Watch: Wild Pigs Walk Confidently Through Austin Neighborhood

AUSTIN, TX — The abundance of wild pigs across Texas is a well-known scourge. Prolific breeders, the beasts decimate crops with endless appetite as marauding herds of the porcine poachers run roughshod across the terrain.

On Dec. 30, a resident from the Oak Crest community shared video of a dozen of the swine out for a 3 a.m. stroll — further illustrating the pigs' presence as they encroach on neighborhoods in rooting out a potential meal.

Much has been tried to eradicate the beast, including waiving the number of wild pigs hunters can bag during their hunt. State officials recently even approved using helicopters and hot air balloons to fire upon them from the air, in yielding the porcine version of shooting fish in a barrel.

Yet nothing has worked, and the wild boars just keep breeding at astonishing levels. They're ornery too, making them hard to capture. Stories of charging wild pigs are legion among the hunting community, heightening the animals' notoriety.

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller — arguably the pig population's fiercest foe — once pitched the idea of strategically placing poison across the Texas landscape to kill the animals, only to have a judge abort the mission. Deer and other animals could become collateral damage to the poison, critics argued, plus the ingested poison would ruin the pig meat in making it unsuitable for the market.

Related stories:

• Texas Measure Allows Wild Boar Hunting From Hot Air Balloons
• Texas Judge Says No To Poisoning Wild Pigs

And so, the war continues — and the corpulent creatures appear to be winning. Note the confident manner with which they stroll the neighborhood as caught on the resident's Ring surveillance camera.

It's a situation that's seemingly snout of control, indeed.

>>> Ring, the owner of the Neighbors app, is a Patch advertiser. Patch received no compensation for this article.