Meh…in my part of the world it would be easier now for a large animal to go unnoticed than at any point in the last 150 years. People always talk about development and lack of habitat. Bull, more habitat for almost everything than in a long time.
Practically every square inch of land where I live was once planted in cotton and corn and there was a house every 40 or 80 acres. There weren’t any trees to speak of. Look at old pics from the 1890s from places like Ohio and other places in the east that are densely wooded. There weren’t any trees. Why? Because they burned wood and coal for heat and cooking. Anyway, all the little farms are gone where I live and timber companies own most of that land. A 200 acre pine plantation is impenetrable for most of its life. There won’t be a human set foot in one for years on end. A herd of elephants could go unnoticed and unseen in one. An elephant could walk by a trail camera and you wouldn’t see him if he didn’t walk out into the open.
And people? There aren’t any people outside anymore except for a few months of the year during hunting season. At least not like there used to be. Even when I was a kid, there were the old men and kids who were always out driving the logging roads and trapping and such. Not these days. You can’t give away hides. The gates are all locked. The old men are all dead. Rural life these days for most is just a more inconvenient version of suburban and urban life. People work a lot and stay on the internet a lot.
We have more varmints, deer, bears, cats, hogs and everything else than we’ve ever had and they are all mostly unbothered for most of the year.
