Last time I mentioned that while releasing the raccoon we came across some hogs. Well here are some photos. It was quite surprising--not seeing the hogs--but seeing them in a very large trap. We have a lot of wild hogs on the SRS and they've been studied quite a bit. Before the SRS was established there were many farmers living in the towns that used to be there. When the towns and the people were move off site some farmers left some hogs behind and there were also already some feral hogs in the area. They reproduced like crazy and did so well that by the mid 1960's DOE started allowing controlled hunts on site--along with hunts of deer. Any animals being hunted from the SRS need to be monitored for environmental contamination and for that reason and others, like being omnivores that can be a part of multiple trophic levels and get exposed to contaminants through numerous pathways, the wild hogs have been studied extensively. There are still a lot of them and sometimes I have the fun of coming across a big group of them with lots of little piglets. This was the first time I'd seen them in a trap--turns out some folks are radio-collaring and tagging some to further study their movements and group behavior. You can see the lead hog has a radio collar, but monitoring her they can keep track of the group which is likely a group of females and their offspring. It was fun to watch their behavior, they all turned toward us immediately, backed up, the dominant female stayed in front of the rest and the piglets all took off. They could fit through the fence so they ran away, I'm sure they came right back when we left. Most often I just get to see the wallows of hogs or see a group running away so it really was fun to get to watch them for a bit when they couldn't run.
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