bunny cop agency will be more aggressive and efficient than MO has been with the feral hog issues. :devilish:

 

[Bob Wright]

Been over thirty years since I visited the area, but Telico Plains in east TN. had a fair number of the Russian strain pigs. Beautiful area but really rough terrain

Telico Plains is where the big boar seem to be found. My brother's BIL is the one who furnishes them for New Year's Day,with black eyed peas. Russians run around 600 pounds and are more aggressive than feral hogs.

But even a 400 pound feral hog can really put a bite on a man.

Bob Wright

 

[Gator89]

The first hogs (swine) in North America in the 1500's in FL imported by the Spanish.

The Spanish also imported the first cattle to North America.

As a young 'un growing up in FL I remember folks selling trapped hogs to buyers from NC and TN to be released on the "hunting preserves" advertised in the back pages of Outdoor Life, Field & Stream, etc.

 

[Bob Wright]

Incidentally, Chinese boars were once the source of paint brush bristle. The bristle was never cut to length. After plucking the bristle from the boar, Chinese laborers sorted each bristle by length, then bound the bristles into one pound bundles. (China used the English Imperial system then.) These bundles were then auctioned off and brought to the US for making paint brushes. A maple handle was made and the bristles bound to the handle by vulccanizing, the bound with a leather srip fastened with brass nails. These paint brushes sold for several hundred dollars. The perfection of nylon bristles ended the era of leather bound hog bristle bruches.

Bob Wright

 

[WanderLust]

I always understood this location to be around the Crossville Tn area, on the Cumberland Plateau. Very good setting for wildlife up there, with moderate weather and plenty of farmland to raid! May be confusing it with another resort that was opended for the same reason (hunting) and then went broke and simply released everything into the wild.

 

[MaxMan]

Russian Boar. How is it different from the feral pigs down here? Does it taste like Vodka?

 

[Hankus]

The first hogs (swine) in North America in the 1500's in FL imported by the Spanish.

The Spanish also imported the first cattle to North America.

As a young 'un growing up in FL I remember folks selling trapped hogs to buyers from NC and TN to be released on the "hunting preserves" advertised in the back pages of Outdoor Life, Field & Stream, etc.

@Gator89- what part of Florida are you from? I grew up in Sarasota and Manatee. As a kid I shot a lot of hogs at the behest of local farmers and dairies.

 

[Gator89]

@Gator89- what part of Florida are you from? I grew up in Sarasota and Manatee. As a kid I shot a lot of hogs at the behest of local farmers and dairies.

I was raised in Sumter County. 80 or so miles north of Tampa.

 

[MaxMan]

@Gator89- what part of Florida are you from? I grew up in Sarasota and Manatee. As a kid I shot a lot of hogs at the behest of local farmers and dairies.

Palm Beach county, out west. Had a friend who shot a sow and then here come two babies. My wife took one home. Our friends wife castrated him, to which her son asked, mom are you going to kill him the rest of the way?.
She brought him home, bottle fed him and raised him to about 250 lbs. Answered to his name , Truffles.

 

[Gator89]

Palm Beach county, out west. Had a friend who shot a doe and then here come two babies. My wife took one home. Our friends wife castrated him, to which her son asked, mom are you going to kill him the rest of the way?.
She brought him home, bottle fed him and raised him to about 250 lbs. Answered to his name , Truffles.

You talking about deer or hogs now? Doe or sow?

 

[BearBiologist]

There is a herd of Russain boar in the mountains of East Tennessee and North Carolina. Sometime in the 1700s a wealthy count from Europe settled in the mountainous region of North Carolina. (At that time North Carolina extended to the Mississippi River, Tennessee being carved out of that area in 1796.) This landowner missed boar huning so much he imported a herd of Russian boar for his own private hunting preserve. In time the herd grew and became firmly established in the region. It is my understanding that that herd was used to establish another herd on Catalina Island off the coast of California.

There is a huntable herd there to this day and hunting wild boar is popular. My (late) brother's in-laws always had wild boar as part of the New Year's Day feast.

