Feral hogs — please don't hunt them

Here's something that sounds backwards: Missouri does not want you to hunt feral hogs. With almost every other animal, more hunting means fewer animals. With wild hogs, it works the other way.

The reason is how hogs travel. They move in family groups called sounders — a sounder is a herd of feral hogs, usually sows and their young feeding together. MDC traps a whole sounder at once with big corral traps, which is the only way to actually shrink the population. But if a hunter walks up and shoots one or two, the rest scatter, get spooked, and become much harder to ever catch. So the law bans hog hunting on public land, and MDC asks you to report hogs instead of shooting them.

• You may not take feral hogs on conservation areas or any land MDC owns, leases, or manages.
• The same ban covers Mark Twain National Forest and the Ozark National Scenic Riverways.
• On private land, the owner — or someone they allow — may take hogs, and night vision is allowed there.
• Even so, MDC strongly discourages hog hunting anywhere, because it scatters the sounder and undoes the trapping work.
• Releasing or transporting feral hogs is illegal.