Free Republic

A decade or more ago, a middle-aged couple in Washington State settled in on some acreage near the Hood Canal. They started raising chickens and sheep. All was going well, but coyotes started showing up, killing and eating their livestock.

U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- On October 11, 2022, a Washington State resident and his wife were hunting birds on block grant land near a creek bottom, with their dogs, in Choteau, Montana. They were charged by a large grizzly bear boar. The 51-year-old doctor was hit by the bear and his lower leg was broken. The doctor defended himself with his shotgun and his sidearm, a 10 mm pistol.Block grant land in Montana is privately owned land on which the landowner has signed a contract with the Montana Department of Fish Wildlife and Parks (FWP). The contracts vary but provide access to...

Boise, Idaho - More than half a century after a group of beavers parachuted into the Idaho backcountry, officials have uncovered footage of the quirky wildlife management moment. The Idaho Department of Fish and Game was struggling with an overpopulation of beavers in some regions in the 1940s when wildlife managers settled on a novel idea. They captured beavers and other furry rodents, packed them into special travel boxes, attached parachutes and dropped them from a plane into..."

Big Green has an unlikely new sales pitch to convince Congress to fund ever-expanding land grabs by the National Park Service -- save wildlife migration. A map overlay showing all the U.S. wildlife migration paths would blot out nearly half the nation -- a very clever diagram for empire-building bureaucrats. The obscure but well-heeled Wildlife Conservation Society (2010 assets $764 million) unveiled the idea last week in "Spectacular Migrations in the Western U.S.," a 45-page report on the purportedly urgent need for a widespread network of wildlife migration corridors to avert countless extinctions. The WCS is a consortium of zoos...

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has released its 2008-2009 predation management summary showing that moose and caribou herds in six predator control areas have increased: The agency points to two areas in particular as examples of where the program is showing strong results: the Nelchina Basin area and the southern Alaska Peninsula. The program is getting substantive results in the McGrath area, where it began in December 2003. Last winter and spring, 28 wolves were killed in the McGrath area. Nineteen were taken under the program and nine were hunted and trapped. The agency said the moose population...

When a Corvallis teen came upon a cougar mauling a house cat on Northwest Sundance Circle last month, he probably didn't think, "Well, here's an Oregon success story." Once hunted nearly to extinction in Oregon, the big cats, which inspire awe in some and fear in others, are thriving today. And that presents its own problems. As their numbers increase, so do the chances for encounters such as the one at Sundance Circle. The state has responded by increasing the killing of cougars to reduce the threat, whether real or perceived, to livestock, game herds, people and their pets....

The state has started shooting wolves from helicopters in Alaska's eastern interior hoping to turn around an unsuccessful aerial predator control program there.FAIRBANKS, Alaska — The state has started shooting wolves from helicopters in Alaska's eastern interior hoping to turn around an unsuccessful aerial predator control program there. The project has raised concerns among officials at nearby Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve, where predator control is prohibited. Department of Fish and Game workers shot and killed about 30 wolves from a helicopter Saturday in the Fortymile area east of Tok. The focus area is the Fortymile Caribou Herd's calving grounds adjacent...

In a world where any type of food you can imagine is just a trip to the grocery store away and where much of what we eat comes from factories or corporate farms, you might think of hunting and trapping as unnecessary. You couldn't be more wrong. While hunting and trapping no longer are the only means of putting food on the table, they are indispensable for helping humans and animals coexist. With ever-expanding city boundaries and growing wildlife populations, hunting and trapping are the only practical means of managing conflicts between people and wildlife. Americans in several states have...

Number of hunters falls, worrying some By DAVID CRARY, AP National Writer Sun Sep 2, 4:53 PM ET Hunters remain a powerful force in American society, as evidenced by the presidential candidates who routinely pay them homage, but their ranks are shrinking dramatically and wildlife agencies worry increasingly about the loss of sorely needed license-fee revenue. New figures from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service show that the number of hunters 16 and older declined by 10 percent between 1996 and 2006 — from 14 million to about 12.5 million. The drop was most acute in New England, the Rocky...

Seven people have been threatened or attacked by deer on Southern Illinois University's main campus over the past two weeks, prompting the school to post warnings about the animal aggressiveness A deer also attacked a person Monday, and two of three people injured by a doe June 7 required hospital care, Sigler said. Campus officials have not seriously considered suggestions of killing the offending deer, "I don't want to be a statistic, I guess," said [Bill] House, a 20-year-old zoology student from Park Ridge. Molly Hacker, a 25-year-old plant biology student, said she would continue using the forest paths but...

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Fearful that animal rights activists might push for laws that would curtail hunting and fishing in Missouri, some rural lawmakers are seeking constitutional protections for such pastimes. One proposal, sponsored by state Rep. Jim Whorton, D-Trenton, would guarantee in the state constitution's Bill of Rights the prerogative to hunt, fish and harvest game. A second proposed constitutional amendment takes a broader approach. It would require any proposal affecting fish, wildlife and forestry management placed on the statewide ballot via initiative petition to win at least two-thirds of the vote to become law. Under that measure, it...

Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle An adage says that my enemy's enemy is my friend. That being the case, it must thrill anti-hunters to witness the current bickering between deer hunting camps at a time when sportsmen would be wiser to rally closely around each other. High fence, low fence. Feed, don't feed. Hunters get themselves far too worked up these days over what amount to nothing but personal preferences among law-abiding sportsmen. And there in sheep's clothing to declare themselves allies and agree that anyone who hunts "the other way" is wrong and should be stopped are fanatics who would...