Callin' all varmint hunters!!

[maunahaole]

If you have wild hog, you need nothing else.

[vertical_doug]

My mom and i always lived with my grandparents growing up. We weren't poor, just blue collar working country people.. Man, i would take that every time over having lived with my father who was very well off.

We pretty much ate beans, greens and cornbead 8 days a week. My grandma would leave a pot of beans on the stove 24 hours a day, when it got low you put more beans in. Theoretically, there could have been 10 year old beans in the pot.

Weekends was a different story. Squirrel brains, scrambled eggs, cathead bisuits and blackstrap molasses!! My Pop was a man of utter most respect for Ole mom nature, and was so soft hearted he hated to kill anything. But, he would shoot a possum, coon, rabbit, occassionally turkey or deer. He would think about that so hard he would have a hard time eating.. we essentially ate vegetarian, just cause.

I became strictly vegetarian when i was 12, and vegan from 19-32 when it almost killed me.

I started eating meat again 3 years ago. I still choose a mostly veggie diet. We do not buy meat, but i will eat anything in the buffet of the woods. My wife sometimes has a hard time with me not buying chicken at the store, but no problem raising them for eggs and meat. I am lucky, we have goat, deer a 15 acre full of fish in the front yard, turkey, wild hogs 2 miles down holler, and anything else she might try. If we don't have it, we don't eat it.

A starving man should be willing to eat anything, but the lucky man has an option..

You needed a fishing rod. Bluegills in beer batter were a treat.

[RickM]

You needed a *fly* rod. Bluegills *caught on a lightweight flyrod and then fried* in beer batter were a treat.

Fixed it up fer ya'!

[dhoff]

Hey Rowdy -->> As you found out, snake is actually pretty bad. I can only imagine that Coyote would be, um, well...it would be really really bad.

eaten allot of snake. How it taste is correlated to how hungry one is. I also assume, coyote would be nasty. It seems that vegetarians taste better.

[Mabouya]

Hey Rowdy -->> As you found out, snake is actually pretty bad.

I don't know a whole lot about snakes (mostly have black snakes around here and a few years ago I came across a copperhead) but I do know that when they die and rot that's just about nastiest, stinkiest thing I've ever smelled in my life.

[ned]

I used to to a lot of climbing in the New River Gorge. About half way down the road to the river, there was a natural spring where we'd go to fill up water bottles and the locals who didn't have indoor plumbing would come to fill up massive water tanks in their pickup trucks. Got to talking with a fella one day who warned us, "Y'all watch out for them no-shoulders." Took us quite some time to figure put he was talking about the copperheads.

[rwsaunders]

My local police force will take out any animal if it's considered a nuisance, and they have a list of qualifed hunters on hand, especially for deer harvesting. You might want to try that approach because they'll be back for the cat now that they know his/her scent and pattern. I've used an air rifle for squirrels at close range, but I agree that it is not powerful enough for an animal of that size.

[jerk]

i've got a solution!!

don't let your cat outside. my ex was walking bear, a big wolf and there were a couple of coyotes hanging out just brazenly sitting on the public golf course green. bear's hair all stuck up and he looked like he grew to twice the size and he charged after them. they got away- but he would have killed them for sure.

this is an animal that loves all dogs and people and he is really well behaved. he just hates coyotes.

[Greg Costello]

For a healthy ecosystem we really need a bigger predator back in the mix - cougars would do the trick, so would wolves. The eastern cougar is considered extinct by USFWS (the southern "panther' is, accordingly to USFWS, genetically extinct. This means that unless cougar come back naturally, there probably will be little effort to bring cougars back on the east coast. Wolves would do the trick but as we've seen time and again there is little social tolerance for wolves, and they would also be happy to eat cats after they got the coyote population in check. It's not an easy solution; some of the leading conservation biologists in the east (John Terborgh at Duke for instance) view the eastern ecosystems as on the verge of collapse due to the absence of apex predators. Deer, coyote, etc. are overrunning the systems.

[RickM]

For a healthy ecosystem we really need a bigger predator back in the mix - cougars would do the trick, so would wolves. The eastern cougar is considered extinct by USFWS (the southern "panther' is, accordingly to USFWS, genetically extinct. This means that unless cougar come back naturally, there probably will be little effort to bring cougars back on the east coast. Wolves would do the trick but as we've seen time and again there is little social tolerance for wolves, and they would also be happy to eat cats after they got the coyote population in check. It's not an easy solution; some of the leading conservation biologists in the east (John Terborgh at Duke for instance) view the eastern ecosystems as on the verge of collapse due to the absence of apex predators. Deer, coyote, etc. are overrunning the systems.

There really is no place for wolves east of the Mississippi anywhere, realistically speaking. The deer populations are going to have to collapse for other reasons, (food, loss of habitat, disease, etc..) and the growing populations of second-tier predators will have to fight it out, with the coyote the almost-certain winner..and then we'll just have to see what happens to them...I don't think it can be predicted with any real certainty right now.

[Greg Costello]

There really is no place for wolves east of the Mississippi anywhere, realistically speaking. The deer populations are going to have to collapse for other reasons, (food, loss of habitat, disease, etc..) and the growing populations of second-tier predators will have to fight it out, with the coyote the almost-certain winner..and then we'll just have to see what happens to them...I don't think it can be predicted with any real certainty right now.

