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Was it just a tipping point?
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i've talked extensively with old time hunters from SW and south central OK. There were small populations of wild hogs in SW OK until the mid-late 1990s. Then within a few years the wild hog population went out of control. There were several years of bumper acorn and pecan crops. The infusion of Eurasian boar blood did not help the situation. About the same time there was a proliferation of hog hunting "ranches". Then folks started releasing hogs into the wild.
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Thallub, why are these people purposely releasing wild pigs into the area? To hunt later?
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Yes.
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Isn't that illegal in Oklahoma?
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Yes, it is. It's also common practice and is seldom enforced.
Saw my first hog track on one south central OK property in 2006: Within two years sounders of hogs routinely visited that property: One sounder took up residence in the thickets that evolved after a wildfire on the place.
A man and his wife inherited a property several miles from that place. They opened a hog hunting "ranch" with about 100 acres under high fence. They claimed to have 10,000 acres of private land leased for hog hunting. In fact, the scam artists had no land leased for hog hunting or anything else. He released hogs all over the area. He took his hunters out and turned them loose to trespass on private property.
After a bunch of people raised cain about the trespassing, dumping of hog carcasses and a couple trucks belonging to trespassers burned up, that practice stopped.
There was a guy NW of the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge who kept 300-500 wild hogs that he was selling out of state. The OK Dep't. of Agriculture got wind of his operation and tested his hogs. They found pseudorabies, swine brucellosis and other diseases and shut the guy down. The idiot stopped feeding the hogs and they were starving to death. Some neighbors cut the fences and released the hogs.