In South Carolina, wild boar records lean hard on a single national park. Congaree National Park accounts for 205 of the state’s 390, and Richland County, which holds most of the park, leads all counties with 223. Congaree protects one of the largest remaining stands of old-growth bottomland hardwood forest in the Southeast, a flood-prone tangle of cypress, tupelo, and towering loblolly pine along the Congaree River. It also has a boardwalk and steady foot traffic, so a hog crossing a trail there is far more likely to be photographed than one in a private river swamp.
Hogs are introduced in South Carolina, not native. Wet, acorn-heavy floodplain forest suits them well, and their churned soil and wallows mark the low ground where they feed.
Upstate and Lowcountry
Away from Congaree, records thin out fast while still reaching 30 counties. Pickens County in the Upstate comes second with 22, helped by a few records from Clemson Forest, and Oconee and Greenville add more from the foothills. Charleston, Berkeley, Georgetown, and Jasper counties trace the coastal plain toward the sea.
Reports peak in July at 48, with April close behind at 43 and a low in January. With no more than 48 records in any month, those swings are small and likely track when people visit the swamp as much as anything the hogs do. Even so, they rank 12th of 108 mammals in South Carolina by record count.
Full species profile
