Archive for the 'Animals' Category

Via Kenny and WiscoDave, this:

There aren’t many places in the U.S. where coyotes aren’t breeding pups, including Central Park in New York City, Scotten said. The canines’ native habitat was once the dry, open expanses of the western United States. But like humans, coyotes have slowly expanded their territory across the nation by quickly adapting to disturbances in their natural habitats.

Coyotes have learned to thrive in the same urban development that has caused other predator populations to decline. They can cross bridges, swim canals, and navigate sidewalks while hunting for food, Scotten said.

A coyote’s dream home, though, would be in a suburb like Bloomingdale, where densely packed developments are surrounded by farms and pastureland — a small taste of the open range prairies they used to roam.

“Now, especially in areas like Bloomingdale, the coyotes appear to be living in rural environments but coming in to urban areas to get food since its easier,” Scotten said.

Humans likely brought the first coyotes to Florida to train hunting dogs in the 1920s, but many scientists believe they now fill the role in Florida’s ecosystem that red wolves left behind. The animals help keep Florida’s rodent, raccoon and fox populations in check, but are known to prey on cattle, turkeys, chickens or unsuspecting house pets.

And humans too.  Like The Alaskan says:

Lethal control works. Alaska uses aerial wolf control to manage wolf populations as well as long term hunting and trapping seasons with generous bag limits. Wolves will have dramatic impacts on moose and caribou populations if allowed to increase in numbers unchecked. Natives in western Alaska will tell you that there was never any moose in western Alaska until wolf suppression was initiated. Moose in Alaska have been expanding their range because of wolf (lethal) control. State Fish and Wildlife personnel use aircraft to control wolf populations. Abundant moose and caribou populations are the result.

Your pig problems could be managed the same way. Aerial lethal suppression coupled with an open hunting season on pigs until you achieve the numbers, in terms of managed populations, that you want.

If eradication is your goal, then lethal removal is the only option. If the State is serious, your pig problem can be solved.

Remember, countless millions of bison, packs of wolves, plains grizzles and the prairie chickens (extinct,) were removed from the great plains with single shot front-stuffers (in large part.)

The scoped AR seems IMO, to be the best platform for ground based pig control. What fun!

We’re just not killing them.  If we don’t kill them because of gun laws, then they’ll kill your pets and sometimes hunt you down too.  Make your choice.

First, there is Texas.

Two joggers were attacked by a coyote in Frisco, Texas on Monday morning, police confirmed.

Sheri Devore and Marcia Foster were heading home from their 45-minute run around 5:30 a.m. Monday when the animal allegedly approached the two women and “lunged” at Foster, according to Fox 4.

“It knocked her down. I was like trying to grab her to get up. And the overwhelming thought in my head was: ‘just stay up.’ If you go down, that’s it,” Devore told the news station, adding the coyote didn’t appear to tire and “just kept coming and coming and coming.”

Fortunately, the pair was rescued by a driver, Michael Harvey, who was on his way to work when he witnessed the terrifying scene.

“Right before I got to the Panther Creek there, I [saw] two ladies in the middle the street waving their hands,” Harvey told Fox 4.

“There were like trying to move away from it in the middle of the street. Trying to get it to stop. Trying to make noises and getting it to stop to scare it off, but it wasn’t going,” he continued, adding he was surprised by the animal’s lack of fear “even when I [tried] to pull up on him blowing the horn.”

Next, there is inner city Charlotte.

Proof of Charlotte’s fast growing inner city coyote population showed up Monday on a home’s security cam, when “a pack” of up to four was caught on video walking through a yard.

The sighting was in the Sedgefield area of South End, about 1.5 miles south of uptown.

Donna Ragan, who works with Charlotte’s Second Harvest Food Bank, posted the video of on Facebook, noting the “pack of two to four coyotes” was filmed at 4:40 a.m. Monday outside her mother’s home in Sedgefield.

A 30-second clip shared by Ragan features as many as three of the animals wandering at the edge of the camera’s range, including one that comes up to the porch.

Ragan posted the video as a warning to homeowners to bring their pets inside at night.

She believes the coyotes are hiding during the day in the wooded areas that separate subdivisions.

“They honestly can’t help the situation that they have been put in as neighborhoods are sprouting up everywhere and they don’t have too many places to go,” Ragan told the Charlotte Observer.

How sweet.  The furry hair balls with big ears can’t help it.  I guess they would be warm and cuddly.  Why don’t you take them in and give them a blanket and warm place to sleep?

Actually, the first attack was a lone Coyote, while the second account doesn’t involve an attack, at least, none stated in this report.  But the attacks have happened, or they’re coming.

You carry a gun all of the time, right?  Hey, I wonder if Scott would think this is reason enough for someone other than him to have an AR-15?

And everywhere else.

Amei Francesco-Folsom arrived home on a Thursday afternoon to find blood all over the streets in her Palm Springs neighborhood. Her husband, Greg, informed her the blood was from neighborhood ducks and she subsequently called her town’s maintenance department to have it cleaned.

