You wild hog, you!

This is the hog section of the ranch.  About 80 of the 150 high-fenced acres, are closed off so the hogs can't wander around too freely.  The deer have access to the hog section, but the hogs do not have access to the deer section.  Yes, we still have segregation on the ranch....don't judge us.

To me, the hog section looks like the scene of a post-apocalyptic war.  There is no grass.  The only green in the area is on the trees....but not trees low enough to the ground that the hogs can eat them. 

These next 2 pictures show the fence that separates the hog section from the deer section.  Can you guess which side is which?  (Mind you, it's winter, so the grass isn't as green as usual.) 

 To supplement the food for the animals there are 2 kinds of feeders on the ranch. 

Protein feeders that hold protein pellets that look like hamster or rabbit food and the food is always readily available to the animals:

 And corn feeders, that shoot corn out of them at a scheduled time everyday:

The hog section has 7 or 8 corn feeders with tree stands at each for hog hunters.  Because this corn is like candy for the deer, you find a lot of them in this section around the times the feeders go off. 

Here's one in action:

The little gold nuggets of yummyness.

This is outside of the high-fence on the ranch where the wild hogs have come in and rooted up the property.  There are patches like this all over the ranch which is destroying all of our meadows.  The neighbor who is a farmer said they have destroyed over half of his crops.  After the rest of the ranch is high-fenced, we will have to set up some traps to try to catch any of the hogs that have managed to stay inside of the fence. 

The hogs are so destructive and are so out of control, that in Texas and Florida, they have legalized this form of hog hunting:  (WARNING!  ANIMALS DIE IN THIS VIDEO....I DON'T WANT HATE MAIL!)

Lessons for this post:

1.  Hogs are why we don't have nice things.

2.  I REALLY want to go helicopter hog hunting!