Trapper gets 18 wild hogs in roundup from three locations in Columbus | Columbus Ledger-Enquirer

Wild hogs that terrorized caregivers on Bowen Boulevard and damaged property during the spring apparently paid the ultimate price after a contractor set up traps in southeast Columbus.

Anna Mims believes her area is getting back to normal after the trapping. “I think they left me alone,” she said Saturday. “My yard is trying to get back together.”

Drale Short, the city’s Special Enforcement manager for the Columbus Consolidated Government, said Jager Pro Hog Control Systems in Fortson caught 18 wild hogs from three locations, including Pierce Road, Macon Road and Vista Drive during May.

The trapper killed three boars, six sows and nine small piglets, but she said there is no way of knowing whether they were the same ones doing damage on Bowen Boulevard. “I don’t have a pickup location but that doesn’t mean that’s not where they were,” Short said. “They don’t sit still. They are constantly moving.”

The city contacted the professional after some caregivers couldn’t enter the driveway to Mims’ home. The yard was damaged with hogs digging up roots in the front yard. Some hogs were captured within a half-mile from her home on Pierce Road.

Rod Pinkston, founder and CEO of Jager Pro, said the wild hogs continue to leave the Fort Benning military reservation and spread into nearby neighborhoods. It easier to kill the pigs and not let them come off the installation, he said.

“They come out into the city and go into different directions,” Pinkston said of controlling wild hogs. “You could have it in one place. It’s just more efficient.”

To trap the hogs, trappers use a 35-foot diameter Manually Initiated Nuisance Elimination, or MINE,. Trapping System with a camera and automatic feeder valued at $5,000, Pinkston said. Hogs enter the system and the doors capture them.

He said property owners who may have wild hogs would expect to pay $75 to $100 per pig for personnel to capture a whole sounder. That would put the cost of the latest trapping at $1,350 to $1,800.

“The process of 100 percent capture success is very difficult, time consuming, strategic and expensive requiring highly trained personnel,” Pinkston said.

If anyone looked at the front yard on Bowen Boulevard, you would want the nuisance hogs corralled and exterminated sooner than later.

“I’m sure if we could afford to keep them longer we would,” Short said of the trapping crew. “It’s not cheap.”

If you’ve seen something that needs attention, give me a call at 706-571-8576.