tip for surviving in the country/woods

[mattness]

if you go outside at 2 a.m. to check the mail you forgot to bring in... and your 85 pound dog wont follow you out of the light into the darkness despite you calling him....

bring a gun LOL


the rest of this thread is irrevelant


dog runs after something - rabbit/deer
dog growls like crazy running around the house - opossum
dog growls like crazy and runs into the woods - raccoon
dog barks with pauses in between - coyotes
dog shuts up and doesnt make a sound and wont leave the light - ????

we have been seeing bobcats around so i dunno : /

as long as the panther isnt back we're cool. and by panther, i mean panther.

 

[mattness]

check this story out. i guess the guy had to kill it with his bare hands.

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/06/19/Pasco/Man_strangles_rabid_b.shtml

our bob cats around here dont look like that. i guess where he's from they are half jaguar and ours are half lynx

ours look more like this.

we didnt start seeing bob cats around consistently until last year and this year. we're so overpopulated on rabbits and deer that anything could thrive out here that fed on them.

our friend just trapped a bobcat about 2 months ago that was taking his chickens. he actually set it free... lol.

when i was little my great-aunt-mary-ellen had a ton of cats that were basically wild - but she fed them and they lived in her barn... shed go out there and find one shredded once every couple weeks or so with its head ripped off. we think those were minks/weasels that were doing that cuz we live next to some ponds/creeks/bridges.

but she had a magical water bucket in front of the barn. any animal that drank from it died. LOL

in the mid 90s a huge bob cat drank out of it, sat down, and died 15 minutes later. sitting down it was almost waist high.

then in 1998(i was in 2nd grade) a red fox drank out of it and immediately fell over dead...

both had rabies.

my grandparents told me once that a dog showed up in front of their house one day and every time theyd try to come outside it would growl at them and it foamed at the mouth like crazy, well they had to shoot it and they called DNR to come get it because they didnt want to handle it.

welll... when they got there... they took ALL the chickens... ALL the cats, all the piggies, everything!!!

they only got a handful of animals back i was told. they probably kept them for themselves.

 

[mattness]

in 09 we had a bridge about a qrtr mile from our house that was totally overrun with minks. my dad hit one in the car one day and he had it stuffed. it was in really good shape, it wasnt smashed or anything.

weve told a ton of people about it but none believe us.. but sure enough if they ever stop by we show it to them and they cant believe it lol.

in 02-03 we had a bridge close to home that would always get clogged with huge branches after it would rain. well over a short period of time i noticed that the branches were REALLY getting piled in front of this bridge... i had to walk past it every day after i got off the bus.. well about 30-40% of the time id go buy it id see a big ath beaver swim up the creek.

i told everyone in the house about it and noone believed me. i saw it about every day and every time wed drive past it id beg dad to pull up to the bridge to see if we could see it but hed never stop. too busy, you know how dads r.

well one day we had the van all loaded up with all my brothers and sisters and my dad had pulled over in front of the bridge to skim through the mail he just grabbed... and sure enough there was that damn beaver.. and i made sure everyone saw it!!! i finally had closure on it. i checked the DNR website and apparently they released a ton of beaver here in indiana. so one must have found its way here. now here in 2010 i see them pretty consistently.

after we bought our new property in 04/05, i was riding a 4 wheeler down the tree line fence thingy of our property, and on a long branch extending over the path i was on. i saw a boy in a costume.

i rode closer and got almost directly underneath it... and it was the biggest, hugest, owl... thats right an OWL... i had ever seen.

now we see/hear plenty of owls out here, mostly barn owl. but nothing like this. it was a great horned owl for sure. it looked at me.. then turned its head and looked away... looked at me... then looked away. and i admired it for a few minutes.. and it flew away into the woods. it was sunset so it was prolly out a tad early and went back to bed LOL.

we heard/saw the bird around once a month until this year. it was living in the top of an abandoned barn we have. the thing was massive.

we never photographed it because it was always dark or almost dark when we saw it. but this is pretty close to what it looked like.

 

[mattness]

over the last few years ive seen a ton more hawks/eagles/osprey.. but almost no foxes.

lots of coyote, way too many rabbits.

lightning bugs/fireflies are way down in numbers... but butterflies were out big time this year.

deer are way up, you can go hunting every day for 3 weeks and not see one... but load the car up and go home and hit 4... lol

we saw the black panther mostly in 09 - the flood year if i recall correctly, if water has anything to do with it. we have a corn field here at the top of this hill we live on and its seperated by a runway... for an airplane... lol... but weve had 3 neighbors see it at the same spot - clearing the run way - it can cross the runway in 3 "gallops/jumps/hops" or whatever you want to call it. its also been spotted walking on top of the creek back and forth - like its hunting for things at the bottom. its almost clifflike. the cat is very large and is pitch black. you'd never see it at night. we had a july 4th party at our house once and someone mentioned a big black cat - and everyone had a story to drop. we're not scared of it because people have reported them around here forever... we just.. dont wander in the woods at night.. heh. we're almost certain it uses the corn to move around for miles and miles.. completely concealed. i remember seeing a report on the news back in 2004 where they interviewed an elderly couple say they saw it jumping over a fence with one of their piglets.. and i laughed about it along with the reporters... a panther?? how silly. now i wish i knew their names and id go find them and apologize

bobcats have been seen a lot here lately

raccoons/oppossums are everywhere. i think we had to bury 5 or 6 opossums this year because of our dog dragging them to the front yard and letting them rot.

