Archive for the 'Animals' Category

Source.

Something tells me he did everything wrong.

This bear has become too familiar with humans.

The video was captured in Greenville County near Traveller’s Rest, S.C.

In a recent conversation, the discussion of rabbit hunting came up. The rabbits are thick this year in our area. The intent is “backyard” hunting for food on several acres. Why not eat the rabbits while teaching your children to forage and harvest what God makes readily available in addition to regular hunting, fishing, chickens, and a large garden?

Hunting in most areas here is legal, but the 22LR is too loud for the desired purpose. A lower profile with the neighbors is a better choice. Early in the investigation of options, any info or background readers might have would be very helpful. The readership here is much more intelligent than a web search.

Below is some preliminary info on “quiet 22,” subsonic, and .22 air rifles. Also, the option of suppression comes to mind, which brings up questions about the law.

CCI’s Quiet .22 load is designed to deliver about 68 decibels (Db) at the shooter’s ear. This is about half the noise generated by high-velocity .22 LR ammunition and only slightly more than normal conversation. Sounds can be painful at around 95 Db and sustained exposure to noise in the 125 Db range, or even one time exposure to levels of 140 Db or higher, can cause permanent damage to hearing. When I was growing up hearing protection was rarely used when shooting and the incessant ringing in my ears is a constant reminder of that mistake.

 

While subsonic .22 LR ammunition—ammo with a muzzle velocity of less than about 1,100 fps—has been available for a long time, it generally comes in the form of expensive match-grade ammo or target rounds that are only slightly below the speed of sound. This means you either pay more for each shot or the noise reduction is minimal so as not to sacrifice velocity.

The Best Quietest Air Rifles mentions not scaring prey away and avoiding alerting the neighbors.

Looking to hunt vermin, rodents, or squirrels in your backyard? Well, after spending dozens of hours on research, I found and shortlisted some of the quietest air rifles in the market right now. Let’s dive straight into it!

An air rifle in .22 could be a good fit.

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Source.

Early on July 6, 2021, Leah Lokan awoke to a 417-pound grizzly bear a few feet from her tent, so close that she heard when the bear “huffed” at her head.

“Bear! Bear!” Lokan yelled, prompting Joe and Kim Cole — two other cyclists camping in the small town of Ovando as they trekked across Montana — to spring from their nearby tent, armed with bear spray and clamoring as much as possible, according to a 26-page report addressed by the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee’s executive body earlier this month.

The bear fled.

After scaring it off, Lokan, a 65-year-old visiting from Chico, Calif., moved food out of her tent to a nearby building. She armed herself with a can of bear spray. She declined an offer to stay in a hotel for the night. Then, she and the Coles returned to their respective tents.

Lokan’s extra precautionary measures weren’t enough. The bear returned about an hour after the first encounter and mauled her to death.

A year later, wildlife officials said the bear that killed her had developed a “predatory instinct.” Although they couldn’t determine exactly how such an instinct evolved, food and toiletries inside and near Lokan’s tent, as well as the lingering smell of cooked food from July Fourth picnic celebrations, likely played a role.

“While foraging under the cover of darkness in Ovando, perhaps due to a simple movement made by the sleeping victim, or a certain sound made by the victim, the bear reacted,” the committee’s board of review wrote in their Jan. 4 report, which was discussed earlier this month during the executive body’s summer meeting. The 11-member review board included officials from Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks; the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; and the U.S. Forest Service.

The bolded section highlights three bad decisions.  She should never have had food in her tent to begin with.  Next, bear spray isn’t enough.  Third, a hotel rather than a tent near city establishments would have been a better choice.

Getting rid of food is essential.  Protection is necessary.  A large bore handgun would have been the right medicine.

Via WRSA, On The CCP Role In The Ongoing COVID Con

This story is about a bear stalking somebody that moved into the woods, which the author, the target of the bear, uses as a metaphor for facing the Covid Vaccine damage. You’ll be interested in the Covid Vaccine data. The author indicates that CCP is at war with the U.S. but is missing a known piece of the puzzle; the illness started in a lab in the U.S., making the U.S. government a combatant against its people. You should read it; the vax data is excellent, assuming it’s accurate.

