Archive for the 'Animals' Category

It has become a mantra here at TCJ.  You know what can happen in the bush without a side arm.  The bush has bears, Coyotes, dogs, snakes, feral hogs, big cats and potentially two-legged predators.  This report is simply disheartening when it could have been prevented.

A Georgia man sustained serious injuries to his legs, arms, and hands after a pack of loose dogs attacked him while he was relocating a deer stand. The 61-year-old hunter ended up with 298 puncture wounds and a severed ligament in his hand after an attack that lasted upwards of 15 minutes. Once he escaped, the man managed to flag down a passing driver who helped transport him to a nearby hospital.

He was attacked by three dogs.  The story continues.

Scott tried screaming for help, but no one was around to come to his aid. Because he’d left his cell phone on his ATV more than 150 yards away from the scene of the attack, he was unable to phone authorities while the dogs were mauling him. Eventually, he managed to fight them off by wheeling around a large stick in circular motion. As he spun with the stick, Scott made his way toward another ladder stand that he knew of on an adjoining piece of property.

[ … ]

He stayed in the stand for about 30 minutes, waiting for the dogs to leave the area. When it seemed like the coast was clear, he climbed down. But the dogs heard him moving through the dry leaves and quickly returned. He scrambled back into the stand and waited out the dogs for another half hour. Then he made a run for a nearby highway.

[ … ]

According to the Athens Banner-Herald, all three dogs were euthanized after the mandatory quarantine, and the woman who owned them received a citation for being in possession of dangerous animals.

While the attack was both physically and mentally traumatizing, Scott said he won’t let it keep him out of the woods for good. “I’m going to start carrying a side arm again, and I already bought a collapsible steel baton and a canister of bear spray,” he said. “When I do go back, it’ll have to be with my son, at least for the first few times.”

The pictures at the link are remarkable.  Go to the link to see what three dogs can do in a big hurry to the human body.

In the mean time, he should have been reading TCJ.  He got slack and paid a huge price for it.  Never, never go into the bush without a large bore pistol.

This isn’t good news for ranchers and residents. Of course, the government, either purposefully or through incompetence, was dragging its feet.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will study delisting populations of grizzlies near Yellowstone and Glacier national parks

Idaho’s audacious bid to strip grizzly bears of Endangered Species Act protection was rejected by the Biden administration Friday.

But its neighbors Montana and Wyoming had better luck. Responding to delisting petitions from all three states, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said bear numbers in the Greater Yellowstone and Northern Continental Divide ecosystems may be strong enough to qualify as distinct populations that can be considered for delisting. The agency will spend the next year collecting data to determine if each of those populations are indeed healthy enough to move from federal to state management.

The service dismissed Idaho’s much more expansive request that grizzly bears across the country be stripped of their threatened and endangered status. The decision came just a day after Idaho Gov. Brad Little threatened to sue the agency for failing to act on the state’s petition, submitted last March, within the required 90 days.

“The response is seven months late, and it took a threat of legal action from the State of Idaho to simply receive a response,” Little said in a prepared statement. “While we continue to evaluate the decision from (the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service), this is another example of federal overreach and appears to have a disproportionate impact on North Idaho.”

There are about 1,000 grizzlies each in the Greater Yellowstone and Northern Continental Divide ecosystems, which are centered around Yellowstone and Glacier national parks.

[…]

Glenn Reynolds post a link to hunting feral hogs from a helicopter in Texas.  Bacon, Glenn says.  Nope.

My hog gave me shoulders (what you would know as the ham), ribs and backstraps (what you would know as pork tenderloin).  A lot of all of it.  Feral hogs are too lean to give you bacon.

Anyway, feral hogs aren’t just a problem in the South as the link alludes to (” … an invasive species in the southeastern United States“).  Where do they get these “journalists” anyway?  That’s very old and outdated information.

Based on this report, I pointed out that “They reproduce faster than lethal removal can take them out, they’ll adapt to their surroundings, they’ll dig up the ecosystem to the point it looks like a rototiller came through, they’ll kill indigenous game, and they’ll come after humans too.”

