The gamey, close-grained meat of these notoriously savage and unpredictable creatures has been prized for centuries across the whole of Europe, Scandanavia, and southern Russia. Domestic pigs turn feral very quickly and the bush country of Australia and New Zealand have large populations of those that escaped from the early settlers. Introduced in 1893 to North America, and again to several estates in the South during the 1920s, wild boar escaped and cross-bred with wild domestic pigs. There is now an abundance of this sort of feral beast which provides excellent pork and a testing hunting experience across many southern states. Pig hunting in Alabama is so popular that it has become practically a religion.