Free-Ranging Pigs Not so Free for the Taking

Why You Can’t (Easily) Dine on California’s Delicious Wild Swine

California has a free-range pig problem. An estimated 200,000 to 400,000 feral swine are tearing up farms, vineyards and public parks—plus the occasional soccer field and backyard—in 56 of the state’s 58 counties. A new California state bill sponsored by Senator Bill Dodd (D-Napa) seeks to make it easier to hunt these “hogs gone wild,” but it faces opposition from the very hunting groups it purports to help.

In Marin, Sonoma and Napa counties, there seem to be more would-be hunters than there are huntable pigs. Everyone loves free pork, it turns out. Ron Castrillo, head of Sonoma Trappers, a business that “deals with” pests from squirrels to raccoons, also happily disposes of wild hogs. He’ll take care of your problem pigs, no charge. Most landowners prefer to bring in a few buddies for a private hunt.

“If you want clean and green, delicious lean meat, hunt wild boar,” says Castrillo.

Taylor Boetticher, co-owner of Fatted Calf charcuterie, agrees: “It’s great stuff—the quintessential pasture-raised pig. It doesn’t get any more-free range than feral!”

But Fatted Calf doesn’t sell any California-sourced wild boar products. And you can’t order it in a restaurant around here, either. You can only eat a wild California pig if you hunt it yourself or know a hunter or trapper kind enough to slip you some sausage—for free.

Blame Monterey

America’s porcine troublemakers are a nonnative, invasive subspecies of Sus scrofa resulting from crossbreeding between escaped domestic pigs, imported centuries ago by the first European settlers, and some European wild boars brought in for sport hunting in the 1920s by a single Monterey County resident, George Gordon Moore, who also cut them loose in North Carolina. The European wild boar has longer hair, smaller ears, taller shoulders with shorter hindquarters and, for the males, longer tusks than domestic pigs, but the latter’s body type will quickly adapt to the wild in similar ways even without crossbreeding.

There are as many as 9 million feral swine roaming 39 states: California is in fourth place, trailing Texas, Florida and Georgia—for now. The population has exploded like a “feral swine bomb,” a phrase first attributed to Dale Nolte, manager of the National Feral Swine Damage Management Program at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. (Check out USDA’s slick “Feral Swine in America” series on YouTube, covering several states.)

What’s the problem with wild pigs? They reproduce faster than any other large mammal. Almost like rabbits, in fact, having up to two litters of five to seven piglets per year, starting at around 8 months old. Two or more sows and their young from multiple litters will travel together in a group called a sounder; older boars tend to travel alone. Wild pigs have poor eyesight but good hearing and an amazing sense of smell (of course). They also face very little predator pressure—coyotes and mountain lions will attempt only the younger piglets.

Rick Petkus, who’s lived in Napa’s Wild Horse Valley for 30 years amidst a couple of large vineyards, used to see wild pigs often, but thinks the 2017 fire pushed many of them out. “They love cover crops, fava beans. But I’ve also seen a pig eating grapes,” he says. Petkus and his wife woke up several years ago to a ruckus in their front yard. A large sow was circling the oak tree in distress. In the oak’s branches was a mountain lion with a small piglet in its jaws. Petkus chased them both away and ended up cooking the piglet like a suckling. He’s run into many while hiking, and he hunts them when he can get access to private land to do so.

Because they’re omnivores, pigs not only enjoy snacking on just about any farmed crop, they’ll tear up pasture, fields and vineyards with their powerful snouts in search of roots, grubs and the water they need to regulate their body temperatures.

“A couple pigs in the night can clear half an acre,” says Tommy Otey, farm manager for Front Porch Farm in Healdsburg and Acorn Ranch in Yorkville (Mendocino County). Painstakingly imported (from Italy) pigs were at one time raised on Acorn Ranch, but the entire herd was eventually sold to other ranches and farms. The area is now “crawling with feral pigs,” according to Otey.

For ranchers who closely manage their stocking density to their acreage, losing a couple hundred square feet of pasture can be significant, plus the risk of erosion. Less frequently, wild boars will kill chickens, lambs and other young livestock, and all pigs will feed on carcasses. They don’t just destroy property. Their destructive habits wreak havoc on soil fertility, on the habitat of native plants and animals, and also make it harder to protect endangered and threatened species.

