Eastern turkey numbers are at huntable levels in a number of Pineywoods Counties allowing hunters to enjoy a spring season.

However, a far more abundant East Texas resident might be curtailing expansion of eastern birds: feral hogs.

These non-indigenous omnivores are at record numbers in Texas research suggests they have a negative effect on turkey nesting success.

Take for example a study conducted in Rio Grande turkey country, the Edwards Plateau of central Texas in 1993. There, researchers used chicken eggs to simulate turkey nestings and found that hogs destroyed 28 percent of them.

On the other hand, some researchers, including V.G. Henry debate the hog’s effectiveness at nest predation arguing that they are “haphazard nest predators” and that hogs are, “not additive to nest predation, but only replaced that which would have occurred by other predators either driven off or preyed upon by feral hogs, especially snakes.”

Research conducted on other ground-nesting animals, including reptiles may shed some light on the potential for hogs to harm turkey nests. In Georgia, for example, 80 percent of sea turtle nests were lost on Ossabow Island due to hog predation.

“There is no doubt that feral hogs have a negative impact on their environment and research certainly suggests that they can and do destroy the nests of turkeys and other ground nesting birds,” said wildlife biologist and hog specialist Rick Taylor.

The Pineywoods has seen more than 20 years of restoration efforts bring huntable populations of eastern turkeys back to the region. At the same time, feral hog populations have skyrocketed there in the last five years.

“East Texas has had a tremendous increase in feral hogs and there are some concerns as to how this might impact the eastern turkeys,” Taylor said.

I personally witnessed hog’s impact on eastern turkey nests in 2005 on a 25,000-acre hunting club along the Sabine River corridor in Newton County, TX. While scouting for (ironically) an area to hunt hogs I came across a turkey nest.

A few days later, I returned with a camera to capture photos of the nest and found it destroyed by the snouts of feral hogs that rooted the area to the point of looking like a tilled field.

What is interesting to note is that the only area in East Texas turkeys have not successfully colonized is in the extreme southern portion where hogs are the most numerous. The Tony Houseman State Park and Blue Elbow Wildlife Management Area sits on 5,000 acres of some of the most pristine bottomlands in the state and it is currently devoid of turkeys.

Feral hogs however are so numerous that they frequently feed in broad daylight along the side of Interstate 10, which divides the area, and have moved into the city limits of Orange.