They’ve adapted to the harsh, cold weather in Canada.  If you consider these like any other animal you’ve ever studied, you’re on the wrong track.  They defy your expectations.  They’re warm weather animals.  They’re cold weather animals.  They’re nocturnal, and they eat in daylight too.  They will come after you.  They will even attack horses.  On the other hand if they see a means of escape, they’re runners and refuse to “bay up” and even the dogs can’t catch them.  They reproduce at a rapid rate, they’ll eat virtually anything.  They destroy everything around them, and are costing millions of dollars in damages to farmers.

In fact, the Northwest is bracing for a hog invasion.  They’ll get it too, of that you can be sure.  Better journalists than the one cited above have begun to catch on.

Today, around six million feral swine run hog wild in at least 35 U.S. states, where they can grow more than five feet long and weigh more than 500 pounds. They’re adaptable creatures, capable of thriving in nearly any environment. For instance, the animals are also increasingly widespread on myriad Caribbean Islands and in Mexico, from the Baja to the Yucatán Peninsula, as well as Canada, where even deep snow and bitter cold can’t slow them down. (Read how feral hogs are moving into Canada and building “pigloos.”)

What’s more, females can begin reproducing at just eight months of age, and each can produce up to two litters of four to 12 piglets every 12 to 15 months. This allows the species to multiply rapidly and colonize new territory with unparalleled efficiency. Feral swine also ravage agricultural crops, and can harm people who corner them. But those outcomes aren’t what really worry experts.

It’s their diseases.

According to the USDA, feral swine can carry a litany of pathogens that could potentially spread to people such as leptospirosis, toxoplasmosis, brucellosis, swine influenza, salmonella, hepatitis, and pathogenic E. coli.

But there’s another concern—new diseases we don’t even know about yet.

“Swine, in general, are considered a mixing vessel species, because they’re susceptible to human viruses, like influenza viruses,” says Vienna Brown, a USDA staff biologist with the agency’s National Feral Swine Damage Management Program. “And when those get into swine,” she says, they could “create a novel influenza virus.”

“So I would argue that our risk from swine is greater than it is from other, more traditional wildlife species, in part because of their gregarious nature, our proximity to them, and just sheer numbers.”

[ … ]

Scientists are also tracking how diseases move through feral swine in the wild. Officials in Great Smoky Mountains National Park started monitoring feral swine health in 1959, but it wasn’t until 2005 that it saw its first case of pseudorabies. Like ASF, this virus is not a threat to humans, but it can cause aborted fetuses in pigs and death in other animals, such as wild raccoons and opossums and even pet cats and dogs. (Learn more about the battle to control America’s most destructive species.)

“The prevalence increased from basically zero to roughly 20 to 40 percent, depending on the year,” says William Stiver, supervisory wildlife biologist for the national park. “But it’s certainly here, and we’ve watched it sort of migrate across the park through the pig population.”

Leptospirosis, which is caused by a bacterium, has also been found in the park’s feral swine. If left untreated in people, it can cause kidney damage, meningitis, liver failure, respiratory distress, and death, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Kill them when you see them.  You benefit society when you do that.  There’s the added benefit of good eating, but make sure to cook them well.

Prior:

Feral Hogs in Canada

Woman Killed by Feral Hogs Outside Texas Home

Houston-Area Suburbs Now Suffering from Feral Hogs

Hog Apocalypse in Texas

Save the Planet – Buy an AR!

Source:

Terreton, Idaho — An Idaho resident shot and killed an adult male moose after it charged him, making him fear for his safety, according to reports.

According to Idaho Fish and Game, the moose had been making himself known in residential areas around Terreton and Mud Lake for better than a week, and had apparently become “increasingly agitated.”

Before the man was forced to shoot this moose, he reportedly attempted to “haze” the moose out of the yard. This behavior is not unheard-of, according to New York State’s amusingly-named Moose Response Manual.

Though specific to New York, this manual has some interesting items.

The moose reportedly charged the unnamed man, and the man tried to stop the attack by shooting the moose, and he succeeded. According to Idaho Fish and Game, the moose was “only a few yards away” from the man when he killed it. The man managed to avoid injury.

