Sounders.

This is coolbert:

Once again in the Chicago Tribune we have a story that has been covered before. The wild pig gone berserk and a menace and nuisance in several states. Herds of pigs [a herd of pigs is called a sounder] proliferating in abundance and number and causing widespread and ever increasing mayhem, destruction to crops and native vegetative matter in a massive way, almost overwhelming in nature.

"GPS, copters deploy in war against crop-eating pigs"

And hunted with can only be called quasi-military methods.

WAR!!

Quasi-military methods NOW to include:

* The use of GPS for sounder location.
* The use of night vision devices.
* The use of helicopters [air assault].

From the Tribune article only today:

"Oklahoma just called the GPS-equipped Judas pigs, which leader hunters to their unsuspecting friends. Texans started gunning down wild hogs from helicopters last year. South Carolina legislators have drafted a bill [kill] that allows hunting with night-vision devices."

This very topic has been the subject of various previous blog entries.

Wild pigs, a cross of feral hog [escaped and now wild domestic pigs] and imported European wild boar breeding in extraordinary numbers, a threat to crops and the environment, the proliferation of which is a threat growing and cannot be contained, almost "guerrilla-like" insidious and uncontainable!

"They tear down even more than they eat, and they eat plenty"

Animals big, ugly, dangerous, wily, and having a degree of animal smarts not a whole lot less than a dog or cat!

Be very careful when hunting these critters. They can and will come at you to KILL YOU and have a marked capacity for being able to do so!!

The "hunt" for the wild pigs does constitute very realistic training for soldiers? A sport that benefits the society as a whole and has that element of danger that ordinary military training just does not provide. You can "wet your pants" literally when after these creatures.

Teams of soldiers from units such as special forces, rangers, Marines, paratroopers, SEAL, etc., using archaic weaponry [bow and arrow, crossbow, spears, black powders rifles, etc.] hunting the wild pigs perhaps is the ULTIMATE in military training only second to actual combat itself? I would think so. That ELEMENT OF DANGER PRESENT AS IT NORMALLY IS NOT!

Definitely too there is precedent for such military maneuvers! From the StrategyPage CIC web site of Al Nofi:

"In December of 1959 a detail of Army Special Forces personnel conducted a mission on Ishigaki Shima, a Japanese island, in support of operations to wipe out an infestation of wild boar."

This was U.S. Army Special Forces [Green Berets] from the battalion forward located on Okinawa a mission "in support of", hunting the wild boar with M1 .30 caliber carbines? Might have well been the case. The wild pig infestation problem is not confined to the United States.

European knights of yore, the nobility of the Middle Ages too the favorite sport and practice for war of which was hunting the wild boar from horseback using lance, the pig sticker, the meat of the beast a favored delicacy and those heads from game taken adorning the walls of the castle as trophies demonstrable of martial prowess.

Good hunting, good luck, and BEWARE!

coolbert.