However, she soon discovered it wasn’t there by accident. The Lakewood residential community is removing ducks — violently.

In late November, men dressed in dark blue, carrying guns and orange buckets started walking through the neighborhood. They work for Allstar Animal Removal, a licensed wildlife removal company contracted by the homeowners association. It is not clear what type of guns were used.

Their job is pretty straightforward: shoot and remove the Muscovy ducks — a nonnative species from Central and South America with black and white feathers and red waddles.

“I came home and saw blood everywhere,” Francesco-Folsom, who has lived in Lakewood since 2003, said. “I’m beyond upset about this situation.”

So I assume that you would rather your children walk around in feces and contract awful diseases?

News from Texas, but it could be virtually anywhere in the lower 48.

FRISCO – Frisco police are warning residents to beware of aggressive coyotes after a jogger was attacked in the third coyote-related incident in the city this month.

It’s only abnormal if you don’t know anything about Coyotes.  When you’re out and about in or near the bush (and yes, a park is near the bush or at least similar enough), you’re carrying a gun, right?  You’re watching your six, right?

From several of you, news from Canada:

A Yukon woman and her 10-month-old daughter are dead after a bear attack at a remote cabin, the territory’s coroner said.

In a news release, Yukon’s coroner said the bodies of 37-year-old Valé​rie Thé​orêt, and her daughter Adele Roesholt were discovered by the child’s father at around 3 p.m. on Monday.

According to coroner Heather Jones, the two had been alone at the cabin when the attack happened.

“It appears they had been out for a walk when the incident occurred, sometime between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m.,” the coroner’s news release said.

Thé​orêt, originally from Quebec, was on maternity leave from her job teaching Grade 6 French immersion at Whitehorse Elementary School. She and her partner, Gjermund Roesholt, and their daughter had been trapping at Einarson Lake for the last three months, the coroner said.

Einarson Lake is located more than 400 km northeast of Whitehorse, near the border between Yukon and the Northwest Territories.

Roesholt was away from the cabin on the family’s trapline when the attack occurred, Jones said. He came back just before 3 p.m. and was immediately charged by a grizzly bear, about 100 metres from the cabin.

Roesholt managed to shoot the bear, killing it. He then went to the cabin, where he found the bodies of his partner and child outside.

He used an emergency beacon device to call for help.

That call went to RCMP in Mayo, a village of 200 people and the closest settlement to the cabin. It also went to friends of the couple.

[ … ]

Beaupré said the couple bought their remote trapline about three years ago, and tried to spend as much time as they could in the wilderness. They were avid outdoors people with lots of experience, he said.

“They were, I’m 100 per cent sure, well-prepared for anything that could have happened. But, you never know.”

This sounds like a horrible and messy affair.  Either the bear caught them near the cabin with the woman unarmed, or actually invaded the cabin and took them out.

Just horrible.

I guess the moral of the story is that being prepared in this neck of the woods means always having a firearm on your person.  Not ten feet away, or in the next room, or in the safe.  But on your person at the ready.

Dean Weingarten:

With no round in the chamber and no magazine in the pistol, the Glock was rendered useless, if Mark Uptain ever got to it.

Uptain had bear spray holstered on his hip. Chubon did not recall Uptain using the bear spray to the point where Chubon fled to get help. Uptain emptied the bear spray at some point during the fight. The 250-pound grizzly sow had evidence of bear spray on her. Mark Uptain was killed in spite of the bear spray.

Carrying a semi-automatic pistol with an empty chamber is known as carrying in condition three, terminology used by the renowned gun writer, instructor, and competitor Col. Jeff Cooper.   It is also known as “Israeli Carry”, because it is how Israeli soldiers are trained to carry semi-automatic pistols.

It can work well if the user trains to always load a round from the magazine when the pistol is drawn from the holster.  As a safety feature, if an untrained person accesses the pistol and tries to fire it, they may not know how to load a round into the chamber and can be stymied in their effort to fire the pistol.

First, use guns, don’t rely on bear spray.  Second, a gun is of no use to you if it isn’t on your person and ready to use.  Finally, whatever you may think about having a round chambered, this is one reason I carry 1911s and use the safety.  In one motion I can sweep the safety down as I’m gaining purchase on the gun.

Dogs being attacked by Coyotes has become a routine occurrence throughout the country.  But remember, it can happen to humans as well.

The child had just gotten off her school bus and was walking toward her house, located in a wooded area, when the coyote approached her and bit her on the leg, the television station reported.

Multnomah County Animal Services spokesman Jay LeVitre said the girl was taken to a hospital and treated in case the animal was rabid, KATU reported.

Michelle Dennehy, an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman, told KATU that in general, coyote attacks are extremely rare.

“With any animal, and coyotes are no exception, we see more problems when, for example, they’re being fed and they become habituated to an area,” Denehy told the television station.

