A North Carolina man took a creative and goofy approach to bear deterrence —stepping out of his house in a bear suit to spook away a black bear that had plunked down on his lawn.
It worked for Rodney Clark of Asheville, North Carolina, as evidenced by media interviews and a video making the rounds on news outlets and social media.
However, some Wyomingites said trying that tactic on a grizzly bear would probably get a person mauled, possibly killed — or perhaps even worse — molested by the bear.
Because an “educated” pig is harder to track or trap, Kentucky is taking steps to prevent the hunting of feral hogs known to damage crops, woodlands and potentially spread disease.
Kentucky wildlife management officials are finalizing a ban on the hunting of wild pigs in an effort to more easily capture them. Under the new regulation, pigs could still be shot if they’re damaging private land, although wildlife experts are encouraging landowners to instead contact the Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources to have the animals removed.
Steven Fields, an attorney for the department, told lawmakers during a legislative hearing earlier this week that if a sounder — the name for a herd of wild swine — knows it’s being hunted, the sounder avoids humans and shifts its activities to night, making it harder to track.
The Kentucky Fish and Wildlife Commission, the governing board overseeing the KDFWR, voted in December to approve a regulation eliminating the existing year-round hunting season for wild hogs.
Ben Robinson, the wildlife division director at the state agency, told the board the department was trying to prevent “anybody from shooting a pig at any time” because it can make feral hogs hard to trap en masse, something state and federal officials have actively been pursuing.
“It goes against what we’re trying to do with our trapping efforts by educating these pigs, making them much more difficult to trap,” Robinson said in December. “We’re having a lot of success with our partners, [U.S. Fish and] Wildlife Service, USDA, in trapping these animals and keeping them out of Kentucky. So by allowing landowners to just shoot freely, that goes against what we’re trying to do.
Here’s a stunning prediction. This approach won’t work.
A 72-year-old Montana man shot and killed a grizzly bear after it attacked him while he was alone picking huckleberries, according to the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks.
The man was hospitalized after the encounter, which happened Thursday evening near Columbia Falls on Flathead National Forest lands, the agency said in a news release.
FWP’s wardens and bear specialists referred to the incident as a “surprise defensive encounter.”
The man reportedly shot the bear with a handgun after the adult female grizzly charged him, the release stated. FWP responded to the incident and confirmed the bear was killed.
Neither the article or the press release says what make, model or caliber the handgun was. We would like to know this information.
It’s likely the man is alive because he quickly deployed a handgun rather than following the stupid advice to try bear spray first.
I had never heard of this animal before. It’s loose in Colorado, probably a former pet. Video at the link.
Um, what? It’s difficult to tell how big these crabs are with no backdrop for compare and contrast, but they look huge. When you are in the ocean, you’re at the bottom of the food chain.
If you’re chased by a feral boar, just run. Or better yet, shoot it with a large bore handgun.
I love eagles, but this child narrowly escaped being taken by one. If you have small children or small dogs, it’s best to keep positive control over them while they’re not in the home. They can be taken by eagles, hawks or owls. I was in the back yard at another home years ago with Heidi, my 90 pound Doberman, and an Owl swooped in within feet of her at dusk. A very, very large bird indeed. I think it finally gained perspective on just how large Heidi was and did a 180 in mid air, within feet of me. I felt the air off the wings of that bird. Of course, Heidi was standing on her hind legs jumping at it. That night, the owl was lucky to escape with its life. It had made a very bad decision.
Ohio’s House of Representatives has unanimously passed House Bill 503, a critical piece of legislation aimed at controlling the population and movement of feral swine within the state. The bill, strongly supported by the Ohio Pork Council (OPC) and other agricultural groups, targets the importation, hunting, and feeding practices of these wild pigs to protect the state’s livestock industry.
House Bill 503 addresses key issues related to the management of feral swine, including prohibiting their importation and hunting, and outlawing the feeding of pigs with garbage.
That’s right. The best way to stop the invasion is to prohibit the hunting of feral hogs. They didn’t ban hunting over feeders or raising feral hogs in preserves, they outright banned hunting them.
Wayward pigs are causing issues in some parts of Connecticut – and it’s become enough of an issue that state lawmakers are looking into how to deal with it.
