The gov tried poison here in the 60s and 80s. Our ranch was in both trials. The feeders sucked, killed a lot of birds and only a few hogs. They used stricnyne then, which was great for killing the coyotes that ate the poisoned hogs. The hogs that didnt get a large enough dose to kill tought the others to not go near the feeders.
Dad and grandpa killed more hogs with rimfires than the poison killed in the same time frame.
Back then Grandpa would drive around at dusk and dawn with a M1 and kill 30 hogs, then go on to his other chores. Thats 60 hogs per day, every day that he had grain planted. There are pictures where 100s of hogs were shot in a morning, and the rest of the day was spent hauling them up to the work camps in Salinas.
The only thing that brought the population down was removal of the primary food source and their bedding areas. We did control burns to remove the heavy brush and the grain became grapes (not by our choice, family sold out of the ranch). The hogs still raid the grapes heavily, but there is a much smaller window where they can feed on them and it is much harder for the hogs to get the fruit.
