Growing Up in Whiteside Cove

Wild Hogs in the Chattooga Watershed

Eric Orr

The cultural heritage of the Chattooga River watershed is rich with the legacy of wild hogs. Since the 1500's imported hogs have been leaving their mark on the forests and folkways of our region. Indians and European settlers alike used hogs for meat and trade. Their impact can be seen in names like Hogback Mountain, Hog Holler, and the Walhalla High School Razorbacks.

Hogs were introduced to the United States by Hernando De Soto in 1539 when his expedition landed on the Florida coast. To the Indians of De Soto's day, pigs were repulsive creatures. The earliest Cherokee name for the hog was sikqua, the same name given to the opossum. The name later evolved into sikqua utse tsti, or "grinning opossum." Both animals were considered filthy and unfit to eat. The Cherokee believed that if a person ate the meat of a slow moving animal that person would become slow and sluggish. The fact that hogs were brought here by Europeans also contributed to the Native Americans' distaste for the animals. They had similar feelings toward cattle, which they called the "white man's deer." That attitude was held even after the Cherokee had adopted the pig as livestock, which probably occurred sometime in the 1700's. And though Indian women were relegated to taking care of the "filthy animals," the entire tribe depended on pork to supplement the bear and deer meat derived from hunting.

When pigs were brought to the U.S. they were kept like cattle and were often allowed to free range through the forests. In the Southern Appalachians where land was too steep to cultivate domestic hogs would roam the hills foraging for food, thriving on chestnuts and acorns. When the animals were ready to sell at big city markets they would be rounded up into pens and herded by the hundreds or thousands down drover's roads like the Old Buncombe Trail (a spur of the Old Buncombe Trail crossed the Chattooga River at Burrells Ford). which crossed the Chattooga at Burrells Ford. The practice free ranging and herding hogs ensured that enough animals escaped to establish a healthy feral population in our forests.

But hog populations began to dwindle in 1920's along with deer, turkey and bear. One of the hog's primary food sources, the American chestnut, was in decline, forests had been over-logged and new laws were being passed that limited and eventually eliminated free ranging livestock. More and more people moved away from the mountains to work factory jobs leaving their subsistence farms behind, and domesticated hogs became less common.

Like the other major game animals, wild hogs have made a comeback, but perspectives are somewhat mixed. While the animals are an ecological nightmare, they are highly prized by many big game hunters. Do a Google search for "hunting boar" and you'll get a listing of countless websites dedicated to the pursuit of feral hogs. Lots of folks spend lots of money to pursue wild pigs. In 1893, the first true Russian boars were introduced to the U.S. in a New Hampshire hunting preserve.

Then in 1910 and 1912, more Russian wild boars were released into a hunting preserve in Graham County, North Carolina near the Tennessee border. By the 1920's most of them had escaped and established a foothold. The Great Smoky Mountain National Park was later created 30 miles north of the hunting preserve, and by the 1940's the wild pig population had spilled over into park boundaries, where they remain a serious problem today.

Russian boars were again released in two hunting preserves in California in the 1920's, some of which got loose and intermingled with feral hogs that had already escaped domestication.

Like most invasive species, wild hogs adapted well to the forests where they were introduced. And with few predators it didn't take them long to populate most of the Southern Appalachian region. Wild sow generally produce 2 litters of 4-8 piglets per year, but they have the potential to give birth to up to 12 piglets 4 times a year. The baby pigs are born after a 115 day gestation period and stay with their mother for about a year. They are sexually mature at a year and a half and fully grown at 5-6 years. The life span of wild hogs is 15 to 25 years. These traits give wild hogs the potential to multiply exponentially.

Although feral pigs can mate any time of year they generally breed during 2 major seasons; one in the summer and one in the winter. When a sow goes into heat boars will fight to breed with her. They attack each other by slicing and jabbing their tusks at the opponent's shoulders. The tusks are extremely sharp and usually measure between 3 and 5 inches. Although they can inflict serious wounds to humans, wild hogs normally develop "shields" on their shoulders that consist of cartilage and scar tissue. These shields are usually about 1 inch thick but they get harder and thicker as the hog grows older.

Wild hogs are considered one of the smartest animals in the forest making them hard to hunt and trap. It's also why they make for a challenging game animal. They rely heavily on their keen sense of smell to locate food. The diet of the wild hog is about as varied as a human's. Along with acorns and nuts, they've been known to eat roots and tubers, most any kind of agricultural crops, fruit, frogs, snakes, salamanders, insects, mice, eggs, and even baby rabbits, fawns and calves. They will also eat dead and decaying animals.