we did a spotlighting run with 5 pairs of eyes and a pretty good spotlight and saw 4 coyote, 1 owl, 17 deer, 7 coons, and toooo many rabbits. i only saw one fox this year and it was medium sized and during the day. and it didnt look well fed. probably surviving on cat food LOL

we had a bad drought this year if that has anything to do with it.

and also this year the DNR has had a documented cougar/mountain lion in may. they caught it on some hidden cameras out in the sticks.

actually if you report a big black cat... they almost always tell you you most likely saw a cougar... because the odds of them being black is 1 in a million... but weve seen nothing BUT black ones around here LOL. they wont accept them as fact until someone gets hurt or drags one in. and even then theyd say it was a pet that got imported in.

and i havent seen a lizard in the wild since the mid-late 90s. none at all. i think the last one i saw was a blue tailed skink.

we had a good year for snakes on accident.. we had a pile of lumber under a tarp .... and termites started to colonize and eat the wood... well one day we decided to move the wood out of the way to park some cars or whatnot.. and as soon as we lifted the tarp... snakes went EVERYWHERE. i mean dozens and dozens of snakes. of all kinds, mostly garters. we put the tarp down and got my crazy ath little brother to try to catch some. and catch some he did.

he caught a few good size garters but they were vicious as hail. you couldnt hold one because they struck like crazy..
and he caught a snake that was red and had white and black stripes on it. so before picking it up we tried to remember the rhyme... but none of us could remember how it went... red touches yellow and youre a dead fellow.. or whatever.. but anyways my little brother picked it up and it turned out to be a milk snake. i dont even think they have teeth. it was SO calm. it would make a great pet. we kept it for a week or so and released it.

in 07 we had a bad copperhead outbreak down at the creek and went down and killed a bunch to keep em in control.. every time youd flip a medium sized rock youd find 2 or 3 running away or coiled up. it was a small rock island in the middle of the creek. we havent seen many since. maybe only one or two a year.

my favorite turtle hole has been overrun by geese for the last two years >.< i used to be able to go out with buckets and bring home 20 baby painters and 20 yelly belly sliders/red ear sliders whatever u wanna call em... in one lap.. id always re release them though. the last year i had a good turtle haul i was sitting in the grass and waiting for heads to pop uo where the water was shallow... and something crawled up on my hand.. it was a little musk turtle i later found out... it stunk!! lol but i swooped the net into the mucky yucky moss and dumped it onto the bank and dug through it... and i found at least a dozen of these baby musk turtles in the muck. they stunk so bad i only kept one to take home and that was to identify it. i thought they were snappers at first until they stunk me out.

in 08 i went and the geese were so bad i didnt get hardly any turtles.. maybe only 1 per lap.. the trick is to walk fast along the bank and as soon as u see a head go under... swoop it!! if you see a lot of moss... SWOOP it anyway!!! lol they like to hide under that crap. well anyways, i got flustered and decided to sit on the bank like usual and watch heads pop up... normally id only see one head every minute or so in a different spot of the pond... all big turtles too. the babies dont leave the shallow stuff. well out of nowhere painter turtle started surfacing and getting their shells level to the top of the water to take up warmth or something. i think it was breeding time for them or sumthing. it was in may. but i bet 75 full grown painters surfaced at once. i couldnt believe there were that many in that spot out in the middle.. and the water was crystal clear and you could see how big they were.

one part of the pond is almost like a swamp... very mucky and mossy... well i was on a tractor ride with my grandpa and we saw painters stacked 6-7 high all the way down a 15 ft or so log. they were stacked like pancakes!! to this day i dont see how its possible for turtles to climb and stack like that.

i used to catch box turtles too but they suck to play with cuz they dont come out the only way to find those is to trip over them in the woods. LOL.. the last one i ever found in the wild, i kicked it and almost fell over... and i yelled for my sister to come look at it, and something a few feet ahead of me stood up and charged me... it all happened so fast i thought for sure it was a bobcat because i was playing close to the bobcat den where my grandparents told me to never go.. (it usually happens like that huh...) right before it got to me it turned and ran past me. it was a fawn.. (baby deer for u city slickers)... i learned my lesson and picked up my prize turtle and ran home with it. i think i sat in the grass in front of it for an hour with a piece of lettuce trying to get it to come out.

 

[mattness]

sorry for the rant i got carried away. ive got to beat specops in my post count

 

[Redbone]

Back in the 60's and 70's after the fall bear hunts if any of their dogs didn't come back they'd just leave them run wild. They would form packs and chase deer, get into the garbage, attack pets and make a general menace of themselves. I had to shoot one of them while bird hunting but he was rabid so I didn't feel too bad. But it scared the hell out of me because I could hear more of them running around in the area. The guys in our town would get together and go after them to try to save the deer season for the hunters that liked to come up here.
The deer up here are really getting thinned out recently with wolves moving back in, and more sightings of cougars. The bear hunters do a much better job now of keeping track of their dogs with radio collars and such, so that group of predators are gone though. The DNRE finally admitted to the existence of cougars here in the upper peninsula after years of reported sightings. I've only ever saw one cougar which was crossing the road at night, took me second or two for it to register what just ran in front of me but the long tail is unmistakable.