Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Hey, look at me. I'm big and mean

BANG. I'm bigger and meaner.

Lots of people don’t give a fugk what the Audubon society calls them and use common parlance when discussing local fauna.

Don't get your panties in a wad. Just wondering.

So what do you call these?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher

Now that I think about it mice, spiders and snakes seem to freak people out.

Rats that's the rodent I hate.

I like shooting gophers.

Which are also known as Richardsons Ground Squirrels.

We use that name for profiling purposes.

Think snakes like ground squirrels too.

Fat mice.

Never known one to rattle until it's shot, or a rock busts it's head. These nature programs that say they rattle as a warning are false in my own experience.

This rancher where we hunt in Wyoming, would be pissed if we saw a rattlesnake and didn’t kill it.

Another couple with us on a whitewater trip broke camp to leave a day ahead of us. Last item to be packed was the ground cloth for their tent. You guessed it. He got tossed in the river.

I sure like your way of thinking!

gophers, squeaks, ground squirrels, whatever. They get where the dogs can get them, they die.

Lived in places where folks called any black bird a blackbird. Starlings, crows, grackles, even true blackbirds. If it had feathers and was black it was a friggen blackbird.

When I was younger, putting up hay, we had one farm down the road that was nothing but a big hill. We farmed the top with corn,sides with hay, but there were a lot of rock cliffs nearby.This place was swarming with copperheads. It was nothing to find 4-5 copperheads that slid under the bales after it was left in the filed for the next few days after each baling.

Preferred way to pick up hay was to hook the bale and roll it 90 degrees towards you to see in any were under the bale. An old single shot 12 gauge was clipped to the light bar of the International H, and every copper head got killed right then.

It was common to find dead ones that were baled up as we were feeding the dairy cows in the winter.
A neighbor friend got a few bales on year to put in his beagle dog boxes. I guess one was still alive because after it warmed up in the dog box, it bit the dog and killed it .I don't know how the snake got thru the baler knives an still lived, but when we went over the dog wa dying and the snake was still in the box.

Damn copperheads, you don't get any warning.

Dang, you got serious about your snakes. This is a 2 gauge, called a punt gun. I've read that they'd pour a full pound of black powder down the hole.

With a cheek weld, or in his case a chin weld like that, I wonder where the recoil went? Talk about taking it on the chin!

Or maybe grey squirrels. Oh ... wait ... that one is taken too. Hey, maybe Audubon was on to something!

I've read a little about them. The butt was blocked in. No one could handle that kind of recoil. The gun was blocked in and they aimed by steering the boat with those little hand paddles. More than 1 of them got knocked out of the boat and boats were known to sink after the recoil tore it apart.

Years ago I hiked many, many miles through the AZ desert and Chaparral. I did run into a few. They rattled, but I was way to close for comfort before they did. Scared the crap out of me.

It seemed in the AZ heat they would hide much of the day.

Chesapeake market hunters. Interesting times.

I would have loved to see the Passenger Pigeon flocks in the mid west. Supposed to have been legendary.

Don't forget bats.

Rats used to be common pets with girls.
Tarantulas are common pets in western Europe.


When I taught a class on bats, the good Lord delivered one to me. I displayed it behind glass and released it after the series along with a bat box.