Hog-killing hunters help rare turtle on SC island

The wild hogs that lured Bo Martin to this uninhabited sea island never materialized in the thick maritime forest.

Martin and his buddies, who hunt pigs and stab them with long knives, spent an entire February day scouring North Island with a pack of dogs in their search for feral swine. By dusk, the Upstate resident had not killed a single pig at the nature preserve between Myrtle Beach and Charleston.

“To go this far and catch nothing, it’s frustrating,” he said.

His failure to find hogs is a sign that South Carolina is winning the war on pigs at North Island – and saving endangered sea turtles that have fallen victim to hungry swine. That’s significant because North Island is one of the top 10 beaches in South Carolina where loggerhead sea turtles nest.

Wild hogs that reached the island sometime in the recent past ate thousands of sea turtle eggs before an aggressive hunting and trapping program began cutting into the pig population, state wildlife managers say.

Now, hogs are destroying few, if any, loggerhead nests at North Island, the only barrier island in South Carolina where wild pigs have been a threat to sea turtles, according to the S.C. Department of Natural Resources.

Trappers and hunters have killed more than 300 hogs on North Island since 2008, in some years taking more than 50 pigs. But hunters reported killing only a handful of hogs in 2014, and the downward trend is continuing during this year’s three-week hunting season, according to the S.C. Department of Natural Resources.

While state officials say a lack of hogs is frustrating some hunters, they’re not complaining. Getting rid of destructive swine was the point when the wildlife department began a limited pig-hunting season on North Island about a decade ago. Hogs were first reported on a North Island beach about 15 years ago.

“We’ve learned that you can reduce hogs, even when they are there in great numbers,” said Charlotte Hope, a sea-turtle biologist with the S.C. Department of Natural Resources. “It takes a lot of work, but it is doable.”

The work at North Island, in Georgetown County, is notable because it could guide wildlife managers on how to protect sea turtles on other barrier islands if hogs invade those places. As the hog population spreads, it wouldn’t be a surprise for hogs to swim or walk through salt marshes to barrier islands, experts say.

That’s how pigs are believed to have reached North Island, said Jamie Dozier, who manages the Yawkey wildlife refuge of which the island is a part.

Statewide, South Carolina has about 150,000 hogs, animals that have been released or escaped from farms from Colonial times through today.

“If hogs get on an island, they are quick to find the eggs as a food source,” Hope said. “They start out by rooting for ghost crabs. Then they find the eggs on a dense nesting beach.”

In addition to threatening sea turtles, wild hogs can dig up the forest floor or eat the eggs of birds that also establish nests in the sand dunes of undeveloped beaches.

South Carolina’s problem with hogs on North Island isn’t unheard of in the Southeast. Georgia, which has bigger sea islands, kills thousands of pigs each year through hunting and trapping programs. In addition to allowing public pig hunts, South Carolina wildlife managers trap hogs in a half-dozen cages at North Island, then shoot them to eliminate the threat to sea turtles.

Wildlife officials aren’t ready to declare victory at North Island yet, saying they must keep up the pressure with trapping and hunting because pigs can produce several litters of offspring each year. They also note that other turtle egg predators, such as coyotes and raccoons, remain.

Green bubbas

Hunters credited with helping to save North Island’s sea turtles aren’t sign-waving environmentalists. Many are conservative, plain-spoken folks who like nothing more than spending a day in the woods looking for wild hogs.

“It’s high intensity and it’s fun,” said Newberry pig hunter Billy Kunkle, who traveled to Georgetown with Martin for the opening day of hog-hunting season Feb. 12.

Their use of dogs and knives to kill pigs might seem brutal to some folks, but sea-turtle experts love what the hunters have accomplished.

“We are cheering for them to help us control the population of hogs,” sea-turtle volunteer Betsy Brabson said.

Feral swine have eaten fewer than five turtle nests at North Island during the past three years, statistics show. In 2011, they were responsible for eating most of the island’s sea-turtle nests. All told, 138 of 158 nests were destroyed that year, according to DNR data.