Realistically this is, unfortunately, the most likely case at this point, but it will be a real mess. The woods in the east look so healthy with all the deer and turkey etc., and now wild boar multiplying, but folks don't seen the impacts occurring. The Carolina red wolf recovery program is stalled out, and the red wolves that are introduced are breeding with coyotes, sigh. We will see what the future holds; just took over the lead at an organization trying to create a better outcome, so this stuff is what I'm eating and breathing these days (The Wildlands Network - Wildlands Network). There is some good fairly wild and reasonably sparsely populated country particularly in the northern appalachians and acadia regions, with wolves just across the St. Lawrence in Quebec, so who knows, they could come but whether we would let them stay is another thing altogether. Cougars could do well in the Adirondacks; I'd like to see them up there just so we had a species called catamounts, what a cool name!

[Cookietruck]

something else might have to step up...

Scavenger turned predator: European vultures' altered behaviour : Nature : Nature Publishing Group

[Tom]

...Cougars could do well in the Adirondacks; I'd like to see them up there just so we had a species called catamounts, what a cool name!

My pals that hunt deer up there say they see them once or twice a year. They say they're kind of a nuisance, you might as well pack it in for a day or so because you won't see any deer. I don't know if they are somebody's house pet they couldn't deal with any more or they're actually there. I did read an account of someone seeing a pair on Route 85 in Slingerlands a couple of years ago, that's a suburb of Albany.

[rowdyhillrambler]

“If people persist in trespassing upon the grizzlies' territory, we must accept the fact that the grizzlies, from time to time, will harvest a few trespassers.”
Ed Abbey

[rowdyhillrambler]

Long live the grizzly, the catamount, the cougar, the lowly field mouse, bring back the red wolf, the black panther, the white tailed deer, the armadillo, timber snakes, badger, the wolverine..

Sometimes i am as guilty as anyone about trying to "sterilize," my surroundings. Then i sit for a bit and think, man, i am the nuisance.

We need a big predator to keep us in check sometimes, maybe a 1/2 wolf and 1/2 ravenous pegasus.

(can you tell, i reread Desert Soitairethis weekend)

[steve garro]

Sometimes i am as guilty as anyone about trying to "sterilize," my surroundings. Then i sit for a bit and think, man, i am the nuisance.



(can you tell, i reread Desert Soitairethis weekend)

We quit.
I live just up the street from where all the water in N. AZ that goes to S AZ necks down to a healthy rock throw.
All you can do is embrace Bat season (they do eat the bugs) keep the filthy Eurasian Doves out, leave the gate on out porch open for the coons or they will claw over, kiss the grapes goodbye as we don't want to take the time to net them, and embrace the bull & kingsnakes as they eat gophers.

Watch your dogs when the Javelinas have babies, hang your food in stainless steel mesh camping for the ringtail cats, always lift rocks away from you, and put the lizards out when they get in.

The mountain lion with two cubs & the bobcat by the river keep to themselves.

But.......
We have four eagles, a pair has eaglets every other year, watch the otters & beavers, we have blackhawks, red tails, cooper's sharp shins, kestrels, vermillion flycatchers, geese, swans, at least 5 kinds of herons & egrets, cardinals, and bluebelly lizards everywhere.

It's not just our planet.

People don't realise how much land it takes for an apex predator - my friend is tracking mtn lions, and an individual recently tracked would roam from the Verde River to the Grand Canyon ~ 120mi as the crow flies, one paved road to cross.......over & over.......

Bear & cubs are roaming the neighborhood here in Flag right now - no biggie........everyone bring in your dogbowls & bird feeders & only take your trash out on trash day....
- Garro.

[RickM]

My pals that hunt deer up there say they see them once or twice a year. They say they're kind of a nuisance, you might as well pack it in for a day or so because you won't see any deer. I don't know if they are somebody's house pet they couldn't deal with any more or they're actually there. I did read an account of someone seeing a pair on Route 85 in Slingerlands a couple of years ago, that's a suburb of Albany.

There was a confirmed sighting in Acton, Mass. (think: Boston bedroom suburb..) a few years ago. They get around..and they are indeed out there.

[Jason Musgrave]

True Story: I have the first confirmed Mountain Lion sighting in the state of VA in something like 100 years.

#ballersridecontent - a lot of you will know exactly where this took place.

~2003ish I was heading out of Montebello on rt 56 towards the Lovingston side of the mountain. Between the fish hatchery and Meadow Lane is a small rise. As I was peddling up over the top he was standing in the middle of the road just over the rise. As I was on my bike he hadn't heard me coming and was uber-startled. I mentally noted where he took off into the woods and told the game-warden the next day (family friend) who came up and confirmed it with a plaster cast of some prints. Cool story.

[christian]

Shoney -

https://local.nixle.com/alert/5016695/?sub_id=673501

Come on down. We'll go for a bike ride, listen to this talk, ask questions about peeing on our tomatoes, and go coyote hazing. According to DarrenCT, it's 88% as fun as cougar hunting.

[caleb]

There really is no place for wolves east of the Mississippi anywhere, realistically speaking.

I don't know of anyone that disputes that wolves have a place in northeast MN, northern WI, and the UP of MI. People disagree about the right population density and the appropriate extent of the range, but timber wolves are established and thriving on the east side of the Mississippi.