If you haven’t checked out this extensive thread on the joys of feral hogs, you should do so.

Feral Hogs in Texas

Looks like it would be fun for about two or three weeks. Then it would become an ongoing hell.

Via The Defensive Handgun Blog.

Gun-wielding ecoterrorist calls for reduction in human population, gets wish

I guess we’ll see how much coverage this guy’s views and apparent motivation gets. I’m guessing not nearly as much as if he was an NRA activist.

Heh.

Alaska:

A man and woman reported that they were hiking Friday evening when the bear emerged from trailside brush and charged the woman, park spokeswoman Kris Fister said in a statement.

The man fired nine rounds from his .45 caliber, semiautomatic pistol at the animal, which then stopped and walked into the brush.

The bear was found dead about 100 feet from the location of the shooting. Park officials are looking into the justification for the shooting.

Best comment on the story:

If you want to see animals but can’t resist the impulse to shoot, go look at them at the zoo.

Here in West Michigan. Should have worked from home.

Sebastian notes that proponents of expanding the no-lead range claim the “the science is in on lead in wildlife” and “There’s no debate.”

Can’t discuss if banning lead ammo makes sense. We can only discuss how much to ban it.

As usual.

Fallow Deer

A release on the Outdooor Wire notes that fallow deer have been observed in a couple of Ohio counties. Fallow deer are European natives but some are raised in the US.

The fallow deer are reportedly escapees from a propagator in Warren County. Both fallow bucks and does have been observed according to reports. This deer is not native to Ohio and there is no restricted season or bag limit. Hunters are encouraged to harvest them while out in the field. As with any non-native species it is important to quickly limit their populations to control spread of disease and competition with native Ohio wildlife.

Looks like gun season for white-tails opens November 30th, which means that the number of guys with guns on the lookout for deer with be through the roof. Hopefully, these fallows can be taken out.

Was out running this morning on a paved trail near my house when what looked a bit like a German shepherd started to cross the trail.

Except that it was a coyote.

It must have spotted me out of the corner of its eye or maybe scented me (though the wind was strong and mostly wrong for that), because about halfway across it suddenly sped up and dashed into a cornfield across the trail from the swampy woods it had come from.

This was all about 150 yards from a neighborhood along a heavily-used trail on the edge of the city of Wyoming, Michigan. I’ve seen a lot of deer along the trail, including about a dozen last fall crossing at nearly the exact spot as I saw the coyote. And I often spot deer even further into the residential area. But no coyotes until today.

And this wasn’t one of the stumpy mangy looking coyotes I remember seeing in Colorado, either. This was about the size of sleek shepherd.

Coyotes don’t usually attack humans. But there are exceptions.

(When my wife sees this she’s going to think I’m making it up to justify a predator upper for my rifle.)

Python reports rise dramatically since Sumter girl’s death

Florida wildlife officials say all this summer’s publicity about Burmese pythons may be leading to more reports of illegally held reptiles.

And they’ve just released numbers showing a dramatic increase in snake reports just in the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s Northeast Region, which covers 12 Central Florida counties.

Between January and June 30, FWC’s Northeast Region handled 13 snake reports, according to spokeswoman Joy Hill.

But since July 1, when a Burmese python killed a young Sumter County girl, that office has handled 38 snake-related calls.

That’s a 192-percent increase over the first six months of the year.

Officials are encouraging people with unlicensed pythons to get them registered. Which would be better than letting them go.

Woman warned against feeding wildlife eaten by bear

In the evenings, Donna Munson liked to sit in front of her picture window and watch the bears amble toward her Ouray County log cabin for dinner.

The 74-year-old woman — who stocked her backyard with dog food, fruit and yogurt — was found dead outside her home Friday, being eaten by a bear.

State officials had tried so many times to convince her to stop feeding the wildlife that she stopped responding to them and tried to have them banned from her property in southwestern Colorado.

Wild animals are wild, by definition, even if they act friendly. I don’t have any problem with her putting herself at risk, but her behavior also threatens others:

Neighbors complained about a growing number of bears in the hills, ransacking trash cans and even trying to break into houses this summer. Still, Munson kept feeding the bears.

Two of the bruins were shot and killed by Ouray County sheriff’s deputies Friday while they investigated Munson’s death. Deputies said the animals were threatening and had no fear of people.

Two other bears were captured and euthanized in July after a caretaker at Munson’s cabin complained they were too aggressive.

Apparently, the woman was giving special attention to a bear cub who had been injured and told a friend that she was going to use a broom to “swat a large bear that was bothering the baby bear.”

Randy Cassingham covered this on his This Is True newsletter, and he lives in the area. Go read his blog for some personal comments on the situation and a few related photos.