No Action for Amateurs : Hunters-for-Hire to Help Park Service Wipe Out Island’s Wild Pigs

The government is hiring hit men to kill the pigs on Santa Rosa Island, but there are plenty of guys who’d do it free.

The wild swine, they say, are good to eat and a thrill to stalk.

Since a week ago, when the Channel Islands National Park announced plans to kill the island’s 4,000 or so wild pigs, sportsmen have been calling with offers to help.

Inquiries come hourly from “people looking for action,” Park Service dispatcher Fred Rodriguez said. “They’ll say, ‘I want to get on the list.’ They’ll say, ‘How can I get to the island to kill pigs?’ ”

One group of volunteers called from a tavern one afternoon.

“It was kind of comical, actually, that it was something they thought they could do in one day,” Rodriguez said. “They were having a good time. You could hear the country-Western music in the background.”

He said he has been getting about 12 such calls a day.

Park officials do not intend to entertain the sportsmen. Instead, rangers this fall will team with professionals, preferably those experienced in destroying animal populations.

Officials want to employ commercial hunting outfits with staff biologists. People with a science background understand the animals’ habits and can conduct tests or post-mortems if necessary, park Supt. Mack Shaver said.

The government will spend between $200,000 and $800,000 to kill the pigs under a state mandate to restore native wildlife and vegetation to the 53,000-acre island. Rangers will be taught to hunt the feral animals by their colleagues from Hawaii. The rangers and hunters, about a dozen in all, will eradicate the pigs zone by zone in a year and a half. They will use guns, traps and perhaps other methods.

“We don’t want to be paying people just kind of out there shooting a lot of pigs,” Kate Faulkner, a Park Service official, said. “You can shoot a lot of pigs and not come close to eradicating them.”

Most of the island has been ravaged by the pigs’ digging roots, eating acorns and plundering bird nests since European settlers abandoned the livestock there in 1850, authorities said.

Chasing and trapping the first 90% of the animals will be relatively easy, Faulkner said.

“The pigs that are left are the smartest,” she said. “They just seem to know every trick, and you lose your enthusiasm. You can spend thousands of dollars to get each of those last pigs.”

It is against state law to bring the pigs to shore alive because they carry a virus, Faulkner said. To butcher and pack them would be too costly. So the Park Service will allow carcasses to rot into the soil or be used as bait for other pigs.

Wild pigs are fairly common in parts of California. Descendants of fugitives from barnyards, they are hunted for sport and meat.

“Wild pigs have become just as popular a species to hunt as deer have,” Eric Loft, a state wildlife biologist, said. “It’s a good, tough hunt and somewhat challenging.” Unlike deer and elk, pigs can be hunted year-round.

He said their appearance contributes to their popularity as targets. “Pigs aren’t pretty,” he said. “They don’t have the stature of a big Tule elk or a mountain lion. They just aren’t as romanticized an animal.”

Jerry Scotton, a 39-year-old Oak View guide who charges about $475 for a two-day hunt on a ranch he leases in Monterey County, helped hunters kill more than 100 wild pigs last year and “hundreds and hundreds” in his 11 years in the business, he said.

“It doesn’t matter who pulls the trigger,” Scotton said. “Pulling the trigger is secondary. It’s the stalk.”

Wild pigs roam at night, so Scotton takes his hunters out well before daylight. He tries to find the hogs feeding in barley fields or, if it’s later in the day, seeking shade under trees.

“I get up on a hillside and start glassing with binoculars,” he said. “When I spot the boar, I put a sneak on it.”

Scotton advises using a .30-06 rifle and aiming near the neck.

“I like shooting them in the front shoulders to break them down and keep them down,” he said.

“To see the adrenaline going through that hunter blows your mind. He pulls the rifle up and it’s going dum-dum, dum-dum, like you can hear his heart beat. And when he shoots it, there’s a big ‘yahoo!’ and I shake his hand.”

The state Fish and Game Department hasn’t tried to count the pigs on the mainland, primarily because they aren’t endangered, Loft said.

Several hunters said the decision to exclude them from the kill represents a loss of sport and a waste of meat.

“I would love to go up there myself,” said Tony Montemorra, a 64-year-old pig hunter from Oxnard. “I think it’s a crying shame that the meat is not being utilized. . . . It’s wrong. It’s a waste of resources.”

Nothing compares to the meat of a wild pig, said Montemorra, owner of the Sportsmen’s Exchange, an outdoor store. It tastes like ordinary pork but is leaner because the animals feed off the land, he said.

“It doesn’t have any fat on it,” Montemorra said. “It’s certainly not like a pork chop found out in the store.”

Orange O’Conner, a 51-year-old Los Angeles County mechanic and lifelong pig hunter, lamented the loss of homemade sausage.

“I’m out of the South, and I love to eat wild meat,” he said.

Several hunters agreed that hunting pigs can be a challenge. “They’re hard to hit,” Montemorra said. “They’re not a barnyard pig. These things are lean and mean.”