Expensive way to get your pork chops.. LOL
If you think hunting down feral pigs and imported alien introduced/escaped wild boar would be expensive how about the cost to those who spend up to $50,000. to buy the services of a guide to get only the opportunity to hunt one or two high value game species/specimens on a hunting trip for a week or so. Not to mention the cost of travel, taxidermy, processing, shipping, fees and many other costs if you are successful. Now that is some expensive mutton.
Of course, with the $10,000 and up per year in annual costs I spend for boating and catching some fish, that is rather expensive fish, but it all goes into our local costal economy.
Increasingly hunting is not, if for many years it ever was, a cost effective way of putting food on the table. The BC game meat you do put on the table, if properly cared for is of incredible value, with intense unique flavors and quality which cannot be acquired by any other means. No comparison to the incredible flavor of a wild Turkey harvested in south east BC (that have increased their range from the USA) compared to the bland tasteless birds most get for the holidays, even the free range ones. The wild ones do have more texture to the flesh as the can actually fly and run very fast. I suspect that feral pigs and escaped/introduced wild boars are likely tastier than factory farm domesticated pork but don’t really know.
I have eaten wild game all my life and there is quality and health value to the meat. Very low fat content, no artificial hormones, no red dye, no antibiotics, and not stored and sold in sealed air tight packs full of gas to keep the outside of the meat artificially looking bright electric red and fresh. The inside of the meat may be gray but the outside will look like it was just cut and I understand the meat can actually rot before it will look bad. So pay attention to those dates, especially with some types of prepackaged burger.
But this is not really about the cost of getting some pork, it is about hunters using their skills, equipment and experience to help prevent what could be a major ecological, cultural and financial disaster for the province, especially if it goes beyond local escapes and they were to increase their range and migrate over the border and establish and breed in numbers as wild turkeys have done. One wonders if the migration northward of animals is yet another manifestation of global warming.
They displace and eat native species including rare ones and spread disease and parasites to native species and domestic animals. They do huge damage to agriculture, ranching, farming and golf courses etc. and have put some out of business. They do 1.5 billion in damage each year in the US and are established in three fourths of all states
Despite very liberal gun laws and sophisticated attempts at eradication or at least control costing many million, the US seems like it is losing the war and the Americans were born for this kind of fight.
They are omnivores like humans and eat everything which may help explain their success. The big pigs can go 300 pounds or more and the boar species can go a solid 225 to as much as 700 hundred pounds with huge long razor sharp tusks that can open up a human in a second and they can be very aggressive and may even consider you and your pets food. The Hog Hunter Shows give people a misleading sense of how really dangerous they can actually be. They are not like most game species that tend to survive on instinct. They are highly intelligent, quick learners, can hunt in packs and have few predators, with the exception of man. They also breed like rabbits and if they were to establish in Canada in the millions like the US, I suspect you may even see more lobbying pressure to allow the carrying of high powered hand guns in some rural areas, like in the US.
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