Total elimination of feral hogs in Missouri is the end goal for conservation officials, and they are seeing some strides being made.
The Missouri Feral Hog Elimination Partnership killed 9,857 feral hogs in 2021, bringing the total number of hogs killed since 2016 to more than 54,000.
Jason Jensen, incident Commander of Feral Hog Operations for Missouri Department of Conservation, said those numbers are slightly down from previous years. However, by covering more than double the amount of land, Jansen believes the overall numbers of feral hogs may be in decline. For 2019, 10,495 hogs were killed and 12,635 in 2020.