Nutria tail now worth $4

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ^ | Wednesday, November 20, 2002 | Dan Majors

[Willie Green]

Today's installment of "Animals Gone Wild" involves the nutria, a ravenous rodent that is currently consuming the Louisiana coast.

They were brought to this country in the 1930s, before the words "ecological balance" were coined. Back then, folks were still focused on the words "fur trade."

[EggsAckley]

Maybe if they feed the nutria cherry-flavored kudzu, they all would die.

[dd5339]

Hey! How much ammo do we have loaded up? At $4 per tail and 400,000 animals thats $1.6M! Want to take a road trip?

Semper Fi

[robertpaulsen]

All right! Let's go get some tail!

[martin_fierro]

All your Nutria are belong to us.

Kinda looks like a BeaveRat.

[Willie Green]

Their droppings are surprisingly large.
No wonder Louisiana put a bounty on them.

[Mudbug]

And then there's alway Sheriff Lee's approach to the problem:

In Jefferson Parish, with the nutria problem reaching a crisis point, Sheriff Harry Lee put together a team of sharpshooting deputies with hopes of eradicating the rodent from canals and levees. Lee insists the team's efforts have been successful during the past seven years.

http://theadvocate.com/stories/060902/out_nutria001.shtml

[crystalk]

Since this is pronounced "nootra," perhaps a way could be found to make it into "nutra-sweet."

[ArrogantBustard]

Know your enemy.

He need to be introduced to one of these: , at about 1400fps.

[stands2reason]

Looks like a lot of Louisiana women are gonna be sittin' home alone this weeekend....

[CollegeRepublican]

Unfortunatly, these stinking critters spend most of their time underwater and the only reliable way of killing them is to trap them. But the buggy-huggers are doing their best to outlaw leg-hold traps.

Here in Maryland we have a serious Nutria problem on the Eastern Shore. They are destroying the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge. They eat and reproduce like crazy and unfortunatly our hunting and trapping culture is dying in this country. As more and more people from the burbs move to the Eastern Shore and rural areas in general hunting and trapping opportunites are destroyed by their hateful liberal bunny-hugging culture. Sad really. In Maryland next year they are going to probably ban leghold traps unless our new Republican Governor can veto this bill. We are losing hundreds of acres of essential wetlands a year to Nutria. These wetlands are the filters for the Chesapeake bay. No wetlands = silt in the bay = no aquatic grass = no Blue crabs or yummy fish.

[moyden]

In my single days, chasing tail cost a lot more than $4 apiece.

[Mudbug]

The bounty wasn't the first strategy in Louisiana. I remember when they had they were pushing nutria recipes.

"With the theme of "Save Our Wetlands----Eat Louisiana Nutria," the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries and the U.S. Geological Survey's National Wetlands Research Center have teamed up to sponsor the first official nutria cooking contest."

http://www.nwrc.usgs.gov/releases/pr98_116.htm

[Charles Martel]

I just ran across a wonderful article about Sheriff Lee and the nutria, from back in 1996.

For Your Reading Enjoyment

Looks like I have to check into getting a trapper's license. I have several friends who have fishing camps in likely areas of coastal Louisiana; maybe I'll give that new .17 Hornady Magnum Rimfire a try.

If they didn't make us jump through all those hoops, I could pop dozens of the ugly critters mere blocks from my house. A first-generation night vision scope and some .22 CB Longs... whisper quiet.

[dmzTahoe]

"I smell varmint poontang, and the only good varmint poontang is dead varmint poontang, I think." ...Caddyshack

[robertpaulsen]

You need the theme from Caddyshack playing in the background.

[Mudbug]

Thanks for the linked article. I seem to remember hearing the PETA types on the radio too.

The animal-rights groups started sending me all sorts of proposals on how not to kill the nutria," Winter says. The idiocy of these suggestions tended to undercut their moral authority. One group claimed that nutrias could be frightened away simply by lining the canals with giant xenon strobes. "Of course," the author noted helpfully, "their effect on motorists would have to be considered." Another suggestion was to hire a person to roam the canals, shooing nutrias away with "a focusable noise gun" or deploying "specially trained harassment dogs.

[HoustonCurmudgeon]

Well I kill about 30 a year while duck hunting along the Texas coast. I could double that without any problem, that's $240.00 for the cost of cheap reloads.

Now if I can find a Louisiana FReeper to mail them to at the end of the season .............

[martin_fierro]

That almost looks like a series of Bob Ross paintings ("A happy little cabin there!")