Posted on 07/31/2014 4:01:09 AM PDT by Olog-hai
Since Florida’s frontier days when cattlemen drove their herds through the state’s vast fields and forests, ranchers and native panthers have been natural enemies.
The ranchers seek to nurture and protect their calves, while the panthers see them as prey.
Human development won the battle, driving the large, tawny, cats to the brink of extinction before successful efforts to restore them began decades ago.
But with Florida’s panther population recovering, some farmers complain the protected 6-to-7-foot long predators are once again killing their calves. …
(Excerpt) Read more at bigstory.ap.org ...
Florida simply doesn’t need panthers. It’s just stupid in this day and age.
It's hard to believe Jax has a team.
My exact thought as I saw one stalking me while I was out hunting hog.
Perhaps those who support the protection of large predators should contribute to a fund to compensate the owners of the prey.
One was killed just 8 miles from where I live in Illinois.
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- As teenage cowboys my older brother and I were out tracking three of our Brama steers that had gotten loose.
- It was a dark and quiet night as we worked our way around a patch of taller trees and undergrowth about a mile from our farm.
- Suddenly we spotted really huge paw prints in the damp soil with our
flashlights, no rifles with us (dumb) so we scooted back to the farm.
- The plan changed to digging some postholes, putting up hogwire, putting a stout feed box within and rigging a swing gate that would lock closed as a small piece of wood was knocked off a a hungry six month old rowdy Brahma steer went into our trap.
- One by one we caught them and took them back to the farm.
- Brahmas tend to go over, under, thru a barbed wore fence.
- These went into our corral to be fed out on oats, corn, citrus pulp, beet pulp, millet, cottonseed meal, citrus molasses - then butchered for top grade freezer beef and sold to hungry load area physicians and attorneys.
- The butcher hung it, aged it a bit, and wrapped it in freezer paper - they got the hide, by-products, hoofs, horns, bones, etc. - no charge to the boys from the Lazy-J -
- We were cowboys - but I started keeping my scoped Mossberg semi-auto in the trunk of of the convertible.
You are right! Send them panthers to the border in Texas and let them pig out.
“... 6-to-7-foot long predators...”
That’s just scary.
A remarkably stupid thing to say. The ranches in central FL are there, rather than developments, because at the moment there is little demand for development of this land. I can point you at several attempts that failed miserably. People want to live near the coast.
That said, there is a lot of really, really empty land in central Florida, once you get south of Mouseland. But not because the ranchers have preserved it out of a sense of environmental duty.
That includes the tail. FL panthers are most definitely on the small side.
- Years ago a state or federal game agent knew better than entering the property of a big farmer or rancher -
- It only takes one missing nosy govt. leftie to spread the word.
- Some ranches were over 25,000 acres and refused to put license tags on their Jeeps, PU’s, and cars that never went outside the ranch onto public roads &/or property
- When they went to town they did have plates on big Caddy -
- Everything was delivered to the ranch - fuel, food, fertilizer (plenty of manure being spreader automatically) and Brahma cattle do great on sand land patters while Angus need high nitrogen rich soils like around Belle Glade ( a pretty decent football team as I recall)
- Tall thick steel-toed boots - rattlers, coral snakes (they make nice hatbands), water mocassins, gaiters in the ‘glades, rivers, ditches, and pastures after a bad hurricane or tornado -
- Pansies like Obama (snort-snort) and Holder (he illegally carried a revolver in his earlier years) need not apply
Sounds like the Wild West with a lot of hard-working, independent individuals “taming the land”.
“... 6-to-7-foot long predators...”
The mountain lions get big out here in Montana. Plus now we have wolves ... as if the big bears and cats weren’t scary enough.
I’m gearing up for a backpacking trip to a very remote lake in the Bitterroot Mountains. I’m debating on the 44 mag vs the 45 ACP as a companion. Both have their advantages and I can only take one if I want to keep my pack weight down.
I’ve run into bears, mountain lions, wolves and moose right in my backyard. Keeps things exciting. And I never venture out unarmed. Big cats are the scariest as you never usually see them coming. Not until those big paws and claws slash at you and those large fangs clamp down on the back of your neck.
It does make a hike in the wilderness exhilarating though. Just knowing there are things out there that would kill you and eat you makes everything else that much more stimulating. You senses feel really alive just knowing a mistake could kill you.
When I was researching material for my book, “COUGAR!”, I found out that this animal needs to consume between 15 and twenty pounds of meat a day and they will take a deer every week and a half. Out here in Texas, it is well known that they will take calves, foals, goats, and sheep so why would the other state natural resources departments deny their well known natural behaviors?
BYW, my book is a purely fictional account of a government conspiracy to bring predatory animals back into the environment to reduce the wildlife population, but I do have some good info about the big cats on my website: wwbrock.com. :)
Florida has always had panthers but mostly they stayed in the swamps. If the population has grown too much they just need to cull the herd.
The DNR guys will tell you all day long that there are no Black panthers in GA, SC, NC or TN but people see them all the time. We had two juveniles walz down the middle of our street at 1:00 AM a couple of years ago. Mr. GG2 thought he was seeing things.
A couple of weeks a go a lady was walking her little French Bulldog in Decatur (a suburb of Atlanta) and she said a big black cat jumped out of a tree and took off with her dog. But they will still tell you there’s no Black Panthers.
LOL!!!
I’ve fly fished in a beautiful lake in the Bitterroots. It is a magnificent place to fish and we enjoyed eating them for supper. Saw no bears or big cats but was on the look out.
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