Defence against wild boars

How can I protect myself from damage caused by wild boars?

Wild boars don't just cause massive damage in the countryside. These animals are increasingly making appearances in urban areas and rummage around for food in private gardens, golf courses and parks. Wherever you look, headlines about wild boar damage are everywhere. On the hunt for grubs, worms and roots, these black-coated creatures ransack entire airfields, eat away at vineyards and rummage through waste bins in residential areas.

To successfully protect from these damages, it is necessary to precisely understand the behaviour of wild boars. We will show you here what to watch out for and, finally, provide you with instructions for putting up the perfect General wild boar fence.

Problems with wild boars and possible solutions

Reducing the number of wild boars has now become an important issue to the public and government. Despite changes to the hunting laws and multi-faceted projects for managing wild boars, there is currently a growth rate of up to 300 per cent a year. As a consequence, the number of wild life accidents has increased, the risk of disease epidemics amongst wild animals has increased, and agricultural crop yields are being damaged by wild boar and thus endangering whole livelihoods.

There are two main solutions available for getting the situation under control. One solution is to undertake intensive hunting of wild boar in order to reduce the population density. The other is to avoid damages via the use of fences.

Frequently promoted deterrent methods such as scent marks, visual scarers, noise makers or using biological and chemical agents will only provide short-term protection, if any at all, and are not recommended by professionals.

Hunting

Wild boar may only be hunted by authorised hunters. As there are no longer any legally regulated hunting seasons for boar, the animals are hunted year-round in some places. Due to the pressure from hunting, the animals have moved their activities to the night time, thus making it much more difficult to hunt them. To improve the hunting situation, bait is being placed at certain bait locations. The bait is intended to attract the animal in order to make them easier to catch. Driven hunts have also seen a lot of success. This involves driving the targeted boar to the hunter. However, this type of hunt requires a lot of time and organisation. A large amount of time and effort is also spent in corn fields that have been set up with shooting lanes. These lanes are preferably laid out when sowing the seed. The animals usually feel very secure within the corn field and are relatively relaxed. Hunters can get a good sight of the boar through the lanes and thus take them out more easily. Farmers are compensated for the high crop losses in part through aid programmes.

Fencing

To protect yourself from having to hand your land over to wild boars fencing is the only option. Permanent fences that serve as a purely mechanical barrier should be installed to be as robust a possible to prevent them from being pushed over or broken apart. When looking for food, wild boars can summon some quite considerable strength, making even mesh wire fences insignificant obstacles to them.

Steel panel or steel rod fencing or other fences specifically for defending against wildlife are the only real options. Steel panel fences don't look particularly attractive, but are good for protecting land adjacent to forests. Installation of this type of fence requires quite a lot of effort, however, as they need to be inserted about 40 cm into the ground. To further prevent the boars from burrowing under the fence, the underground parts should bend outwards. A nicer, but even more expensive, alternative is a steel rod fence. The posts of the bolted rod panels are solidly concreted into the ground, providing sufficient stability against the power boars. The high costs of this type of fence make it more suited to fencing smaller areas. Animal fences are made up of wires woven around each other and are not easily destroyed. These must however be inserted about 50 cm into the group or fixed to a concrete base to prevent high pressures being put on them.

Electric fences for defence against wild boars

A much simpler and affordable method is to put up an electric fence. Electric fences are suitable for both small and large plots of land and provide reliable protection from wild boars. When they touch the electric fence, otters receive an electric shock. This shock is not dangerous, but is still very unpleasant, and means that the boars will keep their distance from the fenced area in future.

Tips for putting up a wild boar fence can be found under the info point General wild boar fence.