Bob Wright

There are no "Russian" boars in the US. The boars they brought in were from Bavaria (Germany) and DNA shows they were already crossed with domestic pigs.

Craig Boddington wrote a book on hog hunting. Good information but his biology SUCKS (Pigs are NOT related to bears and domestic and wild pigs have the same # of chromosomes-any variation of 36 vs 37 .
is a Robertsonian Translocation=similar to what cause Down's Syndrome in humans)

https://dh.wcu.edu/index.php/2010/08/17/european-wild-boars/
I worked as a part-time hunting guide on wild pigs in Central Cali while in grad school. In fact, I was going to do my MS Thesis on wild pig social structure, but Cal DFG convinced me to do "urban" bears!

For more information, look up (best results will be on Google Scholar) Reginald Barrett, Ph.D. who did his doctoral dissertation while working as a guide in NorCal.

Here's a good concise, if somewhat dated, article:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3781857 (Incomplete)

A good paper on WHY feral pigs revert back to "wild" characteristics: (Incomplete):

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38747342/

 

[bocash3]

There is a herd of Russain boar in the mountains of East Tennessee and North Carolina. Sometime in the 1700s a wealthy count from Europe settled in the mountainous region of North Carolina. (At that time North Carolina extended to the Mississippi River, Tennessee being carved out of that area in 1796.) This landowner missed boar huning so much he imported a herd of Russian boar for his own private hunting preserve. In time the herd grew and became firmly established in the region.

To echo Bob, I was a career life sciences/ecology/biology/wildlife teacher in high school and various junior highs in two counties. Occasionally, my subject would be the natural history of various species. The "Russian" or European boar was one of them.

During 1910-1912, George C. Moore and Conway C. Moore leased a large mountain tract to establish a game preserve similar to those in Europe. The site was Hooper's Bald in Graham County. Their stocking included 13 European wild boars, 14 elk, 8 buffalo, 6 mule deer, 25 black bears, 9 Russian brown bears, and about 200 wild turkeys. The 2,000 acre release area was encompassed by a high fence so these animals could be easily hunted. The fence failed and the boars spread and survived. There is no written account of what happened to the other exotics.

A full blown European wild boar develops long tusks, angled so that the insides are sharpened every time the tops and bottoms come together. The result are knife-like weapons. A boar can and will kill a person. They charge and are programmed to drive these tusks into an unlucky target, then throw their head upward. One account tells of a man getting his femoral artery ripped open and bleeding to death.

 

[BearBiologist]

As invasive and destructive as they are, they should be eradicated

Read some of Barretts papers on eradication programs in the San Francisco area!:
https://www.researchgate.net/profil...moving-feral-pigs-from-Annadel-State-Park.pdf

 

[MaxMan]

You talking about deer or hogs now? Doe or sow?

Sow, pigs.

 

[MaxMan]

You talking about deer or hogs now? Doe or sow?

Spell check. I corrected it. Sow.

 

[MaxMan]

Read some of Barretts papers on eradication programs in the San Francisco area!:
https://www.researchgate.net/profil...moving-feral-pigs-from-Annadel-State-Park.pdf

I thinks there is a way to stop hunger in the country.

 

[gunzo]

I recall seeing adds for a few Hog hunting operations/lodges in the Crossville, Cookeville area as far back as the late 70's.

 

[BearBiologist]

I recall seeing adds for a few Hog hunting operations/lodges in the Crossville, Cookeville area as far back as the late 70's.

I knew a woman who hunted pig in Central California in the late '60s early '70s (I was 18 or 19 at the time). Italian and made Italian dishes using wild game (Italian sausage, Quail Cacciatore, etc.) I started in probably my mid-20's (mid to late 70's).

 

[redhawker]

It is my understanding that that herd was used to establish another herd on Catalina Island off the coast of California.

Believe it or not that's one of the few places in the world that they've been able to eradicate a population of wild boar. https://www.islapedia.com/index.php?title=Pigs:_Santa_Catalina_Island