We don't call...

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Like as not when I stop by Mom's house these days, she has the TV on to one of those "reality" shows involving animals. Chasing coons, gators, snakes, bears, hogs, problem dogs, whatever.

Now it's a teddy bear.

Reminds me of the visit recently from High School bud Rusty Freeman. Freeman is now a game warden in Wakulla County, next to Tallahassee. All around the Big Bend area, except for one small region, bears are a problem. The folks in Carrabelle, he tells me, now use bear proof garbage cans.

Florida Fish & Wildlife routinely gets calls now for nuisance bears. Game wardens show up, trap the bear and move it. Move it where? To somewhere else in the state. What about nuisance bears in other parts of the state? They too are moved - to the Apalachicola National Forest, parts of which are known  as Tate's Hell.

So, bears increase their range and get more and more used to humans thanks to humans.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203710704577050464182836548.html

I have friends who live in dangerous places. Consider Merle and Lara who live in Alaska in the middle of bear country. I worry regularly about them and dearly want to send 'em a bear-caliber rifle. They need the protection.

Tate's cougar and about to be deceased wild hog.

Closer to home, Tate Anderson hunts deer on the Brooks-Lowdnes County line here in Georgia. He has on his game camera a picture of a mountain lion chasing a wild hog. This is about 60 miles from where I live. This ain't the first painter recently seen in Georgia.


http://easterncougar.org/CougarNews/?p=152

Lemme state here that people who claim to have seen "black" panthers are likely seeing wild dogs. I know. I have seen 'em and killed said wild dogs.

I also say if I'm on a deer stand and a painter shows up, he's going home with me and ain't nobody gonna know except me until the hide is on the wall. I have no intention of becoming one run below the top of the predator ladder. http://tchester.org/sgm/lists/lion_attacks.html

Now THAT's huntin'!

My nephew Jake had two buds recently spend the night with him. The two boys asked why they could not play outside at night (they live in the city). I told Shag, Jake's dad and my brother, the two boys were small enough that a big bobcat would attack one of them. He nodded. Shag also has coyotes. http://www.varmintal.net/attac.htm

I also recall all the exotic critters in Florida now - gator-eating snakes, lizards, monkeys, toads, etc - and how people there call for someone with a badge when these critters show up and become a pain.

But as I hinted earlier, not everyone calls on law enforcement.

Freeman told me of a regional meeting. The regional supervisor asked one of the game wardens why they never get bear calls for one place.

And that's all you need to know.

"People in Sopchoppy know how to handle bears," was the reply.

I count myself as a brother-in-knowledge to fine people of Sopchoppy. I am one of those people who knows how to handle bears, cougars, snakes, gators, bobcats, wild dogs, coyotes and even the two-legged predators that occasionally invade our desmenses. I shoot. I have yet to shoot a 2-legged predator or a cougar, but all the rest I have.

People who think like I do don't call for help, unless we need help tracking it, loading it in the back of the truck or skinning it out. We take care of business in a terminal fashion.

This will drive animal rights activists beyond insane. Animals do not have rights. Rights imply an ability to be held accountable for the actions taken. It also means the ability to comprehend why an action is a result of another action even if there is a significant delay.

The "why" is the critical part. Animals don't understand why.

Nephew Jake and his first hog.

As soon as the AR crowd agrees to hold animals accountable for their actions and animals understand this, I will be at the forefront of rights for animals. Even if that happens, I will continue to hunt animals as long as animals continue to hunt and kill each other.

You ain't gotta like that. But as long as lions on the African plains take down wildebeest, I will hunt for meat. As long as animals attack people, I will remove them from being a threat to me and my family. Attacks, BTW, include animals destroying farm crops.