Posted on 12/19/2014 5:41:58 AM PST by Scoutmaster
The scuppernongs.
I was involved in selling properties once owned by a defunct textile mill company.
The metes and bounds for one tract involved a scuppernong something-or-other, and a painted wagon axle (among others).
That's not entirely unusual.
In just two years (plus or minus) of practicing real estate law, I saw some doozy landmarks in places as far flung as South Dakota, San Diego, Borger (TX), and South Bend. The scuppernongs were in Alabama.
My wife and I saw a mountain lion in Connecticut two years ago. There were other reports that weekend from nearby areas.
That information is incorrect. The death rate due to attacks by mountain lions in the United States in Canada has typically been 0 to 2 persons per year for many decades.
Mountain Lion Attacks On People in the U.S. and Canada
http://tchester.org/sgm/lists/lion_attacks.html
They are reintroducing themselves. They disappearred because there was a family on every 40 acres that would shoot them (and the deer they ate) on sight.
Whitetail deer were also hunted to extinction in most of the U.S.
What’s different now?
1. Very few rural Americans.
2. A thick and well fed deer population
3. Currently no wolves to compete with
I live in KY and in a very rural area, I border a National Park and me, my wife and her Mom who is our only neighbor have routinely over the years seen a large mt. lion around our place. I talked to a park ranger and was assured it was a bobcat, same with the local game warden-no mt. lions in Kentucky whatsoever. Right, this bobcat was two or three times as big as the biggest bobcat I have ever seen, has a massive paw print and he has a looong tail which I have yet to see on any bobcat and that mt. lion face.
In fact I saw him this morning coming to work. I had turned off our rd. and in the head lights saw him shoot across the road heading toward the ridge behind my home. I stopped where he crossed and looked but could not see him. But they don’t exist in Kentucky...
I don’t understand why he shot it dead. You are right, if you, a “commoner” had shot it you would be screwed.
I didn’t know anything lived between Tatum and Roswell except rattlesnakes, a few wells and those itty bitty oak trees.
A mountain lion tagged in south central Colorado less than a year later was found in a game preserve area along the Platte River near Kearney, Nebraska. Their range is impressive.
Oops. Deep Purple, not Grand Funk Railroad
How can you get in trouble for shooting an animal the government says doesn’t exist.
I went to JMU from 83-90. One job I had there in the summer was Gypsy Moth surveyor, where we checked traps in the spring and counted egg cases in the fall. I talked to one guy out in the sticks who’d seen one multiple times on his property near the W. VA border.
A professor who worked with fish and game said several wolves and a couple mountain lions had been killed by autos over the prior few years, but it wasn’t publicized because they didn’t want folks to go actively looking for them.
Yep. You've shown that.
What I'm about to say is entirely anecdotal and was told to me by a Ranger at Philmont who was a US Air Force Academy cadet.
Outside of an area of Philmont called Indian Writings, there's a mile+ long area where you walk through a canyon walled on each side by something that looks straight out of a John Ford movie. Craggy, bouldery, nooked-and-cranny-ed, tall, multi-story rock walls.
She said "right now, a dozen mountain lion are looking at you."
We said "whuuuuuuuuut?"
She said something along the lines of: "Mountain lion usually have very large territories and were thought to be rather solitary animals. However, current thought is turning to the idea that the large hunting area is necessary because the amount of food - game - has decreased and a mountain lion must cover a large area to feed itself."
"Here, we have abundant game. You know you do; we already have this morning. You see mule deer all of the time and your Scouts can hardly be called quiet hikers."
"Biologists have studied the walls of this canyon and believe that perhaps as many as a hundred mountain lion live in this canyon. They wander out to feed; after all, they have 250,000 acres here, and we're bounded by Ted Turner's land and government park land."
"Every step you take, you're being watched by a dozen pair of eyes. I probably understated that. Two or three dozen, unless they're sleeping. Nothing else is moving down here but us."
My cousin lives right in front of a national forest in northwest Arkansas. He was in the forest one day and saw whatever people patrol it releasing snakes. They were rattlesnakes. lol
Mountain lions are not a threat, except when they are hungry, know they are not being hunted, and are too close to suburbs. Then you get the situation that occurred in California a few years back, when a woman out jogging was seriously injured by a cougar.
I think the real pressure that thinned them was hunting them with dogs. If you were to go out and either stand or attempt to stalk mountain lions, you’re probably not going to have much luck, ‘least for older ones. If they were around and you were using dogs, once they got the scent you were probably going to get one.
I haven’t seen the one at my property in Nevada (haven’t spent a lot of time there yet though), but I have seen lots of its sign, and one of its old kills.
Now that everyone has game cams, cell phone video and even night optics, that, along with no pressure and lots of deer will probably see sightings demonstrative of a rapid repopulation by them of eastern states.
We have all kinds of critters here in Alabama that don’t exist. I have personally seen a pine marten and heard a panther. We were told for years that alligators could not live as far north as Montgomery. Now we have a gator season and they are killing some whoppers.
I don’t think anyone really knows what is out there in states that have a lot of wooded land. Enough people have seen panthers (mountain lions) around here. I sure believe they and other things are out there.
This happens more than you think. My wife’s aunt lives in Harlan KY and her first cousin is a coal miner. This has been 15 yrs. of so ago, but he told her he and his friends kept seeing this state truck parked on the side of the road when they were going to work. With his drive this truck being there was out of place and not far from the mine itself.
One day while they were eating lunch him and the other miners were speculating on what this bunch was doing as they had been there a couple of days and he decided well I will just go ask them and did so. According to what they told him they were releasing copperheads and rattlesnakes into the wild as they wanted to increase the population. He was like WTH!
so the epa or envirowackos quietly introduce a species to an piece of land they want to take.
The feds declare the land a preserve and take by regulation.
(see puddles become wetlands)
lesson: if you see what might look protected animal on your land, kill it fast.
Yeah that was my cousins reaction. Like they need more poisonous snakes there.
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