Javelina are not native to Arizona. Neither is Le Luedeker.
Most archaeological estimates place the Grand Canyon State arrival of the hairy ungulates about 200 or 300 years ago — long before they started feasting on the state’s golf turf — after they had migrated north through the desert along with warmer temperatures and favored snacks that popped up among the vegetation. Luedeker’s arrival, meanwhile, is more precise. He moved west from Texas in 1973, fresh out of college, shortly after landing a position with the Arizona Game and Fish Department. He has tended to, tussled with, tackled, treated and tamed the state’s wildlife, javelina included, ever since. He was supposed to retire last December, “but there were some goals I wanted to accomplish yet,” he says.
Javelina and Luedeker are both Arizonans now, though the longtime wildlife manager has done his best to keep the snorters from taking up residency too close to humans. Luedeker has, over the last 51 years, wriggled into too many crawl spaces to remember, puffing up his frame to appear larger and more intimidating to creatures that do their best to do the same but defer to others who do it better. He has hollered at them, chased after them, subdued them with a dart gun, pitched small rocks in their general direction — “behavior training,” he calls it, not too dissimilar from a spanking — and squirted them with diluted ammonia. He has been bitten, but just once, on the heel of his work boot, after releasing a javelina from the jaws of a snare trap. Somehow, its four-inch, self-sharpening canine teeth did not break his skin.
And despite their residency in New Mexico, Texas, and now parts of Oklahoma, Luedeker has only once spotted a javelina outside Arizona.
“Maybe 20 years ago, I was driving west to New Mexico and happened to have one run under the car,” Luedeker says. “That was surprising.” He pauses for a couple seconds, then says, “It didn’t cause any damage to the vehicle” — a 1970 Chevrolet Blazer still parked at the house, now with more than 300,000 miles on the odometer and the original engine still under the hood — “but it was lethal for the poor, old javelina.”
Luedeker was driving south from Sedona to Scottsdale not long ago with a baby javelina in the back seat — in his state vehicle, not the Blazer. It weighed about two pounds and was probably two days old, likely abandoned by its mother in favor of a stronger birth twin. He had picked it up outside city hall and was transporting it to Southwest Wildlife Conservation Center, a rescue and rehabilitation facility that will foster it and eventually re-release it into the wild as part of a herd. All in a day’s work for Luedeker, who estimates he responds to 40 or 50 javelina calls every year — “generally because of complaints from people who are incapable of cooperating with them,” he says.
Andy Huber and Emily Casey are quite capable of cooperating with javelina — and they have for years as the director of agronomy and the assistant superintendent, respectively, at The Club at Seven Canyons in Sedona, about two hours north of Phoenix and half an hour south of Flagstaff.
They would just prefer the golf course they tend to not be ripped apart again and again by hungry javelina.
For a couple weeks last fall, Casey became the public face — or at least the public avatar — for javelina relocation after posting a video of the herds’ handiwork all around the course on her X account. Digging for grubs and other goodies, the javelina destroyed chunks of the course.
Unfortunately for Casey, “There are javelina haters and there are javelina lovers,” says Luedeker, who has worked closely with Huber, Casey and the rest of the Seven Canyons team to relocate dozens of the 150 to 200 javelina who roam the course’s 200 acres to a more natural area of the national forest that splits the region. “And very little in between.” The javelina lovers found her video and filled the replies. “I’m not going to lie, there were definitely some tears,” Casey says. “People got pretty mean.”
More than the heaps of abuse, though, Casey was fascinated with how an animal native to such a small pocket of the country could engender such strong reactions. “All of a sudden, people from states that have probably never heard of a javelina until they looked up a picture on Google are these huge javelina advocates,” she says. “It’s their favorite animal.”
So, what exactly is a javelina? (Helpful hint: not a hog.) And will you ever have to deal with one on your golf course? (Probably not, but you will deal with some sort of creatures. Best to have the state wildlife department saved in your contacts.)
First, the basics. Javelina, or collared peccary as they are more scientifically called, are herd animals that stand about two feet tall and weigh about 40 to 60 pounds — the largest Luedeker has ever seen was a 99-pound female — and live in parts of the Southwest United States, along with Mexico and Argentina. They are not pigs, but they are distant relatives of wild pigs and, believe it or not, hippopotamuses. Most research indicates they have poor eyesight and a heightened sense of smell — they can sniff humans and animals from about 300 yards out. They will attack dogs, likely a response to coyotes attacking them. Oh, and they can run as fast as 35 mph.
They are also attracted to plants and water — which explains their love for Seven Canyons and other golf courses — as well as garbage. “A lot of people feed them” says Marc Hammond, co-owner of Animal Experts, a wildlife animal control company based in Tucson, Arizona, that receives about 400 javelina calls every year. “Those people are idiots!” The more comfortable javelina become around humans, the less fear they will have and the more likely they are to bed down in a neighborhood or on a course. Hammond recommends, “Buying bulk cayenne pepper or chili powder and putting it in areas where they’re knocking your garbage over, just sprinkling it around there, spraying a towel with commercial ammonia.
“As far as things like wolf urine, that doesn’t work. We tried that a long time ago.”
In an effort to intimidate, javelina will grunt, growl, pop their jaws and release musk similar to skunk spray from a dime-size hole on their back. “You smell for the rest of the day,” Casey says. “And when you hunt them, you have to be careful when you dress the pig because if you get the stink sac on the meat, you can’t do anything with it. They’re kind of like skunk pigs.”
And javelina are hunted. Arizona issues tags to hunt javelina through a lottery system, one javelina per tag, with 575 tags reserved for the area that includes Seven Canyons. “I’m like a hunting guide now!” Casey says with a laugh. The tag allows for hunters to use handguns, archery tools or muzzle loaders — HAM, for short. (Really. HAM.) New Mexico uses a similar lottery system.
Texans hunted and ate javelina throughout the Great Depression. “If you are lucky enough to get a young gilt,” Charles Jones wrote in the McAllen (Texas) Daily Monitor back in 1934, “you will have some of the choicest meat possible, equal to any cut of pork and as a varied menu, better than venison.”
Casey and the Seven Canyons team don’t have javelina on their menu just yet. For now, they’re happy to continue what Luedeker calls “by far the biggest capture and release project we’ve done.”
“One day we got 18 and we were so excited,” Casey says. “And then we thought about it: 18 is one herd. There are nine more herds to go.”
Javelina tend to remain in the same three- to five-mile radius their whole life — they live about a decade in the wild — but their migration patterns seem to be changing. Jim Goetze, a retired professor of biology and former chair of the Natural Sciences Department of Laredo College, says, “There are a couple of verified reports on them from southern Tillman and Jefferson counties” in southwest Oklahoma. “I can’t imagine that the Red River is much of a barrier to them, and I would speculate that there would be at least some small herds of peccaries in appropriate locations in Oklahoma.”
And Luedeker says they have moved as far north as the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. “Their favored habitat is thorn-scrub, interior chapparal and Sonoran desert,” he says. “What we have in the Verde Valley is a little mix of thorn-scrub and quite a bit of chapparal. What they have found attractive is mass crops that are produced by oak trees, mostly gamble oak and also pinyon pine, which produces an edible nut for them.”
No matter where javelina wind up, keeping them away from densely populated areas will remain important. Just ask Casey.
“I’m out here legitimately wrestling pigs,” she says. “Five years ago, I wore a dress and heels to work every day. Now I wear cowboy boots, jeans and a Carhartt. There has definitely been a lot of, ‘What am I doing?’ My dad thinks I’m absolutely crazy.”
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