What he said is a load of crap.  Ask any Raccoon hunter in the South who’s killing the ‘Coons and destroying his hunting?  Or go out in the field to a deer stand just before dawn or walk into any field around me just after dusk and shine a flashlight around you.  Tell me who has all those eyes?

As for deer hunting, one commenter told you why there are so few of them now.

Why are there more coyote sightings ___________ (fill in the blanks.

Deer and coyotes have expanded their ranges since the White man. They love the landforms and uses we create. Had three or four setting on the golf course in Snotsdale by my office for years. Kept the rabbit population in check, Bobcats galore too.

Hunters don’t hunt them anymore also helps. We have a standing order in my hunt club that every hunter must shoot a coyote whenever they see one. If you get caught NOT doing that, your out!

(One area I had hunted Coues for years in had an estimated 97,000 deer in it in 2000. Eight years later it was down to just over 14,000. Fish and Game at their annual meeting said it was ML’s. Tags were no more than 50/year. They eat a deer a week in AZ.) … Trust them at your own risk, they appreciate the flexibility in your love of nature.

Folks, the country is going to have to deal with the notion of the hatred of guns and mankind’s dominion of nature as a moral mandate from God.  If America doesn’t come to terms with that, not only will the wicked humans in the inner city continue to prey upon other humans, but you won’t even be able to allow your own pets or children into the yard or on your porch without being closely supervised with an armed presence.  Perhaps you should ask if you can do that anyway?

As for deer hunting, it will perish as a sport if we don’t cull the Coyote population.

In Western North Carolina:

A Haywood County man says he battled a bear outside his home and he has the scrapes and bruises to prove it, WLOS reported.

Sonny Pumphrey was in his driveway Tuesday afternoon when he says a mother bear and her two cubs showed up. He says the cubs ran off but the mother bear reared up and attacked him.

“She made a charging dead run at me. That sucker was eyeball to eyeball to me,” he said.

Pumphrey says he punched the bear in the nose, but then she dropped down and bit his hip.

She kind of shook me a little bit, and I’m still … I’m hitting her steady on the top of the head just as hard as I could swing, man, for dear life,” he said. “I just continue pounding and pounding and pounding and she’s continuing trying to bite me. And like I said … she got a hold of me and then shook me a little bit, then she let go and she took a swat at me. And when she took a swat at me she knocked me about 8 feet over on the concrete.”

Sonny’s wife Betty heard the screams and rushed to his aid along with their little Yorkie, stunned at the sight of a large black bear in their driveway.

“I saw her stand up and rear her paw back and all I seen (sic) was a mouthful of teeth,” she said. “And I just knew he was going to be gone.”

This happened near Waynesville.

WAYNESVILLE – A Haywood County man says he punched a mother black bear in the nose after she came toward him at his home off Liberty Church Road.

Sonny Pumphrey, 78, was working in his driveway Tuesday afternoon when he said he looked up and found himself eye to eye with a black bear, according to a post on his Facebook page.

I’ve hiked and backpacked near this area many times.  Honestly, I don’t think I’d be working anywhere around there, even in my own driveway, without carrying a legitimate self defense weapon.

I’m glad he survived, but punching a bear in the nose is not a viable strategy.

News from the Northwest:

A Gresham woman killed in a suspected cougar attack near Mount Hood suffered a broken neck and had more than a dozen puncture wounds to the nape of her neck, records released this week show.

Those injuries — as well as wounds on Diana Bober’s hands — “appeared to be consistent with an animal attack,” staff in the Clackamas County medical examiner’s office determined, according to a state police report.

The 5-page report doesn’t list an official cause of death for Bober, 55, and it’s unclear why it’s missing. Her death is the state’s first confirmed fatal wild cougar attack.

Wildlife officials later shot and killed a female cougar they believe mauled Bober, based on all available evidence.

The new details emerged in Oregon State Police documents obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive through a public records request.

Searchers found Bober, an avid outdoorswoman, on Sept. 10 in the Mount Hood National Forest, three days after out-of-state relatives reported her missing. They said they hadn’t heard from her since Aug. 29.

Her body was discovered about 300 feet off the Hunchback Trail and down a steep incline, the state police report shows. The area was about a mile from the Zigzag Ranger Station, where searchers first found Bober’s car.

State officials said her wounds indicated a wild cougar was responsible.

A hunt for the mountain lion began almost immediately. Officials set up multiple cameras along the Hunchback Trail in the area where Bober was found.

Three days later, on Sept. 14, a trail camera captured an image of a large cougar, state police records show.

“This appears to be a big cat,” Sgt. Todd Hoodenpyl wrote to Capt. Jeff Samuels and Trooper Casey Codding at 9:51 a.m. that day.

About six hours later, search dogs treed the cougar off the Hunchback Trail and it was shot and killed, according to state police.

They’re not warm and cuddly and friendly.  If you backpack or hike or mountain bike like I do, going solo is a risk.  I usually take partners, but sometimes don’t.  If you don’t, watch your six.

Always carry weapons and be prepared to use them with quick-access gear.  And a dog can alert you to things you won’t hear or see.