In an effort to help control feral hog numbers and damage, the MDC wants to ban feral hog hunting on lands managed by the conservation department.

Feral hogs cost Louisiana farmers more than $74 million in crop losses and other damage in 2013, according to a new study by the LSU AgCenter.

These are not your stuttering, porcine cartoon characters. Descendants of domestic hogs that have escaped or wandered off, they are four-legged rooting, breeding, and eating machines. Their spread has become an ecological train wreck across the country.

The problem with feral hogs in the Francis Marion National Forest has become so bad that the state and federal governments are paying three hunters to help remove them.

San Jose council members have made permanent a measure that allows the shooting of wild pigs that have become a nuisance by ripping up lawns and golf course fairways.

Game officials say they have eliminated the majority of invasive porkers from 10 counties, and progress is being made in another seven counties where the pigs have taken up residency.

While New York tries to eradicate Eurasian boars from its fields and forests, environmental regulators have banned hunting or trapping them in the wild.

Add up all the wild hogs in Louisiana, and you get roughly the same number of people who live in Baton Rouge and New Orleans combined.