Pigs are also shockingly smart—University of Pennsylvania researchers have taught domestic pigs to play video games by manipulating joysticks with their snouts. California’s wild hogs may be even wilier. They’ve learned to do their foraging at night, tunnel under fences, avoid many types of traps and to relocate, fast, when hunted.

A Pork in the Road

Classified as a game mammal by California in 1957, wild pigs are managed by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW). Hunters must have a valid hunting license ($52 annually for residents) and purchase a wild pig tag ($25 for residents). If they’re successful, they tag the carcass and fill out the CDFW’s online form with information about the pig. They can hunt on private land only with permission of the landowner, and on public land as part of a state-sanctioned organized pig hunt, such as is held annually at Lake Sonoma (bow and arrow only) and at Lake Berryessa.

Pig hunting tags are a significant source of revenue for the state: almost 54,000 were sold during the 2020—21 wild pig season, raising $874,000. But only 3,950 tags representing successful hunts were returned, 72 fewer than the previous year. Sonoma County accounted for 95 of them, Napa 29 and Marin just 3, while Monterey porked out at 1,118 and Mendocino had 195.

Landowners can shoot or trap problem pigs themselves with a depredation permit, no hunting license needed, and only monthly reporting required. If they catch one in the act of destroying their property, they’re allowed to kill it without a permit and file a depredation incident report later.

Public parks also deal with feral swine through depredation permits and hired guns. Kyle Seever, his father and brother all trap and hunt wild pigs for a living in the North Bay, working mostly for state agencies. “I get phone calls from landowners, but they don’t want to talk to me very long when they hear what I charge,” he says. “Their workers can usually handle it—up to a point.” Seever estimates he eliminates 800 to 1,000 pigs on average every year, in areas including Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Reserve, Salt Point State Park and the Jenner headlands.

Still, humans aren’t even close to defusing the swine bomb. Which is why Senator Dodd, a hunter and a member of the Congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus, introduced SB 856 in January. The bill would replace tags with a wild pig “validation” ($15 for residents, $50 for nonresidents) that would allow hunters to take any number of wild pigs; it would also eliminate the need for a depredation permit for landowners and allow them to authorize whoever they want to kill pigs on their land on their behalf.

There is widespread support for those provisions, although they would mean significant lost revenue for CDFW and probably the end of its helpful data collection. What hunters’ groups don’t like are the bill’s proposed prohibitions against “contained pig hunting preserves”—which are big business in California— and criminalizing the “knowing release of any swine to live in a wild or feral state upon public or private land.” Several people interviewed for this story complained that many private hunting outfits were importing European wild boars, “the bigger and uglier the better, so that Joe Blow can get the trophy pig he wants,” as one put it off the record. “And what we really don’t need are any more wild boars.”

SB 856 also seeks to reclassify feral pigs as “exotic game animals,” so they can be managed separately from other game mammals such as deer. The bill’s opponents say that would be unnecessarily confusing since feral hogs are anything but exotic. In fact, it’s their very piggyness that makes it so hard to eat them.

How the Sausage Gets (Legally) Made

Legally, hunters can eat what they kill, and they can give it to friends and family. Ranchers can slaughter their own animals and do the same. The problem comes when you want to sell game meat or even donate it to a nonprofit. Then the government gets involved, for food safety reasons. Most game meat like venison, elk, duck, bear and rabbit exists in a gray area; some states allow state-inspected carcasses to be butchered and donated or sold (such as turned into jerky or served in a restaurant), but some require USDA inspection. What you see on a restaurant menu is most likely the oxymoronic “farm-raised wild game.”

But when it comes to pigs, the USDA claims jurisdiction over swine of all kinds, whether domestic or feral. Pigs can carry quite a few serious diseases, in particular the bacteria that cause brucellosis and trichinosis, which can infect humans who handle or consume raw pork. The carcasses also need to have been properly and safely eviscerated (for example, not nicking the bowel and contaminating the meat withe. coli) and kept cold. Government-enforced food safety standards exist for good reason.

Which means that for Fatted Calf to make sausage from a California wild boar, that pig had to be trapped and transported alive to a USDA-certified facility, where it would be inspected, slaughtered and then inspected again. David Evans of Marin Sun Farms owns the last USDA-certified slaughterhouse in the Bay Area, and since he closed that Petaluma facility’s doors to non—Marin Sun Farms animals in late 2019, North Bay ranchers have had to truck their hogs (and cattle) hours away, to Orland or Modesto. Although two mobile slaughterhouses have been launched to fill the gap, neither is yet taking regular pigs, let alone wild ones.