No word on the caliber or type of firearm. Moose are very dangerous animals.

Source: New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Moose Response Manual

Outdoor Life.

Hunting wild hogs is great fun, and it’s a popular pursuit in many places around the country. But wild pigs themselves are a real problem for native flora and fauna. This is precisely why hogs have become a nationwide concern as they reproduce in astounding numbers and find ways to thrive in new environments.

According to a report from the Cowboy State Daily, Wyoming and Montana are currently free of wild swine. However, wildlife managers in these states are receiving reports of pigs in Colorado, North Dakota, and Utah. Landowners and hunters, meanwhile, are worried about hordes moving into Montana and Wyoming from Canada.

Alberta and Saskatchewan are already infested, which shows that cold weather and snow have little impact on the prolific pigs. If they can survive in Canada, so the thinking goes, wild hogs marching into Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming is entirely possible.

As wild hogs continue to spread throughout central Alberta, Ryan Brook, a University of Saskatchewan professor studying the pigs, says they could cause an “ecological train wreck” and bring “absolute destruction” to the native ecosystem.

We warned you and have commented before about this problem.

They reproduce faster than lethal removal can take them out, they’ll adapt to their surroundings, they’ll dig up the ecosystem to the point it looks like a rototiller came through, they’ll kill indigenous game, and they’ll come after humans too.

If you live up there, get your rifles ready.  Oh, Canada won’t let you have those.  Too bad.  If you live in the rest of the U.S., get your rifles ready.

That goes for Alaska too.  There aren’t enough bears to kill them all.

I’ve also commented on the hog problem in the South before they began to move North.

Woman Killed by Feral Hogs Outside Texas Home

Houston-Area Suburbs Now Suffering from Feral Hogs

Hog Apocalypse in Texas

Save the Planet – Buy an AR!

Here is the report.

I say parenthetically and the Northern U.S. because an imaginary boundary line won’t stop them.

You know they’re already in the Northern states.  See, you thought that hogs were a Southern problem, an issue only Georgia, Texas, S.C., Mississippi and Louisiana had to deal with.

You’d be wrong about that.  They reproduce faster than lethal removal can take them out, they’ll adapt to their surroundings, they’ll dig up the ecosystem to the point it looks like a rototiller came through, they’ll kill indigenous game, and they’ll come after humans too.

If you live up there, get your rifles ready.  Oh, Canada won’t let you have those.  Too bad.  If you live in the rest of the U.S., get your rifles ready.

That goes for Alaska too.  There aren’t enough bears to kill them all.

There are several of these. I think one may even have been posted on TCJ some time ago. This one is in PA:

Field & Stream has the backstory.  “A wildlife photographer named Slwomir Skukowski recently shared rare video footage of a mature wild boar fighting off a wolf pack in a Polish forest near the village of Mrzeżyno. The three-minute clip was filmed with a trail camera, and it’s amassed hundreds of thousands of views since Skukowski uploaded it to Youtube on December 13. It shows the big Eurasian boar thwarting multiple advances from at least seven wolves working in unison to bring it down.

In the video, the big hog is seen charging into the encircling wolf pack with reckless abandon. The wolves continue to approach the boar, but they never actually take it down—at least not in front of the camera. Eventually, the snorting pig scatters the canines, and they retreat to a nearby ridge before regrouping for another attack. Around the three minute mark, the wolves disperse and the clip cuts out.”

Of course, we don’t know what eventually happened, but it’s significant that one hog dispersed a pack of seven wolves, not once, but multiple times.  They are smart enough to know when there is danger of being gored by an animal that can run as fast as they can.

This is why you carry in the bush regardless of where you are.  In the Northwest it might be brown bears, but in the South it’s snakes, wild hogs and black bears.  There is danger everywhere.  Never go out in the bush without a sidearm.

Here is the video.

Here is a related video from the Southlands of the U.S.

Outdoor Life has the story.

This information comes from PhD work at the University of Georgia (Blaise Newman, a PhD student at UGA) and which is sponsored by Sitka (which makes perfect sense).

See the link for the details, but here is the BLUF.  Avoid blues.  Avoid anything you might wash your gear or clothing in detergent containing UV brighteners.