But the best part is about the bear encounter.

I sped indoors, locking the door. I grabbed a weapon out of the hall closet. In my haste, I grabbed the weapon that looked like a rifle, instead of the actual rifle, which was in a case. Thus I found myself locked in an upstairs bathroom, cowering, armed with a BB gun.

[…]

I looked under the bed: hiding there could not save me if the bear made it into the house. I realized I was holding a BB gun, and felt ridiculous. Even if I managed to shoot it, this would do nothing but enrage him. The thin bedroom doors that I had thought so rustic and charming, could be broken down by an angry animal of that size in no time.

My heart pounded as I realized that he was not leaving; he continued pacing and circling, no matter where I went.

I went back into the bathroom, and locked that door with its flimsy lock.

City folk are cute.

When I called back in spite of myself and begged the police for help, they told me to call again only if he managed to break into the house.

When seconds count, the police are a third phone call away.

F&S.

A new pill undergoing trials at Duke University may be the answer to poisonous snakebites. Currently, snakebite victims need specific antivenin for the species they were bit by, and that medicine needs to be administered intravenously at a hospital. The antivenin called varespladib-methy in pill form may change that, curing a broad spectrum of bites from different snakes.

According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 2.7 million people get bit by venomous snakes each year around the world. Venomous snakes kill between 81,000 and 138,000 people annually and leave three times that many people with disabilities. Many victims are struck in remote, rural areas with limited access to antivenin, making time one of the biggest factors in saving those bitten by snakes. But researchers hope that a pill-form antivenin would change that.

I’m not sure what “pretty long time” means, and I don’t like the sound of that.  But I do like the idea of something other than what we currently use.  I’ll communicate with the doctor and see if I can’t dig up some more facts.

For those of you who don’t currently know anything about how this all goes down, I do know a little something.  My dog Heidi always had a penchant for messing with snakes.  It was something pathological about her.  She started pawing at a Copperhead one night on a walk and got bitten in the paw.

It swelled up the size of a softball and I feared she would lose the leg, or part of it.  The emergency Vet I took her to gave her some anti-inflammatory medicine and antibiotics and sent her home.  I slept with her that night.  She was pitiful.  She recovered though.

When I asked the Vet about antivenin and studied it later, as it turns out each treatment of that stuff ranged up to $15,000 (at that time, several years ago).  It is biological material and degrades with time, and they don’t give it to animals.  I wouldn’t have been able to afford it anyway.

They create antivenin by injecting cattle (usually in Mexico) with small amounts of snake venom and then extracting the blood products over time after the cattle have adapted to it.  For it to be viable, it has to be refrigerated.  This isn’t something every hospital has sitting around (sometimes it has to be delivered via a “life flight”), and even if most or all did, snakes bite at the most inopportune time, well away from hospitals.

If Heidi had gotten bitten by a Rattlesnake, she would have been dead within minutes or perhaps a couple of hours.  So would a human without treatment.  Oftentimes, humans lose arms, legs, or other body parts, when bitten by Rattlesnakes.  Water Moccasins (Cottonmouths) also kill with a neurotoxin.  Copperheads aren’t quite the deadly threat that Rattlesnakes or Water Moccasins are, but in order to keep from losing appendages, you have to seek treatment.

A tablet like they’re describing would go a long way towards reducing the cost of this treatment and expand its availability when most needed.

As I said, I’ll try to communicate with the doctor and find out more.  For those of us to bang around in the bush or work on farms or ranches, this is important stuff.

UPDATE: Related, a little boy in Colorado was killed by a Rattlesnake.

Source.

The coyote attacked the toddler on Tuesday in Mile Square Park in Fountain Valley, according to a news release from the Fountain Valley Police Department. The girl is recovering from her injuries, police said in another news release.

Wildlife officers on Thursday trapped and euthanized the coyote in the park, Patrick Foy, a captain at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, told CNN. DNA from the child’s clothing was matched to the coyote’s DNA, Foy said.

Gosh.  It’s almost as if people should buy guns and carry them for purposes of defense of their family.  I know I heard that somewhere.

Watch the video, but here is my analysis (the comments on YouTube are idiotic).

