The Associated Press' Paul Webber has a fascinating and nicely-written story in the Star-Telegram today about pigs and the Texas legislature. No, it's not what you think. It's a piece about a legislator's proposal that would make it easier for hunters to shoot wild hogs from helicopters. Ranchers and farmers claim feral pigs are a nuisance running, um, hog wild over their property.

State Rep. Sid Miller, a colorful Republican out of Stephenville, wants to bring the fight to the razorback.

"I’ve had numerous calls and complaints that someone needs to do something," Miller said. "We’re losing ground on this problem."

But, he says, don't worry that a drunk redneck will shoot your dog and crash into your home.

"You’re not going to have some bubba up there going, 'Pass me a beer and ammo’ and hunting some hogs," the legislator said. "We certainly want to do it right."

Weber also wrote about what it was like to watch the pigs from a helicopter with Kyle Lange, a professional hunter:

As his helicopter flew over, several packs of hogs that had been rooting around in the brush or napping in the sun suddenly scattered in all directions, with piglets scampering to keep close to their mothers, the little hairs on their backs blown back by the breeze from the chopper.

"You can kill 300 in a day from up here in the Panhandle and you’ve just slowed them down is all," Lange said over the whump-whump of his two-seat chopper.

Yep, that's an Apache attack helicopter in the photo above, taken from the Pentagon's Web site.

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