What’s even more interesting is that a deer’s ability to see in the blue spectrum dictates where they move and when. Newman’s most recent project touched on this connection by tracking whitetail bucks in Florida with GPS collars and seeing how they moved through different landscapes at different times of day. She found that these bucks often chose to move through more open and brightly lit areas that reflected plenty of blue light including UV.

“They’re actually moving through an environment that makes it easier to detect you,” she says. “One way I always relate it is if you had the option to walk down a dark alley or a well-lit alley, which would you choose to move through?”

Newman also evaluated how deer move during low-light hours by hooking them up to an electroretinography machine and measuring their response to different light stimuli. (This is essentially the same technique that was used in the Deer Lab’s 1992 color vision study.) She found that deer were most sensitive to light and movement under twilight conditions, which supports the idea that deer are more active at dusk and dawn because that’s when their eyes function the best.

“One of the most interesting things we found is that deer eyes can detect the best, and are most sensitive, during twilight periods,” Newman says. “So, if you’ve been hunting all day just waiting for that buck to come by, and he’s finally coming out at twilight, you better be careful because his vision is the most sensitive it’s been all day.”

If deer vision seems inferior to ours, that’s only because we see the world through human eyes. As apex predators and tool developers, it’s beneficial for us to see in finer detail and to be able to recognize a wide range of colors. These subtleties aren’t so important to deer, though. Their eyes have evolved to prioritize detection over detail, and their abilities in this department are vastly superior to our own.

“Deer are a prey species,” Newman says. “Having detailed discrimination isn’t really important to deer. They just need to be able to detect and escape something.”

When it comes to color vision in particular, Newman explains that deer benefit from having less “chromatic noise.” By not having to process so many colors in the retina, their eyes can detect movement more quickly and easily. This means that deer can process visual cues much faster than humans do.

“They see motion at an astounding rate compared to our own ability,” she says. “The other aspect is temporal resolution—the time interval over which you integrate information—and their temporal processing just outstrips ours.”

Movement and blues give us away.

Orange, not so much.  It appears grey to them.

Outdoor Life.

Although domestic dogs are generally accepted as wolf descendants, wolves are a completely different animal. It’s easy to see why much of the general human population places wolves on a pedestal. They are wild, majestic, smart, and perceived as relatable, given our tight-knit relationship with domesticated canines. Wolves don’t care about your suppositions, however. Given the chance, they will kill your dog.

Some might think that wolves and dogs would be friends, but all it usually takes is your dog getting a single whiff of a wolf to convince you otherwise. Hell, wolves aren’t even friends with each other. Here in Alaska I spent several years skinning for a local fur buyer and put up hundreds of wolves. I had wolf smell on me all winter long and any domestic dog I encountered either got its hackles up or wet itself.

The late Outdoor Life contributor Jim Rearden’s book Alaska’s Wolf Man, about the famed Frank Glaser, elaborates on the subject. Years after encountering a pair of mixed wolf-dogs, Glaser captured a male wolf and bred his own wolf-dogs to pull sleds. He noted that they had the distinct smell of wolves, and any time he pulled into the small town of Healy, any loose dogs cleared the street at the smell and sight of them.

[ … ]

It’s not normal for wolves to attack humans, but it’s not unusual for them to kill domestic dogs—even in the backyard. Living in Fairbanks, Alaska, it’s never surprising to hear of wolves eating dogs “off the chain.” Another Fairbanks resident, John Reeves recently mentioned it on a Joe Rogan podcast appearance, and it’s true. When passing through the edges of populated areas, it’s not uncommon for wolves to prey on domestic dogs.

In 2007, there were packs of wolves in different parts of the Fairbanks area ravaging dog yards. A re-posted story written for the Fairbanks Daily News Miner by Tim Mowry that year talks about the winter of 1974-75 when wolves killed an estimated 165 dogs in the Fairbanks area.

There are some gruesome stories at the link.  I suppose there’s always the exception (at one minute into the video).

But it doesn’t matter whether the threat to my beast is a Coyote, Wolf or big cat.  I carry weapons and will use them to defend my family.