A hybrid breed of super pigs—a mix of a domestic pig and a wild boar—is running wild in Canada. And now they have their sights set on the United States.

Originally crossbred to help farmed pigs grow larger and tolerate the cold temperatures of Canada, a drop in the market about two decades ago led some farmers to let their hybrid pigs run free. Now they’re running very free, according to Field and Stream. The super pigs are coming south, likely heading to Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, and Michigan.

The problem? The super pigs are proving hard to eradicate.



“That they can survive in such a cold climate is one of the big surprises of this issue,” Ryan Brook, leader of the University of Saskatchewan’s Canadian Wild Pig Research Project, tells Field and Stream.



The cold-hardiness of the hybrid pigs means they survive well. That means other native species don’t. Brook elaborates:

“Wild hogs feed on anything. They gobble up tons and tons of goslings and ducklings in the spring. They can take down a whitetail deer, even an adult. Originally, it was like ‘wow, this is something we can hunt.’ But it’s become clear that they’re threatening our whitetail deer, elk, and especially, waterfowl. Not to mention the crop damage. The downsides outweigh any benefit wild hogs may have as a huntable species.”

Ferral pigs are a serious problem here in he Ozarks!

Sort of reminds me of the problems we are having at our southern border. Just replace the word pigs for ________ well, you know.

Open season I presume?

Mt USDA is training their ws guys to trap them. Not as easy as in Midwest or the south....darn cold hanging out of a chopper at 8000ft elevation! Will be interesting to see how successful they will be covering that big country

Super pigs are killing deer and elk. Okay....

our wolves might eat em

a bunch of folks on this forum have cried and whined about not having those vermin. Well, coming to a farm near you. And when they get there. You wont be able to keep up with as fast as they reproduce. Ask, and you shall receive. You have received. yall can now hunt until your barrels melt and not have to gripe about not having them up there to hunt. The farmers raising crops. Have no idea what is about to happen

Who might you be referring to?

Snowmobiles and dogs. I can't see how they would end up being a major problem in much of the North, seems way to easy to hunt them with deep snow in the winter on snowmachines.

They won't last anytime at all here , on cattle or horse ranchers lands. Free pork steaks.

I can't really see MN-DNR saying yup just hunt from snow machine with loaded guns.

they will ham string you until the population is so high it will be near impossible to control

Hogs do fine on cattle and horse ranchers lands. Most people here dont even eat them - shoot them and let them lay. USDS offers free trapping on your property. You can get rid of them - but you have to stay on them. I have either killed them off my property - or run them off. I purchased a thermal scope three years ago. I went from killing and trapping 153 in six months to not getting a picture of one in the past two months. I built my house in 2003 - and there have never been fewer hogs in my area than right now.

What I meant was that ranchers would shoot them immediately , not wanting the holes that hogs dig , or the rooting up of everything.

I should have clarified , sorry.

Unfortunately there is no way a alphabet agency (dnr, gf&p) will pass up an opportunity to place some kind of overpriced fee on folks to eliminate a problem that our tax and license money will also be used to try and kill them off. Wait and see, they will spend millions of dollars and years of biological studies to come to the conclusion that they should be killed. But only by licensed folks or a permit. Instead of just saying from day one to shoot and kill all that are seen, no matter the season.

I am not sure just what locale in Canada that they exist as a problem....?

After a few generations in the wild, a domestic reverts back ti their wilder versions. Sounds like potential Russia boar crosses happening

in Manitoba for the last 20 years= open
some outfitters were having their bear clients not shooting bears but hogs and it was way cheaper than a hunt in the USA = baited barrels for bears


Alberta-Sask-Manitoba- peace gardens ND

When they get into a black spruce forest they just dig below the frost ground and eat the moss
in the cattail marshes they take out a city block overnight digging the tubers out

Long distant travellers some doing 20 miles over night

Just Eurasian and feral domestic hog crosses.
They do fine in Siberia so why not Canada ?

In my experience - hogs are much more pressure sensitive than deer. When I first bought my place 20 years ago - we killed a lot of hogs in the daytime incidental to other hunting activities. They became more and more nocturnal - until I have not seen a hog during daylight hours for the last three years. I could easily see 50 deer on my place in an afternoon now. Coyotes are what stands between being totally over run with hogs and having a manageable number. I would bet over 50% of coyote droppings are mostly hog hair around my place.

About ten years ago, Our own g&f decided a big part of the problem was local hunters moving them around the state to their local area. G&f decided they would stop hog killing on all wildlife management areas and NWR’s. I have some land adjacent to an NWR. It went from a national wildlife area to a hog production area. Years ago, when re-establishing the deer population in our state - g&f set aside deer refuges so deer could breed and multiply unmolested and spread to surrounding grounds, building the population. It worked absolutely great. Fifty years later, they did the same thing with hogs - but this time around - they thought it would reduce the hog population. Wonder of wonders - hogs are even more successful at reproducing when unmolested than are deer.