They can weigh up to 250lbs, stand 3ft tall, shatter bones with a powerful 30mph charge or slice you up with their 18-inch tusks.
Worse still, your chances of having a nasty encounter with a wild hog are going up every year.
The Daily Mail’s map reveals how in recent decades these destructive beasts have spread from isolated pockets to covering much of the South, California, and beyond.
More than six million nomadic pigs currently roam America, ravaging crops and properties that lay in their path, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) warns.
As they spread across more US states, they increasingly encounter people on the edges of towns and cities.
These face-offs have left people dead — by one estimate, the animals claim nearly 20 lives globally each year.
Carl White never expected to be fighting off a powerful wild hog as he worked out of his garage late one night on the outskirts of Houston, Texas.
The wheelchair-bound 63-year-old says his neighborhood is now a frontline in the battle between people and swine that’s leading to scary attacks.
With their sharp tusks and aggressive attitude, the animals have attacked pets and even people
‘He was coming full speed, looking right at me and fixing to mow me down,’ White says about his run-in in November.
Alerted by his dog, White drew his airsoft gun and scared the beast away with its flashlight and a volley of pellets.
Still, the animal still managed to get ‘so close that I could smell him,’ White told KHOU 11.
White got off lucky.
In his neighborhood, the animals, with their sharp tusks and aggressive attitude, have killed pets, confronted neighbors and damaged property.
They’re concentrated in Texas, Florida, and Louisiana.
Attacks on people are rare, but terrifying when they happen.
‘They’ve got a lot of force behind them,’ Josh Gaskamp, a swine expert with the Oklahoma-based Noble Research Institute, told the Daily Mail.
‘They can break some bones when they run you over.’
In 2019, Texas caregiver Christine Rollins, 59, was mauled to death by a pack of wild hogs while outside the home of the elderly couple she looked after, before being partially eaten.
Wildlife experts warn that as the population grows, the animals are becoming bolder, encroaching on suburban areas and attacking humans when they feel threatened or cornered.
The animals claim more lives by charging across highways and triggering road traffic accidents.
In October 2023, two women were killed after a group of wild pigs caused their car to swerve into a head-on collision in Jim Wells County, Texas.
They are also incredibly destructive, as they ravage crops, spread diseases and contaminate water sources, causing some $2.5 billion of damage each year in the US, says USDA.
Last year in College Station, Texas, wild hogs ravaged five soccer fields at an athletics complex, causing $150,000 in damage.
Wheelchair-bound Carl White fended off a wild hog attack outside his home in Houston, Texas
Feral hogs graze along a hiking trail in the Richland Creek wildlife management area in Texas
The USDA has launched expanded control efforts, including aerial shooting programs and increased hunting allowances.
They’re also working with their counterparts in Mexico and Canada to stop the animals from jumping the borders.
In the worst-hit states like Texas, law enforcement officials offer bounties of around $15 per hog ear to citizens who successfully shoot one down.
Groups of self-styled ‘hog hunters’ are cropping up across the US, shooting arrows and bullets from ‘hog-copters’ to kill thousands of the feral beasts each year.
Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene famously promoted hog-hunting, sharing in 2022 a video of her shooting swine and saying it would ‘help American farmers out.’
Wild hogs are an invasive species of pig that was first brought to Florida by Spanish settlers in the 1500s.
They’ve expanded from pockets of Florida, Texas, and parts of California in the early 1980s to some 35 states across the South, California, and beyond, nowadays, USDA maps show.
They have in recent years made gains in New Mexico, Kansas, Indiana, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky.
They reproduce fast, typically birthing two litters of around five piglets per year.
Another frontline is opening up along the northern US border, with invasive boars from Canada threatening to spread into Montana, Minnesota, and North Dakota.
They’ve been dubbed ‘super-pigs’ because they were crossbred with domestic varieties to make them bigger, stronger and more fertile.
Ryan Brook, director of the Canadian Wild Pig Research Project, says they’re ‘spreading out of control as we speak.’
In the coming decade, Gaskamp predicts the animals will have spread to some 40 states.
