One Less

[Richard Flanders]

That is indeed a very interesting perspective that I have not heard before and, having been raised in farm country, much appreciate. Somehow, though, I just cannot imagine having too much fresh venison in my freezer! I think we should all show up en masse at Stans at some point, each of us pulling a small trailer or a pickup with a freezer and small Honda generator and have a cleansing deer drive.... all in the name of taking stress off Stan and his crops, of course!

[Tom Flanigan]

Stan, I can certainly appreciate your perspective. The oat farmers I know in Canada have the same perspective on the bears. Also, on the property I hunt in NY, corn used to be grown for silage for the cattle. The deer did tremendous damage so we got crop damage permits from the NY DEC to use in September. The DEC came out and viewed the damage then took a rough estimate of the deer per acre on the property (I don't know how they did it). We got permits for the excess.

I'd go out evenings and kill four or five from the fields and then call the game warden to pick them up at the barn. One day I asked him what he was doing with the carcasses. He told me that they take them to a dump. I never turned in another deer after that. I shot them but I butchered them all and gave most of the meat away. It was a real chore processing the number of deer we were shooting but I just couldn't see them going to waste.

I tested a lot of different calibers and bullets back in those days from the .222 to 30-06. In the end, my favorite caliber for field shooting was the .243 with 100 grain bullets. I use mostly a .270 with 130 grain bullet now for everything from deer to moose. The .243 is too light for game larger than a deer or bear.

We had very few coyotes back then unlike now. We have fewer deer on the property than we did years back, but they average bigger and are probably better conditioned. Coyotes might be the reason why. I hate the thought of them killing deer but they are probably beneficial to our herd.

[Stan Hillis]

Tom, we are allowed to shoot them at night, under permit, because that is the most efficient way to cull. I use a .300 Blackout on an AR platform with an ATN thermal scope. Head and neck shots only. Here is a short video filmed through one of our scopes showing the neck shot efficiency.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmuM5trgpL8&t=96s

Scott, the land is not posted, per se. In GA private land does not have to posted with "No Trespassing" or "No Hunting" signs to be considered posted. It is private land and it is understood that it is private unless one has written permission, on their person, to be there. I have hunters working at the problem. Problem is, very few will go to the effort to hunt if they can't have a chance at killing a big set of antlers. And, you don't kill old bucks by shooting the first doe that steps out.

It's a very big problem. The density per acre here is so high that I have actually let land go, and stopped leasing it to farm, because I'd lose $$$ on it every year due to deer predation. This may be hard to understand, but having a problem with feral hogs too, I'd take the hogs over the deer any day, if I could get rid of one or the other. I can put a pack of hog dogs on the sounder of hogs a couple times and those left will relocate themselves to another area. Deer won't leave until the last one is dead, and they often birth triplets here because the nutrition is so good.

SRH

[Stan Hoover]

Originally Posted by Stan Hillis

Tom, we are allowed to shoot them at night, under permit, because that is the most efficient way to cull. I use a .300 Blackout on an AR platform with an ATN thermal scope. Head and neck shots only. Here is a short video filmed through one of our scopes showing the neck shot efficiency.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmuM5trgpL8&t=96s

Scott, the land is not posted, per se. In GA private land does not have to posted with "No Trespassing" or "No Hunting" signs to be considered posted. It is private land and it is understood that it is private unless one has written permission, on their person, to be there. I have hunters working at the problem. Problem is, very few will go to the effort to hunt if they can't have a chance at killing a big set of antlers. And, you don't kill old bucks by shooting the first doe that steps out.

It's a very big problem. The density per acre here is so high that I have actually let land go, and stopped leasing it to farm, because I'd lose $$$ on it every year due to deer predation. This may be hard to understand, but having a problem with feral hogs too, I'd take the hogs over the deer any day, if I could get rid of one or the other. I can put a pack of hog dogs on the sounder of hogs a couple times and those left will relocate themselves to another area. Deer won't leave until the last one is dead, and they often birth triplets here because the nutrition is so good.

SRH

Have airplane, will travel to shoot deer

[Tom Flanigan]

Nice video Stan. I don't know if we were allowed to shoot at night. I never asked. What I would do is drive to various fields in the evenings and shoot from the hood of the Jeep. I could usually take two deer from a field before they would dissappear into the woods. They would invariably run at the shot but some would stop at the wood line and look back. My favorite gun for this shooting was, as I mentioned, a .243 (later stolen). The .243 with 100 or 95 grain handloads usually put them down on impact if you shot high on the shoulder. I always aimed for the shoulder since some shots were long. They usually ran a bit if you shot lower on the shoulder or in the heart. I learned to place my shots higher.

There was an area next to the farm house that was thick and the deer were always in there. I shot this area in the morning with a high powered rifle till my friends wife complained that I was waking her up. I then went to a .22 magnum. I only took shots within 50 yards and aimed for the shoulder. Deer would usually only run about 50 yards or so. I never lost one. I picked my shots carefully. I'm not suggesting that the .22 magnum is a deer load but with shots well placed by a careful person, they did the job well.

