The history of the Wild Boar (Sus scrofa) in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park is one that began as a sport around 1900.

This “sport” quickly grew (seriously out of control) when the first hogs that were brought to the Appalachian region in North Carolina and held at Hooper's Bald. It was about that time that these large and hearty 300+ lb. feral hogs escaped their pens in North Carolina and began populating all across the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  A mother hog or “sow” can birth up to 12 piglets in a single litter each year. The numbers obviously grew at an alarming rate and soon the Wild Boar was well entrenched into the local mountain areas.  It is currently believed there are over 500 wild boars in the National Park today. They are a vicious, unpredictable, basically good-for-nothing menace and have become an ecological nuisance!

Hence, the wild boar is not native to the Smokies, it is more of a pest.  European Wild Boars, often called Russian boars, likely came to our region in the early 1900's from Germany as a sport for hunters. Populations have become widely established after these “great escapes” of the wild boar from captivity.  
Adult males are usually solitary outside of the breeding season, but females and their offspring (both sub-adult males and females) live in groups called sounders. Sounders typically number around 20 animals, although groups of over 50 have been seen, and will consist of 2 to 3 sows; one of which will be the dominant female. Group structure changes with the coming and going of farrowing females, the migration of maturing males (usually when they reach around 20 months) and the arrival of unrelated sexually active males.

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