He in part blames the growing popularity of hog hunting, which sees the animals transferred to pens in new parts of the country — but they escape and start a new sounder.
‘This problem affects everybody,’ Gaskamp told the Daily Mail.
‘From agriculturalists to policymakers, hunters, wildlife enthusiasts and even the mom and son who want to use a local soccer field.’
For Ryan Ashcraft, 29, who hunts hogs from helicopters, the costs of pursuing the pesky animals can be sky-high
As many as nine million nomadic pigs currently roam America, destroying countless crops and properties which lay in their path. Ryan Ashcraft (top left) is among the hunters who helps reduce the population
Gaskamp says swine can be controlled with trapping, shooting, poisons and fences. He even developed a suspended trap known as the BoarBuster, which is more effective than other methods.
Still, he says, states such as Texas are overrun and cant do anything but mitigate the damage the animals do.
‘Getting this problem under control involves a lot of government agencies and industries collaborating,’ says Gaskamp.
‘If we don’t work together, we’re going to see the pig population grow.
Alarming figures show that wild hogs globally kill more people per year than sharks.
Between 2014 and 2023, there was an average of 5.8 fatal shark attacks worldwide compared to 19.7 wild pig attacks, according to the farming journal AgWeb.
The number of people killed by pigs climbed steadily from 2000 to 2019 to a total of 172 deaths.
It’s not known exactly how many wild hog attacks or fatalities occur in the US each year.
Longtime animal trapper, Craig Greene, recalls a terrifying encounter with the wild pigs in DeSoto County, Mississippi, in 2008.
He describes hiding in his own three-feet tall cage, knowing there was no one nearby to save him, until the animals eventually ran off and he could escape.
‘I know when they kill you, they’ll eat you while you’re screaming,’ says Greene.
‘I’d rather get eaten by an alligator.’
HOG-HUNTING HOMBRES
Pictured: People hunting hogs beside Ryan Ashcraft, who offers tourists and gun enthusiasts the opportunity to shoot the beasts from his ‘hogcopter’ in southern Texas
Gangs of self-styled ‘hog hunters’ are cropping up across the US to tackle the invasive species and, in some cases, claim payouts of $15 for each slain beast.
They use bows-and-arrows or guns to wipe out thousands of feral swine each year, often shooting from above aboard a ‘hog-copter.’
‘They’re wildly out of control,’ says Andy Butler, who has shot thousands of hogs and runs a Texas-based hunting consultancy.
Andy Butler, 36 (pictured) has shot thousands of hogs and runs a Texas-based company equipping law enforcement officials with the knowledge needed to safely shoot the beasts
A few miles away, Ryan Ashcraft also heads up a hog-hunting outfit – this time from the sky – which offers tourists and gun nuts a chance to snipe animals from one of his ‘hog-copters’.
‘The hogs are a cancer on the Texas economy,’ Ashcraft told DailyMail.com, estimating that his company, Ashcraft Aviation, helps wipe out up to 15,000 wild pigs each year.
‘If we didn’t do it, we would have problems,’ he said. ‘They would overrun the land.’
Meanwhile, Matt Wetzel runs a hunting company in Oklahoma which attracts gunslingers from all over who want to ‘harvest and shoot wild hogs’.
‘We are trying to eradicate them,’ he told DailyMail.com. ‘Or at least control the population’.
He grew up on a rice-producing farm which was persistently plagued by hordes of hogs tearing up the land and spoiling produce.
Butler started shooting hogs aged just 13. Since the animals are largely nocturnal, this meant learning to use night vision goggles, thermal optics and rifles.
Hunting a hog is no simple task. They normally travel in packs of around 20 to 35, but Butler says he’s come face-to-snout with a group of hogs – known as a sounder – numbering in the triple figures.
‘We have seen groups of 120 and that’s not uncommon,’ he told DailyMail.com.
‘You will see these huge groups. It’s pretty eye-opening.’
On top of their vast numbers, hogs are also hard to track down due to their nomadic, nocturnal nature, their excellent sense of smell, density, and intelligence.