[Bob Brown]

Stan’s post is a good reminder that predator control has a situational aspect to a person’s opinions. Even the same animal separated by a relatively small distance can make it a kill on sight or ignore situation. I’ll apologise for the long post now, but I wanted to add my thoughts.

A few weeks ago someone on this site posted a picture of a litter of wolf pups that he and his co-workers would pass daily on their walk to a mine site. It reminded me of a similar litter of wolf pups that I’d park and watch while coming home from work near where I lived. Another member took exception to my post when I called the person who shot that litter of wolf pups an A-hole. He said a guy told him that wolves killed dogs in rural areas. Called me an enthusiastic uncontrolled wolf population A-Hole and implied I was vehemently anti-hunting. Then some more nonsense about spotted owls and trees. I have to admit I never read his post to the end and missed the name calling until I searched for the thread today. No matter, back to my point. The area I lived in was about 1200 square miles of mixed farmland and bush surrounded by a large area of government owned forest, the vast majority that was first growth. You could add Pennsylvania to the 6 New England states and fit them all in that area. Few roads, two towns, a few Metis settlements, and some First Nations reserves. Less than 20,000 people total. I lived on the northern edge of the farmland and wolves hit my neighbors hard. One night a nearby neighbor kicked his door open and shot two wolves while they were dragging his dog off the porch. My next door neighbors each lost several dogs to wolves. One of them heard llamas would protect livestock so he bought one and put it in with his horses. The wolves ate the llama in less than two weeks. The ½ mile buffer of cleared fields I kept between the house and the forest didn’t prevent them from coming up to the house, but I brought the dogs in at night and never lost one to wolves. We did lose one to a coyote. I'm glad my wife wasn't looking over my shoulder when I had Dean's pic of the coyote with the dog in his mouth on screen. I posted a few times on this site about when our Jack Russel terrier was killed by a coyote in our drive way. My wife loved that little dog and hardly stopped crying for a week. She'll still shed tears if she sees a picture of him.

Like all my neighbors I kept a rifle and ammo handy in case I got a crack at a wolf or coyote in the yard. At any time in the 25 years I lived there if there were a pack of wolves in my yard I would have killed them all if I had the chance. Not only would it be legal, the county would have, and still would, pay a $200 bounty for each adult shot on private land. A policy I whole heartedly support. Losing our dog led to my dusting off my predator calls and taking my 223 WSSM out to kill as many coyotes as possible around the house. I’m aware of the hypocrisy of carving farmland out of forest and then killing any predators that come onto MY land to do me or mine harm. The wolf pups I posted about lived in the forest area far from any residences or private property. Out there the ratio of predators and prey stays pretty much in balance, regardless of human intervention. Just because I would shoot a wolf or coyote in season while hunting that area doesn’t mean I’d illegally shoot a litter of pups. My wife had gone from accepting to tolerating my hunting as she almost morphed from neutral to an anti-hunting leaning over the course of our marriage. About a week after our dog was killed I wondered aloud about the effectiveness of an electronic predator call on sale in the Cabela’s flyer I was looking at. A week later it showed up. It’s just all situational.

[Robert Delk]

A coyote killed a young girl in Los Angeles county over 20 years ago as reported on the evening news at the time. The sheriff came on and said although it was illegal to discharge a firearm in parts of the county anyone doing it to kill a coyote would not be charged.He had seen the body which was partially devoured.

[Stan Hillis]

We have a few panthers, some black, some brown, around here. They are the same cat as a cougar. They are highly efficient predators of deer and pigs. The cry of a panther is the most blood-chilling sound i've ever experienced. I was a kid, hunting 'coons at night near a big swamp, when I first heard it. It must have been within 100 yards, as loud as it was. It's been nearly sixty years since that night, but I recall it vividly, even now.

I lost all interest in 'coon hunting for awhile after that.........

SRH

[Harold Pickens]

Stan, does the Georgia DNR admit to cougars in your area, or are they like most other eastern states that deny it. With the advent of all these trail cameras, its hard to deny. I have had pts. show me trail cam pics of cougars here in eastern Ohio.
Was hunting in Marquette county of the UP one year and ran into a guy with his Brittany on a leash--told me he was up in the area I was headed to, and got a very eerie feeling, turned around to see a cougar crouched down and creeping up on him--he was white as a ghost and truly scared. The next year was a film clip of 2 cougars crossing Rt 95--it came from the cameras on the front of the Michigan Highway Patrol.

[Dean Romig]

In the 80's when I worked in Boston and travelled Rte. 93 South every morning at 6:30 I was on my way in to work one morning when I saw what I thought was a smallish doe, dead up under the guard rail of the median. But as I drove past it and could see it from a different angle I discovered it wasn't a deer at all but was a cougar with the tail nearly as long as the body and the face of a cat. I should have stopped but the rush hour traffic was too intense.

I never heard or read a word about it on the TV news or the newspapers. It's as if the story was covered up.





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