Decades ago, I worked in the hospitality department of Middletown’s Guenoc Winery, once home to the famed Victorian actress, Lillie Langtry who established her wine estate there in 1888. At that time Guenoc was owned by colorful coastal engineer Orville Magoon of Hawaiian ancestry. To acquire the 23,000 acres at Guenoc in Lake and Napa Counties, Magoon sold some family beach front property in Hawaii to the University of Hawaii. He raised cattle at Guenoc, created a hunting club and, together with his talented winemakers from the Napa Valley family created wildly popular vintages including Chardonnay, and Bordeaux blends of mouth watering red wines. (As an aside, current winemaker for Cache Creek Vineyards and Winery, Derek Holstein who calls wine ‘consumable art’ worked at creating Gold Medal award-winning wines at Guenoc for a decade prior to his Cache Creek work!)
But to get to the point of my story, upon the 23,000 acres Magoon owned, wild boar hunts were not uncommon. When those bulky boars were roasted it was feast time for guests at the winery’s events! Wild pigs (Sus Scrofa) found in Lake County and beyond can be highly destructive creatures, so hunting the critters was a means to two ends- the delicious meal to compliment his wines, and also, eliminating some destructive animals.
According to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s ( CDFW) website called Wild Pig Hunting, “There is no daily bag or possession limit for wild pigs.” They are encouraging safely hunting the critters. The CDFW site also states that pigs (boars) are native to Eurasia and northern Africa; and in the 1700s they were introduced by Russian and Spanish settlers to California as domestic pigs that became feral. During the 1920s the European wild boar which is a wild subspecies of Sus Scrofa was introduced to California in Monterey, when it bred with domestic pigs and created the wild boar/ feral domestic pig hybrid.
Currently wild pigs thrive in 56 of California’s 58 counties. Considered opportunistic hunters, they exist in many differing habitats that include oak woodlands, grasslands, chaparral and meadow. They consume plants and animals such as, eggs, reptiles, baby goats, roots, acorns, grubs, bulbs and more.
While taking an animal tracking class at Pepperwood Preserve in Sonoma County we were given the opportunity to see how destructive the wild pigs there can be in a beautiful riparian setting. The ground was disturbed in parts of the preserve via the pig’s prolific rooting, upending and killing numerous native plant species. Hunters in California have merely made a dent in the 70,000 or more boars that roam the state by killing around 5,000 of the apex predators annually.
Besides hunters, a 300 pound hog has few predators and can roam at will. Predators such as mountain lions, coyotes or raptors may consume piglets, but with 12 piglets per litter annually it is very difficult to keep boars in check. Where these destructive animals are hunted they have learned to become nocturnal creatures to avoid human predators. Evidence of the disturbance natural lands at Rodman Preserve is found under the stately old oaks where wild boars have rooted up acorns and other tasty tidbits. They hope to eradicate this pest and have used a boar trap.
I spied a family of 3 pigs across from Hidden Valley recently. The sow, whose teats were in evidence had a small, tannish pig in tow. They were foraging the grasses along side the considerably larger, and may I just say it, uglier male in the large open field. He sported prominent, erect bristles on his back, some of which I had seen scattered along various hiking trails.
When my family was visiting us here in Lake County a few months ago they took videos of ‘sounders’ as the collective name for a family group of boars is called. These sounders were out in the early morning hours about 2 miles up Big Canyon Road. Sounders have been known to be composed of a few wild boar to up to 30 members.
It’s good news that the US government’s USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (US Department of Agriculture) started a Feral Swine Eradication and Control Pilot Program in 2018. The program operated in a few states as a response to the swine’s interference in native ecosystems, agriculture and also because of some health threats that may occur when wild pigs ravage crops. Some other good news is that if a wild pig sees a human it typically runs, but to be safe it’s best to keep your distance from the porkers.
