Ed Kennet and Bob Brickley speak as if they are at war.
Kennet is indeed a veteran, but both men have more recent experience planning attacks.
This battle is being fought in Moose Mountain Provincial Park in southeastern Saskatchewan against four-legged enemies that can devastate crops overnight and snatch newborn calves as cows give birth.
The two men and others have killed hundreds of wild boar in the park over the past few years.
Last year, they killed 66 at a cost of about $40,000.
Read Also
Research looks to control flea beetles with RNAi
A Vancouver agri-tech company wants to give canola growers another weapon in the never-ending battle against flea beetles.
It is an expensive fight.
“Good old boys and deer hunting rifles are not going to solve the problem,” Kennet told delegates to the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities’ recent mid-term convention.
He estimates 20 boar are left in the park, but sows can have as many as 13 piglets twice a year.
The animals are based in a section of the park that hasn’t been grazed for 60 years, he added.
“This is difficult terrain,” Kennet said. “We may have to use a helicopter.”
Aerial surveillance is a good way to find the hardy boar. The animals come from stock that adapted to the wild after escaping from domestic wild boar farms.
They are tough animals and can survive all kinds of weather as well as being shot.
Brickley, who farms adjacent to the park, said shooting them led to the problem in the park.
“All we did was make the matter worse,” said Brickley, who farms adjacent to the park at Kennedy.
Hunting boar in the traditional way only scatters the survivors and causes them to establish new bases, he added.
Brickley said true warfare is required to eliminate the beasts.
“We never move in on a cell unless we’re confident that we can take them all,” he said.
“As long as you eradicate each group as you go in, then eradication is possible. If you go in and partially take a group out, they spread out, become nomadic and the job is virtually impossible.”
Brickley and other experienced hunters are shooting, snaring and using live traps to catch the animals.
He said boar will terrorize cattle, causing them to leave an area even if there is food.
“We’ve had cattle leave swaths and not eat them,” Brickley said.
“They wouldn’t even come back to a water bowl in the winter time.”
Brickley said wild boar cost him $20,000 in a single year. He once lost 15 acres of oats in two days to 12 pigs.
He couldn’t continue farming if the animals remained in the park, he added.
“They would take my entire crop every year and it’s that simple.”
Brickley has travelled to Texas to see how ranchers there deal with the approximately four million boar that run wild.
Producers around the province have reported seeing wild boar, and Brickley urged them to do something sooner rather than later.
Convention delegates passed a resolution to lobby the provincial government to discontinue wild boar farms and supply funding for eradication of animals that are running free.
About 50 wild boar farms still operate in Saskatchewan. Agriculture minister Bob Bjornerud said he agrees there is a problem but doesn’t know how the province could force producers out of business and compensate them.
