• Special to The Piney Woods Journal

The Three Little Pigs of your childhood is a cute story, but 15 wild hogs in your neat little suburban neighborhood can get ugly.

That's the number of sows, shoats, and boars Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry trappers Paul Dupree and Billy Conlay trapped in the heavily populated New Orleans suburb of Harahan in early June.

The trappers are with the LDAF Livestock Brand Commission, which is responsible for pursuing livestock and farm equipment thieves and trapping nuisance animals. Their trapping work involved those animals that endanger people, livestock, pasture, and farmland. Wild hogs, coyotes, and beaver are the most common nuisances in rural, urban, and suburban Louisiana

Jefferson Parish officials asked for the trappers' help with a problem that is increasing across Louisiana where the city encroaches on the country.

Dupree is from Red River Parish, where the parish seat is Coushatta. There, wild hogs are fairly common and getting moreso each year. Dupree is one of the department experts at trapping hogs.

Of the species of animals the trappers are called on to control in their work, wild hogs, because of their size and willingness to attack humans if cornered, are different than coyotes and beavers.

Most folks don't realize that pigs, both male and female, grow tusks - big, pointy, dagger-like incisors, three inches long in males and smaller in females, that can inflict serious damage to a pet dog's tender underbelly, or a human's meaty calf. Also, most folks don't realize that there are uncounted and increasing numbers of sounders, or packs of feral pigs, roaming Louisiana's suburban and rural landscapes.

"Jefferson parish asked us to come in and catch coyotes because they are not equipped to catch them, and when they catch them they don't know what to do with them. So, for the last couple of years we've been going down to help them with their coyote problem," Dupree said.

"This time, though, we couldn't catch the coyotes for the wild hogs. The hogs were tripping our snares we were setting for the coyotes. So, we started setting snares for the hogs and in four days we caught 15," Dupree said.

How a sounder of wild pigs got to New Orleans is a mystery that won't be easily solved.

The hogs took up residence on the west bank near the Mississippi River levee by the Huey P. Long bridge that crosses the River into Metairie.

"We're talking about nearly under the bridge," Dupree said. "There's a heliport and sand pits there and people are walking right by them. That big boar hog, 450 pounds, was laid up 20 feet from the edge of the mowed surface. No telling how many people walk by them every day. The top of the levee is blacktopped. There's a subdivision and businesses across the road from the levee."

"The people use the levee for a walkway. They walk their dogs and ride bikes and run and exercise," he said.

"While we were out there, there were people walking all times of the day and night."

"These hogs have always been wild," Dupree said as he pointed t a photograph of a 450 pound boar taken along the Harahan riverbank. "Where he comes from, I don't know. He either comes from up or down the river."

Dupree's theory is that hunters are the likely source of the hogs.

"There's hog hunters out there that'll catch them and turn them loose in a hunting club lease, but a hog will wander."

Dupree said the pigs most likely migrated from the Jefferson Parish landfill to feed on the early summer wild mulberries growing in the woods along the western river road.

Or they might have even come from the river, he said.

"Water don't bother them. They'll swim the river. That might have been what these hogs did down here," Dupree speculated. "They just swam that river and found them a nice little place where they eat. After the berries are gone, they'll probably leave. They're not going to stay if there's nothing to eat."

But wherever they came from, Dupree knew the area was experiencing an exponential growth in the hog population.

"We were driving down from Avondale around 6 p.m. and saw a whole herd of pigs eating the mulberries on the easement of Highway 90 near the foot of the bridge," Dupree said. "All it's going to take is a hog that's going to jump across the middle of the road and cause a major accident."

The area is known as Waggaman, said Bert Smith, director of the Jefferson Parish animal shelter. "It's a real pretty area, and that's where all the new subdivision development is taking place."

Dupree said he knew the pigs were sizable because they were strong enough to yank the coyote snare's earth anchors out of the soil.

Dupree and Conlay adjusted their strategy and began setting the snares across the numerous pig trails they found, and attaching the cables to trees instead of using earth anchors.

Hog snare traps are steel cables about eight feet long and 1/8 inch in diameter. The trapper hangs it from a tree at varying heights and fashions a loop at the business end of the trap using a simple sliding lock; a heavy-duty washer. When the animal walks through it, the loop quickly slides down on the animal and tightens.

Wild pigs are omnivores, meaning they eat a combination of meat and vegetative matter, and are generally peaceful. However, they are still wild animals and can attack when threatened, cornered, or protecting their young.

But Dupree was concerned for the neighborhood children when he saw the amount of hog and human activity commingled in the area.

"Kids had playhouses in the woods, and one sow had six piglets bedded up right under one," he said. "That's pretty dangerous for the people."

Perhaps the most dangerous pig in the area was the 450 pound boar with three-inch tusks that proved to be untrappable.

Dupree described the kill.

"He was loose. He was either too smart or too big for the snares," he said. "We found the trails. We know what to look for. We just found him holed up in a cane thicket. He was barely 20 steps from the mowed right of way of the levee. No telling how many people walk by there every day." Dupree killed the board with his department-issued rifle.

Pigs are prolific producers and generally have two litters a year. Since they can survive on a variety of food sources and are extremely clever and mobile they can soon become a nuisance in any area, including urban landscapes.

In four days of hunting the LDAF trappers took 15 pigs, including the big 450-pound boar and four piglet-producing sows each weighing in at 250 pounds.

"We cured a problem that was fixing to get bad," Dupree said. "They didn't even realize they had a pig problem and we just stumbled upon it."

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