[AT] New things was: The last question I had on my list forDecember. (OT)

[Rob Wilson]

Yeah I think ODNR has released a lot more than they are admitting here in
Ohio too. A friend of mine at work lives near Gallipolis on the Ohio River
and one night his daughter told him a woman was screaming outside so he
investigated and sure enough she was right, or so they thought. He called
the sheriff and they told him it was coyote. He disagreed and told them well
if I go out and find a dead woman I'll call the news first them you. They
were there in 5 minutes. They found out it was a cougar also and both ran
like heck. Then there was this in the local paper during gun week:


Elk killed during gun season 

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If there is a thread about this already I couldn't find it. I am just
completely dumbfounded. 


When the pickup truck rolled into the parking lot of the deer check-in
station, clerk Joe Glick didn't even get all the way out of the store before
he knew that was no Bambi in the bed. 

"All we had to do was see the horns sticking up over the side of the truck,"
said Glick, who checks deer that hunters bring to Scott's Sporting Goods
during deer gun season. "We knew that wasn't no deer." 

The consensus was that the animal -- much larger than a deer -- was an elk. 

So Glick sent hunter Todd Tomlin on his way, and he called Christopher Rice,
the Ohio Division of Wildlife officer assigned to Union County. 

"I didn't believe it," Rice said. "I thought Joe was messing with me." 

But Rice knew Tomlin was an experienced, skilled hunter. If he had something
out of the ordinary, it was worth a look. Rice met Tomlin at his Milford
Center home. 

"Sure enough, it was a bull elk," Rice said. "A big one." 

Rice called his supervisor, who called his supervisor. Everyone tried to
figure out what to do with it. 

Turns out, Tomlin gets to eat it. 

Tomlin, a 45-year-old truck driver who's been hunting for more than 30
years, was hunting with permission on private property along Inskeep-Cratty
Road in the southwestern corner of Union County about 8:30 Monday morning
when he saw three does in the distance, followed by a small buck. 

He couldn't get a shot. Then, he saw something brown, with a big set of
antlers under cover of the brush and weeds. 

He fired once with his 12-gauge shotgun and hit his mark. 

"It was trotting, its head up, like it had been spooked," Tomlin said. "I
had just a split second to fire." 

He saw the dark hair on the animal's belly, and no white on the tail, and
knew he had something that would turn into the hunting tale of his life. 

Rice said there are no regulations that prevent Tomlin from keeping the
meat. 

Every December, one or two hunters bag something that's not quite a deer,
said Lindsay Linkhart, Wildlife Division spokeswoman. She said the animals
usually are a mix of a deer bred with something else. 

Elk aren't native to Ohio, and obviously they aren't regularly roaming the
state's farm fields and wetlands. So the animal most likely was either
purchased and then brought to an area farm or bred locally and then escaped
from a pen, Rice said. 

The elk was shot near the Logan-Champaign county line. Local authorities say
a man who lives just across the county line in Champaign County raises elk,
but he could not be reached yesterday. 

The kill didn't count toward Tomlin's bag limit; he gets to shoot and tag a
deer during the remainder of the season if he can, Rice said. 

The head of the animal has been sent to the Ohio Department of Agriculture
for disease testing as a precaution. If there's any way to get the head back
to Tomlin, they will, Rice said. 

Tomlin wants to have the 9-point rack mounted, and he's having the rest of
the animal processed for the meat. 

It dressed out at 350 to 400 pounds, Rice said: "I just told him to cook it
to the right temperature, just like he would hamburger from Kroger." -
Columbus Dispatch


Rob


 

-----Original Message-----
From: at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com
[mailto:at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com] On Behalf Of David Myers
Sent: Friday, January 01, 2010 1:50 PM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group
Subject: Re: [AT] New things was: The last question I had on my list
forDecember. (OT)

Rob, we've had tons of the critters around here (SW lower Michigan) for
quite some time, although I don't remember them in my youth.  But then again
I don't always remember yesterday.  
The DNR has FINALLY admitted we have cougars in MI.  They have tried to
skirt the facts for years, (why???).  There is one that appears to center
it's territory just west of my town.  In reality, though, there hasn't been
as much livestock damage as I would have thought.   I would have figured
with as many coyotes and the cougar the loss of animals would have been
epidemic, nothing in the news or in the coffee shops.  Go figure.

David