San Francisco Bay Area Chapter President Tom Mattusch organized a special presentation by Mark J Hainds in Half Moon Bay, California, that focused on wild pig hunting around the United States.
Hainds is a lifelong hunter who grew up as the sixth generation on the Hainds family farm in north Missouri.  He received a BS in Forestry Management from the University of Missouri, and a MS in Forest Biology from Auburn University.
Feral hogs are a recurring management challenge in the southeast and throughout the U.S.  They are becoming a problem in California. In 2007 Рthe Chinese Calendar Year of the Pig РMark set himself the goal of killing at least one feral pig in 10 different states.  This challenge is documented in his book Year of the Pig, which was published in 2011 by the University of Alabama Press.
Mark is touring his book across the country, discussing the hunts, the weapons, and the characters he encountered while pursuing pigs in: Florida, Louisiana, Alabama, Texas, California, Arkansas, Tennessee, Hawaii, Oklahoma, Georgia and Missouri.
There was a lot of discussion about calibers, which ranged from black powder .50 caliber to .17 HMR.
