Originally Posted by
mrbb
I'm sure things can happen, NOT doubting you.
but at same time, there are SO many things out there, from Lyme from ticks, to deadly disease's from Mosquito's, after all mosquito's have killed more people than anything else out there .
yet there still almost every where!
life is a gamble I guess, and we all pick and choose what risks were OK with and what were not!
I live in a very wildlife rich area, I have wild animals in my yard off and on all day long, from big to small one's
and its been this way all my life, as it is with all my neighbors here, and to date NO one had gotten sick from critters that we KNOW of !
I do know a few folks that got Lyme disease , but all got it from other states/countries that they were in, and not locally/
about 15 yrs ago, I did have a fox(forgot about this one) that was chasing my father(in a wheel chair) around his drive way, biting at his ankles, and chasing the neighborhood kids on bikes.
called the local game warden, and he SAID he would come and check it out, after 5 calls to him and 6 hours going by, I just shot it myself!, then waited for him to come get the thing and have it tested, but he never showed up and calls to the game dept, told ,me to just throw it in the trash to get rid of it!
I double bagged it, and tossed it in trash, but IMO< I think it had Rabies, as was foamy at the mouth and acting off character for the animal!
and this is the ONLY issue I ever had in all my yrs here with so many about often.
I have worked as a butcher too over the yrs, and fully agree, precautions should be taken by all, more than most think they should too!
Ticks around anymore, worry me more than foxes, as for decades, we never had ticks here, and now there every where!
warmer winters, and just warmer all yr, seems to help them breed!
I see bears here with there ears loaded with em all the time, and feel bad for them !, as I imagine there not just on there ears, but that is only place I can see them!
.
as a fact, bears here in PA and many other places have been having out breaks of Mange, and its deadly for them,
been lucky , never had any here, but mother nature can sure be a mean gal!
My mentor wasn't really sophisticated but very knowledgable about wildlife. His philosophy was basically wildlife belonged in the forest, people in the village. And if you stopped hunting them they would eventually lose their fear of humans, move in, take over and bring bad stuff with them. Sure there is going to be some crossover, but IMO you have to paint the situation with a broad brush and play the odds.
I stopped at a turnout off the interstate to take a pee. A Fox maybe just short of maturity came out of a culvert and right at me, I could hear its teeth clacking, It stopped short and circled in its own length multiple times biting at the air. I picked up a handy large stick and when it got close enough clubbed it to death. IMO it was either Rabid or had another sort of meningitis. I was taught to either dispose of them commercially (incinerate) or bury them deep and pile stones on top to make it harder for another animal to dig them up.
Part of a wildlife Stewarts duty is to cull out the sick wildlife. And to help smooth out the overpopulation and famine cyclic of wildlife.
I hunted all my life but wasn't really a true hunter until I did an apprenticeship and schooling to be a game manager. And after the training was just the beginning, as I started looking at wildlife in a new way and with new insights. In Europe they have been at the game management business a whole lot longer than the U.S. it has evolved mostly in the last 600 years to what it is today, I'm not saying it is better or worse just a little differently organized.
I worked on a study for awhile on Tick control. The idea was to set up covered feeding stations and surround the food source with horse hair floor brushes, bristle up. The brushes were covered in tick powder. The study isn't finished yet, they are still trying to decide on the dose and doing meat testing to see how much of the Tick Powder (chemicals) gets into the meat. Sure worked wonders on the Tick levels in my Deer, didn't seem to be any adverse effects I could see. My guess is they want long term study before they make any recommendations. Used to be I'd gut a deer and hang it in the cooler with the skin on and there would be dozens of Ticks on the floor of the cooler the next day.