How boaring

I found a video on an ARFCOM thread of a man shooting a pissed off charging boar with a .45 caliber 1911.  This a strong reminder of why handguns are poor at stopping dangerous flesh-and-blood things.  ***Warning: Graphic.  Lots of blood.*** -- turn it off after the first 20 seconds if you don't want to see blood spewing everywhere, but want to see the pig shrug off half a dozen rounds from close range.

A buddy and I once walked up on a huge boar in a field one day next to a jobsite; I had my 1911 in my hand and was aiming at it's head while it walked up to us within about six feet, curiously. After it got a gander at what we were, it wandered off back into the woods from where it came from, unimpressed, and I swear I heard it snort "Pffft! Sissies don't want nonna this!"

You've probably heard that .45 ACP knocks grown men clean off their feet with one shot up hill in the snow both ways, but that's clearly not the case even if you don't believe in physics. Keep shooting the beasty until it drops!! And when it comes to large, dangerous animals prone to charging, I would stick with rifles or arms that fire projectiles measured in ounces!

And sorry about the lite posting.  I spend about six hours in traffic today, and there may be much more of that in my future.

Hunting buffalo with Cold Steel

I admit to finding Lynn Thompson's self defense handgunnery to be not only laughable, outright dangerous, and foolish, (go to 7:30 mark to see his technique of firing as soon as the muzzle leaves the holster) but there's no denying that the man pushes the limits of his world.

Here a buffalo goes all ninja on Lynn's well aimed spear throw and tries to take him out. He's pretty handy with a double action .454 Ruger, and fortunately doesn't take his own advice by firinghalf of his rounds into the dirt while getting the front sight on target:


Too close for comfort!

Tiger snake has balls

Or. . . . had balls. Ouch!

As Jackson Scott crouched in the dark at a remote Tasmanian farm, a highly venomous tiger snake bit his testicle, The Sun reported today.

No one offered to cut an "X" into his skin and suck the poison out, fortunately. Lesson learned: don't poop in the bushes in Australia.

Don't let your children become a meal

***ETA: The dad used a Spyderco Cali. Pics of the bloody knife at the link.

A six year old boy was physically pulled out of his mothers arms by a mountain lion at a National Park. The boy's dad attacked the cat - who had his son's face in its mouth - with his pocket knife and drove the animal off. The kid is fine.

When outdoors, you're still at the mercy of mother nature, so act like there's a good reason humans are the dominant species on the planet. What puts us at the top are handy things called tools: knives are tools, and are great to have around because of their utility, and because they can be used as weapons in rare occasions like when some starving beast grabs your kid by the face. I'm going to put this out there: having a knife on you does not mean you're a sociopath waiting for the chance to massacre a tanning salon full of meek people. Neither does carrying a firearm. In fact, I'd say that carrying a gun further removes us from our alleged neanderthal roots. What did they carry to protect their gift of life? A stone club and a rape whistle made of bone?

People go out into the world entirely unprepared to deal with problems that have existed since this world was created. Right outside my door are woods chock full of hungry critters, and it's not a good idea to go there without the means to keep them at bay. Fortunately, the dad that saved the day had a simple knife on him, but in many parts of this world even a knife is unlawful to carry. I hope people wake up and realize that it's not the tool, but the man, that has the capacity to be evil, and evil people are way more rare than good people. It is a dishonor to bar people from carrying the tools that will prevent them or their family from being eaten by savage creatures.

The food chain

It's been a busy day, folks. Sorry about the light posting.

Anyhow, I just found this article on Drudge and found some of it to be amazing:

The National Park Service has counted 1,825 Burmese pythons that have been caught in and around Everglades National Park since 2000. Among the largest so far was a 156-pound, 16.4-foot one captured earlier this month.

That's a ton of snakes! More than I would have ever thought, but it makes sense considering the environment those suckers are living in. The article goes on to note the dramatic decline in small mammals around the everglades. I wonder why!