Coming from across the Southeast, hog hunters usually bring their own boats to Georgetown so they can reach the island, which doesn’t have a bridge. And they all bring dogs to sniff out and corner pigs. Some hunt with pistols, but others use knives.

The night before the pig-hunting season opened this month, Martin and his friends stood in the parking lot of a Georgetown motel and talked about how they planned to harvest hogs. Sitting in the lot was a small but sleek boat, containing kennels with barking hunting dogs. Another dog, a powerfully built pit bull, strutted around the parking lot.

With them were Kevlar vests for the dogs, so that wild pigs couldn’t cut the canines with razor-sharp tusks. The men even brought an IV kit for the dogs if the animals did get hurt.

Resting somewhere in the neatly stacked equipment were hunting knives with 9-inch blades. Unlike some pig hunters, Martin and Kunkle stab hogs in the heart after their tracking dogs locate the swine and their pit bull drags them to the ground.

The men said knifing a pig is a more efficient – and humane – way to kill than shooting a hog. Called “sticking a pig,” the method usually kills a hog instantly.

“Once you get him on his side, he’s vulnerable,” said the 35-year-old Martin, who lives in Gaffney. “From that point, we put a knife in him. The pigs don’t suffer. We don’t cut their throats. It’s one stick, one kill.”

In 2014, Martin said he and his crew killed eight pigs on North Island. While they struck out on the first day of 2015, the men agreed it was an interesting experience. Rolling dunes, palmetto trees, salt marshes, dense brush and live oaks make hog hunting on 3,000-acre North Island a challenge, they said.

And trying to reduce the hog population at North Island serves a greater purpose, said Newberry’s Stevie Sligh, who was hunting with Martin and Kunkle.

“You’re helping with the sea turtles, and you’re also getting rid of the hog problem,” Sligh, 22, said. “At the same time, you’re having fun, doing what you like to do.’’

West Columbia resident Henry Griffin, who owns the Kingsman restaurant in Cayce, said he’s also glad to help with the war on hogs. Griffin, 38, left his house at 3 a.m. Feb. 12 so he could get to North Island by sunrise. He uses both pistols and knives.

“It’s more like pest control out here,” he said, standing on the island’s beach with one of his dogs.

Dwindling turtles

Loggerheads, the most common types of sea turtles on South Carolina’s coast, are threatened by a variety of things, including commercial fishing and oceanfront development.

Hotels and beach houses on the dunes reduce the habitat for sea turtles, which like to lay eggs in the sand. Lights from hotels also can scare the reddish-brown reptiles away. As a result, the turtles don’t always lay eggs in the best places for their young to survive – and over time that depletes the turtle population.

Volunteers routinely relocate loggerhead sea turtle nests to prevent them from being washed over by the ocean. They sometimes put mesh panels or steel cages over loggerhead nests to keep predators out.

Turtle experts believe efforts to protect loggerheads are helping, including the use of special nets in shrimp trawlers that allow sea turtles to escape if they become trapped. Statewide last year, sea turtles established about 2,100 nests, DNR statistics show. In the early 1970s, loggerheads established more than twice that amount.

Loggerheads are the only sea turtles to nest regularly on South Carolina beaches. Majestic in the water but lumbering on land, these animals grow to more than 3 feet long and weigh up to 350 pounds. They swim in from the deep ocean in late spring and begin laying eggs in nests they prepare in the dunes. When the young turtles hatch, they crawl from the nests into the sea.

Hope and Dozier said they’re glad the hog-removal efforts on North Island are helping protect sea turtles from the porcine invaders, but both agreed that their agency must continue its efforts.

“It’s not something that you can stop working on, because very shortly you could be back in the same situation you were several years ago,” Dozier said. “These hogs reproduce so quickly, it’s just an ongoing maintenance issue.”

This story was originally published February 21, 2015 at 7:23 PM with the headline "Hog-killing hunters help rare turtle on SC island."