DENTON, Texas - A few bloodstains dotted the back of Robert Stalbaum's pickup. The blood belonged to the feral hogs he trapped the night before.

"Feral hogs have become a huge problem throughout the state," said Mr. Stalbaum, a wildlife biologist for the Texas Cooperative Extension Service and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "We'll never get rid of pigs; they breed too fast. But we want to alleviate the problems they are causing for farmers and ranchers."

But feral hogs aren't just wild animals out in the country anymore, he said. They're starting to move into the city, too.

In the last month, Mr. Stalbaum trapped 16 inside the city limits in the Lakeview Estates subdivision on the south side of U.S. Highway 380 in east Denton.

Wild hogs are known to attack goats and sheep, he said.

Spring floodwaters pushed the wild hogs to higher ground and into more residential areas. The rain also made the pigs' food grow, which makes them breed faster and have larger litters, he said.

In the wild, the hogs eat just about anything, including pork, Mr. Stalbaum said.

"They'll prey on other animals; they'll eat roots, berries, grubs, insects – anything, even their own young," Mr. Stalbaum said.

But pigs have very few predators, except for coyotes, which prey on the smaller ones, he said.

Sows, the adult female pigs, can have up to three litters a year, and each litter can have four to 10 pigs, Mr. Stalbaum said.

They could pose a threat to people, but no injuries have been reported locally so far, he said. However, property owners have reported a lot of damage.

In Lakeview Estates, swine tore up Deborah Muscle and Walter Kolbenheyer's front yard four times in about a month.

"I started seeing them, and they were just running around," Mr. Kolbenheyer said. "They weren't doing any damage then. When they started getting destructive, I said 'That's enough.' "

The city called Mr. Stalbaum to trap them.

The city worked with the Texas Department of Wildlife and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to arrange for Mr. Stalbaum to trap the hogs in the city limits, said Jim Bryan, a spokesman for the Denton Police Department.

The city pays $125 for each day that Mr. Stalbaum catches pigs, Mr. Bryan said.

The traps consist of four, 5-feet-tall steel hog panels formed into an oval and held up by about a dozen steel fence posts. A trip-wire inside closes a trap door that keeps pigs in the pen until Mr. Stalbaum arrives in the morning to kill them.

He uses corn to bait the hogs into the trap, and once the trap door closes, more pigs can get in but they can't get back out.

Mr. Stalbaum also performs lab tests on each pig to check for a wide range of diseases.

The pigs he catches usually weigh between 75 and 150 pounds, he said. Feral hogs can get much larger, but "the big ones get smart."

In Mr. Stalbaum's five years of trapping swine, his largest catch in one night was 22 pigs. The biggest pig he's caught weighed 280 pounds, he said.

Domesticated pigs become wild quickly after they escape, he said. In two generations, they lose their curly tails and their hide turns black.

Mr. Stalbaum said the pork from wild hogs can be good to eat. Some homeowners want to slaughter them; otherwise, he disposes them.

The cooler weather has made the wild pigs much more active during the day after this summer, when the animals were mostly nocturnal, he said.

Because acorns have fallen, pigs are finding more to eat outside the traps and are avoiding them, he said, so there are still many to catch.

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