There's an alarmist theme to these everglades/constricting snake articles, and I get why, but this isn't the first time in the history of the world an animal from another continent has been introduced here and thrived. Horses and wild hogs are just two critters that come to mind. Since the Burmese Python and other huge snakes are doing so well here, it's only a matter of time before their names end up a paper tag on the end of a hunting license. And honestly, who wouldn't want one stuffed on their wall with a tall, fictional tale of taking down such a beast?

So that brings me to the question of the day: What gun for a massive python? Colt Python? Will there be an archery season? Chris Brackett will sure be excited. Will it be added to the Super Slam? Someone will have to call Jim Shockey and tell him to bring his smokepole. Personally, I would forgo the treestand and take after a trophy constrictor with a spear and loincloth. More sporting that way.

I wonder what a Boone & Crocket score would look like:

Burmese pythons can grow to be 26 feet long and more than 200 pounds, and they have been known to swallow animals as large as alligators. They and other constrictor snakes kill their prey by coiling around it and suffocating it.

There's a picture of one of them coiled around a good sized alligator, and you've all by now seen the picture of the one that died while eating a huge gator. It's like Jurassic Park down there!

I love War Stories

Entertaining and funny stories are what the internet was designed for, so go over to My Muse shanked me for a tale chicks and bloosuckers. The humor will fix your day!

Lion, tiger, and bear medicine

On the left hand side of this article is a list of official reports from the Deputies that shot and killed all those animals in Ohio during the Exotic Animal Apocalypse. It's an extremely fascinating read. There were detectives shooting tigers with buckshot, and SRT guys shooting everything with M4s.

If I ever get to go on a safari to hunt the big five, I'll do my best to convince the government to let me take my AR instead of something larger than .375 caliber!

Hat Tip to Hell in a Handbasket.

Arming up for the Exotic Animal Apocalypse

I hadn't paid any attention to the exotic animals running loose around Ohio until yesterday afternoon when I walked in the door. My wife, whom I love more than life itself, was watching the news and they were showing the 18 Bengal tigers and at least one African lion that were killed by various police units in the area, which got me thinking about whether or not this incident will spark new dialog in proper weaponry to deal with the next Exotic Animal Apocalypse.

Think about it. Gunnies the world over constantly prepare for the fictional zombie threat -- which really is just a humorous way of preparing for the end of the world -- and bicker and argue about what firearms would be the best tool to have to efficiently dispatch them; in the wake of this exotic animal roundup I can picture such arguments taking place at my local Ganderous Mountainous. Cops may just start keeping a 45-70 Marlin in the trunk next to their AR that they're probably never going to use, and I bet savy armchair warriors are going to start doing the same.

People generally pay a shit-ton for the chance to fly to another continent and hunt these animals. I wonder if the cops that shot them will have the option to keep what they killed; it would be a shame to incinerate them. I'm sure that the techniques and shot placement(s) were not up to Craig Boddington's standards, but there's little to be said about it considering that the police were properly armed for lighter and thinner skinned animals when they were asked to respond without preparation.

And while we're on the subject, good on them for their bravery. Think about being a cop accustomed to responding day after day to domestic violence calls, shoplifters, and a drunk who parked his car at speed into the first floor of a retirement home, and then getting the call to take down dozens of 400 lb lions and tigers armed with a pistol or 5.56mm rifle. Sounds terrifying to me. One cop even killed a black bear with one shot from his issued weapon. Good shooting!

Ninja leopard attack

A group of Indian men armed with rifles try to take on an angry leopard, which promptly wrecks their shit, leaving six of the men bleeding. The beasty was finally stopped with a tranquilizer gun, but only after it was shot with a rifle.

There's a whole lot of fuck that in this picture of the leopard jumping up at a box truck, trying to kill the guy aiming a rifle at his face. From the looks of the other men, they've had enough. I take it picking on a pissed off leopard is a bad idea?