The legislature’s environmental committee on Friday heard testimony on how much trouble roaming swine can cause. The committee is considering a bill to form a task force focused on roaming livestock.
“The last thing that we want in Connecticut is a population of feral pigs,” State Rep. Doug Dubitsky said. “They’re incredibly destructive, they’re very dangerous, they can run 30 miles an hour, they can be 6 or 700 pounds. They can kill you and they will eat you. It’s pretty nasty.”
State Sen. Heather Somers says bands of pigs are roaming her eastern Connecticut district, causing tens of thousands of dollars in damages to crops and lawns. She says the pigs are biting and chasing farmers.
Congratulations, Connecticuters! Whacha gonna do about it?
Oh, that’s right. Y’all don’t like guns and aren’t used to killing feral hogs. Right?
A committee. That’s the ticket. Another public works project. Talk to the experts about what to do. Run from them when you see them.
Actually, when you hunt them enough they become runners. If they’re chasing farmers and the farmers don’t carry firearms, you’ll never evolve them into runners. They’ll just come after you.
Congratulations.
Or how about hiring professional snipers to kill them? They won’t make a dent in the population, but it will make the committee feel better that they aren’t being mean to the hogs, or at least, someone else is doing the dirty work for them.
Unfortunately for you, there probably aren’t enough of them yet to advertise hog hunting in Connecticut as a sport.
Ignore all other “authorities” on handguns and bear defense (at least regarding statistics and history). Dean rules.
With that said, I think I’d rather have a larger bore handgun for bear defense. If 9mm works, I presume it’s because of shot placement or number of rounds.
After holding the cop accountable for animal cruelty, the person who called the police should be run out of town.
When will Americans return to the notion of self-policing again? You know, family, church, community. When you turn to the state for policing, the state knows nothing except the use of force. That’s the only tool in its tool belt.
On top of that, most police are less than average intelligence, less than average motivation, and are not usually regarded as thinking men.
In this case, the cop was lazy, having run out of patience for catching the dog. I didn’t get to see a side profile of the cop, but my guess is that he’s overweight and got tired of walking around. Someone prove me wrong.
Additionally, he lied both to his superiors and to the man who questioned him. The dog wasn’t a threat at all. It was a 10-pound lap dog who was deaf and blind. That was my immediate reaction when I saw the video and would have guessed that without having been told. Because I am a thinking man. Either that, or the dog was elderly and suffering from age-related issues. Either way, that doesn’t warrant a death sentence.
So the cop was [probably] fat, very lazy, had no emotional sympathy for the owner of the dog (and so he is likely a sociopath), is a liar, and is below average intelligence and motivation.
I would have walked over and picked the dog up. Because I am a thinking man and know that the dog wasn’t suffering from rabies. If the dog had been injured, the cop wasn’t in a legal position to know or do anything about it. Only a veterinarian is legally allowed to put dogs down.
Folks, this describes most cops in America today. America didn’t see it before the age of body-cams, but people see it today. God bless body-cams. The camera doesn’t lie.
Do not ever involve the police. You and your beasts are never in more danger than when the police are around. There is no situation so bad that it cannot be made worse by the presence of the police.
Stay away from the police. Do not get near them. Your life is in danger if you do. They are usually trigger-happy fools. Get away from them as quickly as you can.
In a press release, the RCMP explained that the father and son “had been tracking a bear with dogs” when the adult grizzly suddenly attacked the son. The two men were hunting on a steep mountainside south of Elkford, which lies in the Canadian Rockies just west of the Alberta border. Both men were locals, according to the RCMP, and the son lives in nearby Sparwood. “The man suffered serious injuries,” the RCMP said, “including broken bones and lacerations to his body during the attack.”
At some point during the attack, the son was able to shoot the bear with the firearm he was carrying. Neither the RCMP nor the BCCOS have shared any details about the firearm used, but it was likely the same rifle or shotgun he would have been using to hunt black bears; Canada has strict laws prohibiting hunters from carrying handguns unless they have a special license or explicit permission from the government.
Presumably he used a long gun to dispatch the bear. I would rather have a long gun than a handgun, but the advantage of the handgun is rapid deploy-ability.
Assuming you have the long gun in low ready, I would have to surmise that this is just a failure to respond to get off a shot before his father was wounded by the bear.
It would be interesting to know the style and make of the long gun.
3 months, 1 week ago
