![\"Feral](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.animals24-7.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Picsart_25-05-11_21-12-23-438-e1747023408765.jpg?ssl=1\")
<\/a><\/p>\n(Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n AUSTIN,\u00a0 Texas\u2013\u2013<\/strong>The Texas House of Representatives on May 7,\u00a0 2025 overwhelmingly approved a bill to allow hunters to shoot feral aoudad sheep from helicopters.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the bill becomes law,\u201d\u00a0 explained Austin American Statesman<\/em> chief political reporter John C. Moritz,\u00a0 \u201caoudad sheep would join feral hogs among game animals who can be hunted from the air in Texas. \u00a0Lawmakers in 2011 enacted legislation dubbed the \u2018porkchopper law,\u2019\u201d\u00a0 Moritz mentioned, \u00a0\u201cas a means to try to control the proliferating wild swine who were causing expensive damage to farm and ranch land.\u201d<\/p>\n Feral hogs,\u00a0 from the earliest European settlement in Texas until relatively recent times,\u00a0 were generally seen as a huntable and edible plus on Texas ranches.\u00a0 But the original feral hog population,\u00a0 descended from runaways imported by the settlers themselves,\u00a0 has in recent decades been augmented and markedly boosted by escapees from trucks hauling factory farmed pigs to slaughter.<\/p>\n (See <\/em><\/strong>Ohio truck crash shows why feral pigs are everywhere<\/em><\/strong><\/a>.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Aoudad. (Barbary sheep) (Wikipedia photo) <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Aoudad sheep are relatively recent arrivals to Texas.\u00a0 Native to the Barbary Coast of Africa,\u00a0 aoudads were introduced to Kerr County hunting ranches in 1963.<\/p>\n Feral aoudads appear to have first been reported in 1973.\u00a0 Like feral hogs,\u00a0 historically and still at that time,\u00a0 feral aoudads were initially welcomed as a huntable species.<\/p>\n Possibly because Texas aoudads have always been hunted,\u00a0 they have always been seldom seen,\u00a0 as they still are,\u00a0 despite the zeal of the Texas House of Representatives to legalize strafing them as alleged invading enemies.<\/p>\n Feral hogs today,\u00a0 however, \u00a0appear to become the most hated aliens in Texas other than Spanish-speaking immigrants from Mexico,\u00a0 both the estimated 1.7 million who arrived illegally and the three million or more whose presence is both fully legal and economically essential,\u00a0 yet are resented nonetheless.<\/p>\n (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Texas has historically been the most xenophobic and among the most blatantly racist of states,\u00a0 for fairly obvious historical and geographic reasons.\u00a0 Deep cultural insecurity is barely masked,\u00a0 if at all,\u00a0 by stereotypical Texan braggadoccio,\u00a0 a trait long recognized in western films in which Texan braggarts are gunned down by the dozens,\u00a0 from The Alamo<\/em> to Zorro<\/em>.<\/p>\n Cultural insecurity literally comes with the territory.\u00a0 \u00a0Most of Texas is surrounded to the south and southwest by the Mexican states of Chihuahua, \u00a0Coahuila, \u00a0Nuevo Le\u00f3n, \u00a0and Tamaulipas.\u00a0 Most Texans are closer to the Mexican border and the Gulf of Mexico than to other U.S. states\u2013\u2013and renaming the Gulf of Mexico,\u00a0 as Donald Trump and Texan supporters hope to do,\u00a0 does nothing to relieve the underlying anxiety.<\/p>\n The 40% of the Texas human population who are of European ancestry,\u00a0 historically an even smaller percentage, \u00a0wrested political control of Texas from Native Americans and Mexican Spanish-speakers in 1845,\u00a0 imported African-American slaves mostly from Louisiana,\u00a0 and have ruled the state ever since from an uneasy minority position,\u00a0 maintained mostly because the Spanish-speaking and African-American minorities have never forged a strong political alliance.<\/p>\n (See also\u00a0The animal issue that made Donald Trump a presidential candidate;<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0How an ant doctor came to be driving public policy<\/a>;\u00a0 How the Twin Towers fell on animals too<\/a>; and\u00a0Questioning the claims of \u201ccrisis.\u201d<\/a>)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Currently the English-speaking Texas population of European descent is narrowly outnumbered by Spanish-speakers,\u00a0 while the Spanish-speakers have a 14% higher birth rate.<\/p>\n With perhaps the most xenophobic president in U.S. history in the White House,\u00a0 put there in large part by sweeping the 40 Texas electoral votes,\u00a0 it should be no surprise that bio-xenophobia is resurging in Texas as an external correlative to xenophobia focused on people.<\/p>\n The zeal to strafe aoudads,\u00a0 Moritz of the Austin American Statesman<\/em> explained,\u00a0 is motivated by concern that \u201cthey\u2019ve crowded out native animals\u201d;\u00a0 that \u201cAccording to the hunting guide company Outdoors International, \u00a0the aoudad population in Texas is estimated to have ballooned by 1,800% since 1963\u201d;\u00a0 and that \u201cin recent years aoudad sheep have been known to carry a pneumonia-causing bacteria called Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae<\/em> that can be spread to commercial sheep and goat herds.\u201d<\/p>\n (Beth Clifton photo\/collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Bear in mind that the aoudad rate of population increase over more than 60 years is a fraction of the rate of increase of any suddenly popular exotic pet or dog breed.<\/p>\n If only two aoudads in 1963 had an 1800% rate of population increase for 62 consecutive years,\u00a0 they would still have only 2,232 descendants today.<\/p>\n That is a lot of aoudads,\u00a0 but white-tailed deer are their major native competitor species.\u00a0 Texas hunters kill 430,000 to 500,000 white-tailed deer per year,\u00a0 the most of any state,\u00a0 leaving a relatively stable population of about 5.6 million,\u00a0 according to Texas Parks & Wildlife.<\/p>\n Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae<\/em>,\u00a0 meanwhile,\u00a0 is bad news,\u00a0 but occurs in nature throughout the Rocky Mountain states,\u00a0 and is spread primarily by domestic sheep,\u00a0 who have for decades repeatedly infected wild bighorn sheep herds.<\/p>\n (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n While some Texans exulted over the prospect of shooting aoudads from helicopters,\u00a0 others fretted lest Donald Trump administration budget cuts might slow the pace of the USDA Wildlife Services\u2019 Feral Swine Eradication Control Pilot Program,\u00a0 begun in 2018.<\/p>\n This consists of USDA Wildlife Services agents shooting feral hogs from helicopters,\u00a0 wherever sport hunters are deemed to be not killing enough.<\/p>\n Counter to that,\u00a0 \u201cA bipartisan group of senators,\u201d\u00a0 led by John Cornyn,\u00a0 a Texas Republican,\u00a0 \u201care pushing to take the program nationwide,\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Houston Chronicle<\/em> Washington D.C. correspondent James Osborne reported on May 3,\u00a0 2025.<\/p>\n \u201cAt a time President Donald Trump and Republicans are looking to reduce federal spending, getting agreement on $75 million in new funding [for pig-shooting] could prove a tough sell in Congress,\u201d\u00a0 Osborne wrote.\u00a0 \u201cBut Cornyn said he was confident the support was there.\u201d<\/p>\nTexan cultural insecurity strikes again<\/span><\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nImported to be hunted,\u00a0 but seldom seen<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nBraggadocio<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nXenophobia breeds bio-xenophobia<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nAoudads vs. white-tailed deer<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nUSDA Wildlife Services budget<\/h2>\n