Crazy people roundup

A shooting victim at the funeral of a shooting victim, in Chicago. Why, there aught to be a law or something to prevent stuff like this from happening. Maybe make the whole daggone city a place that is free from idiots with guns. What a swell idea.

Also, TSA screeners conducting an intense scrotum search found a bunch of heroin on a traveler. Oh wait, did I say TSA screeners? My mistake; it was Customs Inspectors, and they weren't sexually assaulting him when they found the drugs, they were interviewing him. Weird. Who would have known that old fashioned police work would produce results?

And again, hailing from Stafford, Virginia we have a psychotic woman ramming her car into another car, all the while her 1 year old is safely strapped into the back seat. Now this may come as a huge surprise, but the whole incident was allegedly started over a man. Shocking!

Kansas City shows off its lunatics with some parents who were off doing who knows what while their crazy ferret ate the fingers off their four month old. Leaving your kids in an air conditioned car while you buy a lottery ticket is grounds these days for state charges, so these people had to know that it was a bad idea to leave their infant at home alone. With an animal that is known to bite.

Now, as you go about your day, look to your left and your right at all the friendly people you encounter and know that at least one of them is batshit crazy. Pay attention to your surroundings at all times.

It's just the beast under your bed

An Idaho family was driven from their home and into bankruptcy by "hundreds and hundreds" of snakes that slithered inside the walls as they slept and left them and their children terrified.

I giggled my ass off when I read this short article, and the whole time I wrote this post. Don't judge me for my gallows humor - I feel bad for them, I really do, but there's something about a story of a family moving into a house that is literally writhing with snakes that makes me laugh insanely like an old man in an asylum that just found a piece of saltwater taffy in his pajama pocket. It's beyond awful, and terribly funny.

It reminded me of when I lived in a room by myself in the barracks on Camp Lejeune many years ago. I got some new neighbors one day, and I suspect that they did a thorough spring cleaning of that room because a few days later I woke up in the middle of the night with cockroaches crawling all over me. They were everywhere; all over the ceiling, the walls, the furniture, and they were even in my computer tower and refrigerator. Each barracks building is like its own little city, so there is no way to effectively get rid of them; they live in whatever room they feel that they get the best rent, so to speak, and will move from one room to another.

I lived in absolute horror for several days. The roaches were eating my mattress, the foam on my computer speakers, and anything else they wanted to feed on. They crawled on my face at night, and didn't even bother to scatter when I came home from work. I estimated their strength to be about a brigade sized element, maybe larger. It didn't matter that I kept the room clean and threw out all the food, they just kept coming. Their ingress point was the bathroom - the head, in Marine/Navy jargon - and one morning while brushing my teeth, watching the little fuckers pour out of the faucet like they were entering a DC nightclub, I grabbed a nearby can of WD-40 and tried to hose one down the drain. I swear I heard that roach scream out loud in torturous pain, his little antennae swishing back and forth, and at that moment it was like I was holding Excalibur. I laid the roaches to waste. At night I would make a slick barrier of sweet, sweet, water displacing formula forty around the doorway to the bathroom so they couldn't get in, and every morning for about four days there would be thirty or more dead roaches where the tile met the carpet -- the WD-40 had killed them on contact. I sprayed a box around my bed, and coated each of the bed's legs, too. Every roach hotel in the room was treated with WD-40 until one morning, there were no dead roaches at my bathroom door. They were gone; packed up their shit and left town.

I feel sorry for whomever or wherever they settled after that. I am certain some filthy Marines several doors down regretted leaving half empty pizza boxes on the floor, sweaty sox on the coffee table, and old Mad Dog 20-20 bottles on the counter. Sleep tiiiiiiiiiight, don't let the bedbugs bite!

Muhhuhahah!! MUHUUHAAAHAHAAAA!!!!!

