during the texas revolution, homesteaders let their hogs
out when they put their families out of harms way and formed
an army to fight the dictator, santa anna, for mexico.
that is what started the hog problem in texas.
Quoting: Anonymous Coward 77067288 In the book, "12 Years A Slave", there are stories of how the early farmers and plantation owners in Louisiana operated livestock.
He said they purposely released both hogs and cattle into the swamps and forests. When they needed meat, they hunted the feral animals with packs of dogs from horseback.
Thus, they had a secure supply of meat year round when needed.
Slaves were allotted a few pounds of pork to go along with their corn ration every week.
Ref the other poster and the Great Depression, YES, feral hogs could become a great food resource during hard times.
BTW, where I was trapping hogs in Houston County, TX a few years back, we gave the smallest piglets that we trapped to a local farmer. He vaccinated and wormed them before raising them to market size.
I was hunting on a huge farm/ranch that had been accumulated in the early 1900s. The owner was the son of freed slaves. He had studied agriculture and had a college degree.
He got rich by renting land to other black folks who were share croppers. The blacks trusted him as one of their own and he did not cheat them on the terms of the share cropping agreement.
This enterprise was so profitable that he ended up owning thousands of acres of farmland when he died.
That part of Texas was deeply prejudiced against blacks, but some managed to become quite successful despite the limitations.
As a lesson learned I observed that black people in the South were MORE successful when they were struggling against prejudice. The literacy rate was HIGHER when the whites actively tried to keep blacks from learning to read and write.
Not intuitively obvious!
