Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire So you think the honey badger is the baddest in the land?

This oryx says differently. Photos shot in a national park in Namibia.

Oryx aren't afraid of much.

Where I used to control predators out on a govt missile range, some of the guys out there saw an oryx with a mountain lion stuck on his horns. They said it carried the lion around for a few days before it came off.

LOL, I've repeatedly heard the Gemsbok is the most deadly accurate animals with their horns in all of Africa, that Oryx could have shish-ka-bobbed that damn runt if it wanted.

The badger's been smokin too much pot or something. Why on Earth would that thing take on something with that kind of head gear?

Must be a young inexperienced Honey Badger, they usually go for the gonads.

That's their survival strategy, i.e., utter fearlessness in the face of death. As a result of this attitude, most large predators steer way clear of them if they've had even one past experience with one.

In fact, this is why baby cheetahs have a color pattern matching a honey badger, i.e., to steal the benefit that species has earned with its ferocity in the face of death, i.e., when large predators see cheetah cubs from a distance away, they will believe they are seeing some honey badgers, and will take a different route to their destination so as to give them a wide berth, thus reinforcing the color pattern in juvenile cheetahs (i.e., those cheetahs that don't produce offspring with that color pattern will have a greater degree of trouble raising offspring to adulthood, and will be less able to pass that survival disadvantage to the next generation).

Eight years ago on MacGregor there was one with a coyote skewered on his horns. The game wardens tried to find it but by the time they did the coyote corpse had fallen off.

A couple of people in this thread mentioned oryx in the context of American predators (mountain lion and coyote). Aren't oryx African animals? What are they doing in North America with mountain lions and coyotes?

White sands Missle Range has had oryx for quite a while.

A bit more than 8 years ago (maybe 15?) I had a tag and saw a skewered coyote on an oryx.

They've been imported for hunting and/or game parks. I'm told that quite a few game ranches in TX have them.

Huh. You wouldn't think introducing invasive species would be permitted. Don't we have enough native species of ungulates for hunting?

....killing them evidently....

Thr where have you been the last 50 years or so?
You can hunt african plains game through out the south west US,
And I heard there is a game farm in Florida with huntable cape buffalo

This was on MacGregor as well. Couple of the Range Riders there were telling me about it. Those old guys were pretty salty. They did away with them now.

The military is really using MacGregor more and more. I've seen some pretty interesting stuff out there.

Here's the history of them there.

http://www.wildlife.state.nm.us/download/education/conservation/wildlife-notes/mammals/oryx.pdf

They migrate too.

Killed some on the Texas ranch in Hudspeth Co. (No season, no bag limit in Texas. Non Game animal.)

Archaeologist son spent one whole summer doing surveys all over White Sands. Said the were tripping over gemsbok everytime they turned around. Only other thing thet saw in abundance was hunters looking for em. And being asked if they had seen any! LOL. Said they usually did 15-20 miles a day on foot.

Thank you for your reply. I never knew any of that. You learn something new everyday.

I took this picture in 2017 inside a high fence in South Texas when I was there for a pig hunt. It's a magnificent animal. About the size of a horse.

Looks like something on a cave painting.

Last time I was down to Rio7’s we were out looking for pigs and spotted a bunch of buzzards and the smell of death. We were all prepared for a human body but we found a gemsbok that had been killed in a fight with another gemsbok.