A chance encounter

BOSTON (Reuters) – A mountain lion was killed just 70 miles from New York City early on Saturday morning, and officials were trying to determine if it was the same big cat spotted a week ago roaming the posh suburb of Greenwich, Connecticut.

A mountain lion was also seen in a suburb of New York City 30 miles away last week, leading everyone to believe the dead cat is one and the same. Sounds likely to me. My thoughts though go to this:

"By and large, cougars want to stay as far away from people as they possibly can because they are so solitary," said Bob Wilson, a co-founder of The Cougar Network, an organization devoted to tracking and researching the animal.

Wilson said mountain lions like to hunt in the shadows and it would be a very remote chance to encounter the cat.

Well now, this cougar didn't conform to the little box that you placed him in, did he, considering that New York City and Connecticut suburbs are are chock full of people? The cat was wandering around really close to people, one or several of which could have had a bad encounter with it if someone hadn't encountered it to death with the grill of their Pathfinder.

People may call me paranoid, but I stay prepared for any predator, two legged or four, at all times because despite what the experts say, primitive thinking animals are unpredictable; that is how they were programmed. I don't know if .380 ACP is sufficient for stopping mountain lion, but I do believe it's far more effective than hope.

Firefox has encountered a fatal error

Very strange.

A Hagerstown, Md., man said he beat a fox to a death after it bit his wife and attacked the couple's dog.

That's an odd way to use a shotgun. Must have been out of shells. Never underestimate the damage a critter can do to you - even a small one.

Failure to stop

Mountain lion takes two shots from a tranquilizer gun before finally succumbing to something a bit more potent.

Combat doggies

A photo essay of dogs used by the military, to include pictures of dogs being parachuted in with Special Forces and SEALs. Now that's neat.

If dogs of war are your thing, then you might want to go here to see pages and pages of them.

Don't mess with Malaysian women!

"A woman in a jungle region of northern Malaysia rescued her husband from a tiger attack by clubbing the beast on its head with a large wooden soup ladle and chasing it away, police said Monday."

The real moral of the story is that if you're a Malaysian man, you might want to think twice about coming home late with alcohol on your breath; the wimmins in them parts I hear are deadly with kitchen utensils.

Not a good example of gun control

Letting a small furry critter that you just wounded get ahold of ol' betsy and put a round in you is not the ideal way to assert yourself as being at the top of the food chain.

How do you screw up putting an animal down that you just shot?

Don't feed the critters

It's pretty bad when a 50 lb coyote thinks that a grown-ass man is dinner. Hopefully the beast hasn't gotten it through his head that stupid people like this guy might be cream filled and try to eat somebody's five year old.

Idiot:



In the states, coyotes are generally a little more wary of humans, as they are used to getting hit with flying copper when they get too close. When I used to spend a lot of time in the woods, seeing a potentially dangerous or predatory critter with sharp teeth show me that it's not afraid to approach would have made up my mind that it needs to be put down. I don't want to read about a kid killed by a feral dog in my paper and know that I somehow helped it overcome the natural tendancy to fear mankind.

From the movie Jurassic Park:
Dieter: "It gives me the creeps, like it's not scared."
Dr. Robert Burke: "There haven't been any visitors on this island. There's no reason for it to fear man."
[Dieter touches a cattle prod to the dinosaur's head, causing it to flee]
Dieter: "Now it does."

Yup!

Found in discussion at AR15.com

Dog shooting

After reading about all the dogs shot during drug raids and such, I was actually pretty impressed when I read this story to hear about the lengths the DC cops went through to not shoot the dog. It was unfortunate that they had to, but it doesn't sound like they had much of a choice.

Who knew vegetarian diets cause violence?

Investigators blamed a vegetarian diet on the mother grizzly's poor body condition, which they said was "made worse by a load of parasites found in her small intestine.

Hmmm. . . it seems that a bear cannot live by plants alone; they need tasty red camper meat to stay healthy and strong. I will take that into consideration if I ever go camping in the woods again.