Texas -

Lawmakers are taking aim at a different kind of pork with a bill that would legalize hunting feral hogs from a helicopter.

The pork choppers would thin out the 1.5 million wild hogs that cause an estimated $52 million in property and crop damage annually. And landowners might recoup some of their damages by leasing hunting rights to fliers.

"I know some folks will have fun with this," said the bill's author, Republican Rep. Sid Miller of Stephenville, "but I have not been anywhere in this state where they have not been a problem."

Helicopter companies already can be hired by landowners to cull the hog populations on their property.

"That is a very, very effective means to control the populations," said Texas A&M University professor Billy Higginbotham, a state wildlife expert.

The exotic porkers, introduced into the state 450 years ago, do damage by "eating crops, depredating goats and kids, eating peanuts, tearing up pastures; they break levees on rice fields, eat corn. They'll eat almost anything. It's a tremendous problem," he said.

While not dangerous to humans – they'd rather flee on their stubby legs than fight with their tusks – feral hogs can carry diseases that could conceivably devastate livestock herds.

Almost 90 percent of Texas counties have feral hogs, and they are now extending into suburban communities, trampling golf courses and softball fields and causing problems on roadways.

"Obviously, your control in those areas will be different than flying or using guns," Higginbotham said.

Because the terrain must be open and helicopters must get close – within 50 yards to get a good shot – it's unlikely to be a sport where people go hog wild, or mistake an overweight pet dog for a hog.

"You've got to get right up on top of them," Miller said. That's close enough to tell a Babe from a Bandit.

But Susan Hendrix of the Texas Humane Legislation Network said that despite the rationales for the helicopter hunts, there's no way to turn the sow's ear into a silk purse.

"Tracking animals and shooting them from a helicopter is something we will definitely oppose," she said.

She said the current law for hunting feral hogs on land is sufficient. Low-flying helicopters upset habitat and all other animals, and "aerial hunting often is less precise, and the animals are hit and not killed," Hendrix said.

Nevertheless, this is pork legislation that Miller hopes that most lawmakers will support.

"I'm just hoping to eradicate this problem," he said.

By CHRISTY HOPPE / The Dallas Morning News

Read original story