The caption says, “wild horses.”  Eh, maybe so.  I don’t know.  There’s a salt/mineral block in the video, so it isn’t completely a wild herd.  No commenter points this out.  In any case, this is their neighborhood.  They know their way around.

Second, the horses are barely at a lope.  I know.  I have trained horses.  They can keep this speed up – and much faster than this – for far longer than the bear.  The bear is heavy.  A large portion of the musculature of the horse is dedicated to doing just what they’re doing.  The adult horses are in absolutely no danger.  They just chose to run rather than fight because that’s the easiest thing to do.  It’s all instinctive.  There was no calculus.

Third, the reason they’re loping is twofold.  They won’t waste energy if they don’t need to, and they’re probably protecting the foal.  That foal is likely in danger, but that’s the only horse in danger.

The bear is in danger too.  If the horses decide to make a fight of it with the bear (assuming the bear catches up with the foal), one strike from a rear hoof will crush the bear’s skull.  Even a glancing blow would break his jaw (killing him) or cause internal injuries (causing organ failure).  A horse kicks much faster than a rattlesnake strike, and delivers 2000 psi pressure.  Don’t ever underestimate a horse’s ability to kill.  I know cowboys who were centimeters from death from a potential head blow.

I repeat.  The herd is in no danger.  The foal is in danger.  So is the bear, so that bear must be very hungry.

Anyway, that’s my analysis.

Outdoor Life.

Hiking with kids can be a unique experience, especially when there’s a black bear following your family up the trail. Last week, Brighton Peachy, her husband, and their three young children were hiking a popular trail in British Columbia when a black bear started following them, according to KUTV News.

While the bear appeared to be more curious than aggressive, it blocked the way back to the parking lot so the family of five—with kids aged one to six—had to keep walking up the trail as the bear lumbered along behind them. Peachy was able to record a video of the encounter with her cell phone.

Video at the link.

He has his wife and children on a hike through the wilderness of British Columbia, and he had bear spray.

I think you know what I think.

Dean Weingarten.

Cynthia had been dropped off by helicopter.  She was hiking along a narrow path on a ridge a few miles from the Salcha River, about 60 miles southeast of Fairbanks, Alaska. A “small black bear” startled her with a crash in the brush. It appeared to her, staring at her, from about 10 feet away. She yelled at it. She pounded a rock with her hammer to make noise. The bear was not intimidated.  Cynthia took a step back, which was also higher on the rock.

The bear moved out of her sight, then struck her from behind and knocked her down. She had been told playing dead was the best strategy, so she did. The bear proceeded to drag her for nearly half an hour. During that time, her right arm was disabled as the bear tore and chewed on it. She was able to get her radio out of her pocket with her left arm and signal for help.

The bear managed to eat and destroy much of both her arms before help arrived. She did not resist the bear.  If she had a firearm, she could easily have shot the bear. At 10 feet, standing still, even a small pistol could have worked.

[ … ]

Marti Miller was working for the Geological Survey as a cook when she met Cynthia, two years before Cynthia was attacked. They had become close friends. Marti visited Cynthia in the hospital and was well aware of the details of the predatory bear attack.

In 1981, Marti joined the Geological Survey full-time, after she finished her college degree. She had her own encounter with a predatory black bear after she became a project leader, sometime before 1995. In January of 1995, she was interviewed by Larry Kaniut, the well-known author of Alaskan bear books.

Marti Miller’s experience was similar to Cynthia’s in many ways. One difference was she was the project leader when her event happened. She was dropped off by helicopter in a very wild area, to work on a geological survey …

[ … ]

Marti decided to climb fast to get above the bear, to a place where she could see it approaching her.  She chambered a round in her rifle.  When she had gained elevation and space, she tried the radio again. Still no contact.  Then she saw the bear again. She moved directly upslope of the bear, and in her best command voice, yelled: “Get outta here!”

The bear was about 100 feet away. It looked at her and purposefully started walking toward her. When it was 70 feet away, she fired, aiming at the bear’s nose. The 180-grain Nosler bullet broke the bear’s neck, killing it instantly.

Dean is the king of bear attack reporting.  I’ve left a number of details out – go visit Dean’s article.  And never go into bear country without a firearm.