Stratton Bald, on the other hand, offers a journey into virgin forest on a quiet and peaceful trail. The trailhead is found easily just across the Santeetlah Creek from the Rattler Ford Group Campground near Joyce Kilmer. Bears and wild boars populate the wilderness and adjoining national forest. They are a hardy species, learning, adapting, and breeding quickly. This foraging in turn destroys groundcover and habitats and causes erosion and siltation.
Boars thrive in all types of elevations and forests and as omnivores, on all kinds of food.
Though they favor nuts, they will eat insects, salamanders, eggs, and small mammals, as well as wild yams and bulbs and roots of wildflowers. As the hogs' numbers have grown, so have efforts to control them. In the nearby Great Smoky Mountains National Park, hunting, trapping, fencing, and luring have been tried with differing degrees of success and popularity. Some boars have been relocated from the park to the national forests, where they can be hunted. The efforts are ongoing as rangers at the national forest and Great Smoky Mountains National Park work toward a balanced solution.