Nicolai Barca

Jadepe, its a lot more challenging than you would think. Their eyesight and other sensesare terrific, they are quite on the hoof and sneaky. They are also reportedly a Dangerouse Game and sometimes charge. I tried doing mock stalks on this day and another day and they always spotted me when I wouldn't have expected, thinking I was well hidden. Then they would stare for a moment before running. They are a heck of a lot harder to hunt than pigs and no, we don't "all hunt cows." I hunt pigs, goats and a variety of other big game in my state and I'm trying something new. There's a special season being held in the Hilo Forest Reserve of the Big Island to get some more cows out of the forest. Feral Cattle are very bad for native Hawaiian forests andthe statehas already allowed cattle ranchers of the area to round up as many as they can and they even have one way gates at the top of the forest. The plan is to have hunting pressure from the lower slopes of the forest drive the cows in the direction of the gates. The season is supposed to go on for one year after which I would imagine the state is going to start an eradication program in which all meat will be left to rot (does that bother anyone?). There is an estimated 200 to 400 feral cattle living in the forest. It's a three mile hike through a new lava flow to get to the older substrate that the cattle can live on. These are decendants of feral cattle given to the king of Hawaii by george Vancouver, which were allowed to multiply to huge levels before eradication efforts were put forth a century later (first half of the 1900s) by Hawaii sugar planters in order to save the source of their water. Low populations of Cattle still exist in certain remote areas of Hawaii but this one was getting out of hand within about an 80 square mile area.