Wild pigs have a home range of about 10 square miles but they'll move outside that range in search of food or in response to hunting pressure. They like low lying areas near water because the ground is softer. It makes digging for food easier and provides mud for them to roll around in for protection from insects. Hogs also need the water to cool themselves in hot weather and they usually won't go farther than a mile from water.

The feeding and breeding habits of the wild hog have turned them into an ecological disaster. Having the propensity to reproduce like rabbits, it doesn't take them long to overpopulate and overuse the resources available and once they inhabit an area they are there for good. Hogs are the kudzu of the animal kingdom. They "hog" everything for themselves at the expense of the native flora and fauna. Wild pigs will sometimes "root" up dirt 3 feet deep looking for food or making wallows to roll in. And when a bunch of them get together they can tear up a whole field of crops overnight. In addition to the crop loss the huge wallows also threaten wetlands with bank erosion and sedimentation, which can lead to a host of environmental and agricultural problems. It renders water undrinkable for humans and livestock, causes algae bloom which kills fish and other aquatic life and spreads some of the diseases that hogs carry, such as E. coli. Wild hogs are responsible for millions of dollars of crop loss and environmental damage every year.

Feral pigs have been implicated in the recent E. coli outbreak in conventionally grown California spinach which killed 3 people and made over 200 people sick. That incident alone caused millions of dollars in losses and left spinach with a nasty stigma. Other diseases that are associated with wild hogs are pseudorabies, brucellosis and tuberculosis, all of which are a potential threat to domestic livestock.

Twenty-three states now have wild hogs. Texas and Florida have the highest populations, but Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina all have them. Hogs are a big problem in the Chattooga River watershed, where dog hunting is allowed and hogs are illegally released for hunting. Although it would be virtually impossible to eradicate feral hogs, their destructive effects could be limited by an intensive trapping program coupled with stiffer restrictions on dog hunting. Please encourage your state's Department of Natural Resources to take action against feral pigs. Ask them to outlaw hunting hogs with dogs. The best way to get a handle on wild pigs is to remove their status as a game animal.

Growing Up in Whiteside Cove

Reprinted from My Life and Times, by Thomas Eugene Picklesimer

With all the long hours of work I did from the time I could walk, at home and as a teenager on jobs, I would coon-hunt most every night in the winter. All the men and boys had hunting dogs, and we would each try to catch more coons than anyone else.; I never won the contests, but I know I spent more hours in the woods than any other person.

My Father had as many as 100 hogs in the woods during some seasons. These hogs were a gentle breed and were never wild in the woods. The trouble was that wild boars would come to the gentle hogs and most of their offsprings would be wild. The greatest sport of all was catching these hogs and changing them to barrows. I had dogs that would catch any wild boar and hold him by the ears until he was tied down. If these boars lived to be old, their tusks would be four inches long. Two of my best friends were cut on the leg by these boars, and they could not walk for months.

I remember the dog catching one of these boars on top of Whiteside Mountain. When we had made a barrow out of him, we were so afraid of him, we never noticed his head was turned to the face of the mountain. When we turned him loose, he jumped down the 2,000 foot cliff. As we watched him fall, the man who helped me said: “I don’t blame him. I would have jumped off the mountain too!”

In the fall of the year, there would be bears moving into the Cove to eat the chestnuts. If they happened to find a field of corn when the ears were soft, they would tear all the corn down while eating the ears. We would get our dogs and run the bears out of the country or kill them. I would pray for the bears to come. It was much fun to hear the dogs barking and the men hollering.

Hunting wild cats was a sport we liked very much. These cats would get in a “rock den” if possible. When the dogs got too close, the cat would go up a tree. I could climb any tree I ever saw, and I would shake the cat out of the tree and beat him with a stick. He would cut a dog to pieces. I had a dog with an ear eaten off by a cat.

One of the best hunters in the mountains was Uncle “Doc” Nicholson. Once, we had a cat bayed in a rock cliff and we could see it. As a dog would try to catch it, he would cut it to pieces. All the dogs were wounded except Uncle “Doc’s.” They were afraid. He would catch a dog and throw it on the cat. All the dogs were so badly cut we had to shoot the cat.

The squirrels would come in the fall to eat the chestnuts. Once, when I was in the woods by myself and came to a place that was covered with squirrels on the ground and the trees were full of squirrels, I counted ten and twelve in each tree.

The old men would never believe this tale as they had never seen anything like I did. The squirrels were the best wild meat of all to me.