Time for the three S’s in Illinois??

[370bc]

http://www.bnd.com/latest-news/article213504504.html Could be an exciting upcoming predator season in the Land of Lincoln!

 

[mongo chicago]

What are the three S's? I am willing to bet that he saw a coyote. Coyotes are becoming very common here.

 

[rebel]

What are the three S's? I am willing to bet that he saw a coyote. Coyotes are becoming very common here.

shoot, shovel, and stfu

 

[Prairiedogger]

It's down to two S's. Shoveling leave forensic evidents.

 

[SSL]

Can't be wolves...DNR says so. Just like they said I was mistaken about reporting badgers and bobcats 10 years before they admitted we have populations of them. Or the River Otter carcass I found in the Mississippi and took to a DNR station 5 years before they announced that they had found a group. (Claimed it washed down from Wisconsin. ) How about the yearly sightings of elk in the Galena area (with the occasional one shot during deer season). Or the puma and black bears seen by multiple people over the years, in some cases by police and complete with photos...but don't exist in Illinois.
The area described is pretty wild and wooly in places with lots of woods and heavily broken ground all the way down to the Carthage/ Macomb area and even rougher along the Mississippi. Prime areas for game to live and not be seen.
But no wolves they say. Got to earn their pay some way and impress upon us peons how on top of things they are I guess.

 

[muleystalker]

Yup, we have wolves in California again but for quite a few years they kept saying we didn't, even though people were spotting them and finding tracks and kills.

 

[mongo chicago]

The wolves in Illinois are elected or have attorney attached to their names.

 

[uncleduke]

I grew up in Rock Island county. When I was kid, there were no turkeys. My grandfather and uncles cleaned them out. I would ride my bike down to the Mississippi River and explore from Andalusia to Muscatine Ia. Found big cat prints on the core of engineers land along the lock and dam projects. Thirty years later the turkeys were back, along with badgers, coyotes by the score and pheasants. Close to Galesburg they shot a 6' puma. There are rumors that jaguars are still in the woods. At that time I was only looking out for timber rattlers.

 

[370bc]

There are recent reports in the local paper about black panther sightings in the area. (No, not the black panther leader Louis Farrakhan, the the Leader of the Nation of Islam). (Although, it would be cool if there was a season on that critter).
The trail I actually hunt on, the land owner called me one winter morning, about an hour before sunrise, and said that one had crossed right in front of him, as he drove down his lane. He said it crouched down on his belly, and he took up half of the lane. The lane measured about 10 foot across. A black panther measures about 5 foot across. Just about right. I took some pice of some tracks in the snow. I will TRY to post them.

 

[timeout]

Two incidents from the past come to mind. The first was a phone call from a game warden asking if a bobcat could crush a calf's skull. My answer was not likely, considering a good sized bobcat is under 40 pounds. A farmer was having calves killed by something and a recent kill involved a "crushed" skull. The warden asked if I would investigate the killing. I called the farmer and he told me that he had found tracks in the cow yard. He promised not to let the cows into the yard until I got there and had a look at the tracks. I explained that I had some things to do and would be at least a couple of hours before I could get there. When I arrived my first question was if there were any large dogs in his immediate neighborhood? He replied "no". The farmer then said some local hunters had been there prior to my arrival. One of them brought a skull from a mountain lion that he had killed "out West". Supposedly the teeth marks matched with tooth marks on the dead calf's skull. The experts had convinced Mr. farmer that a mountain lion had killed his calves. So the farmer went ahead and let his cows out into the lot before I got there. I searched for tracks anyhow and found some. They were dog tracks, or possibly dog/coyote cross, definitely not mountain lion. I also found where they entered the property. I phoned the warden and asked for permission to hang some snares. He denied my request. Sort of ticks a guy off. He wanted me to solve his problem, but insisted I do it with one hand tied behind my back. I told the farmer that if I could hang a couple loops, I would have them next time they came back. I also said that since they had the taste of blood, they would be back. I further explained that all I could do under the circumstances was to make a couple foot hold sets. The next morning around 5AM the farmer was awakened to a ruckus at the calf huts. He grabbed a rifle and killed one dog and wounded another. The wounded one was a female German Shepherd from just down the road. The dead one was a pup of hers a neighbor the other direction owned. Needless to say, the killing stopped and no mountain lion was ever seen.
Another such incident involved a neighbor man and woman calling a friend of mine telling him a mountain lion had just crossed the road in front of them. My friend drove to the spot of the sighting. My friend is a federal ADC agent. In earlier years he had also guided mountain lion hunts. So you see he is quite knowledgeable about such things. There was fresh snow on the ground that night. A thorough search of the area revealed only coyote tracks. My friend's neighbors remained adamant that they were familiar with what a mountain lion looks like and weren't about to accept my friend's findings. He finally just said "OK, it's a mountain lion with coyote feet". Just a couple of examples of how stories get started.

 

[370bc]

Its easier to start stories than to provide facts that support sightings.

 

[Huckleberry75]

Two incidents from the past come to mind. The first was a phone call from a game warden asking if a bobcat could crush a calf's skull. My answer was not likely, considering a good sized bobcat is under 40 pounds. A farmer was having calves killed by something and a recent kill involved a "crushed" skull. The warden asked if I would investigate the killing. I called the farmer and he told me that he had found tracks in the cow yard. He promised not to let the cows into the yard until I got there and had a look at the tracks. I explained that I had some things to do and would be at least a couple of hours before I could get there. When I arrived my first question was if there were any large dogs in his immediate neighborhood? He replied "no". The farmer then said some local hunters had been there prior to my arrival. One of them brought a skull from a mountain lion that he had killed "out West". Supposedly the teeth marks matched with tooth marks on the dead calf's skull. The experts had convinced Mr. farmer that a mountain lion had killed his calves. So the farmer went ahead and let his cows out into the lot before I got there. I searched for tracks anyhow and found some. They were dog tracks, or possibly dog/coyote cross, definitely not mountain lion. I also found where they entered the property. I phoned the warden and asked for permission to hang some snares. He denied my request. Sort of ticks a guy off. He wanted me to solve his problem, but insisted I do it with one hand tied behind my back. I told the farmer that if I could hang a couple loops, I would have them next time they came back. I also said that since they had the taste of blood, they would be back. I further explained that all I could do under the circumstances was to make a couple foot hold sets. The next morning around 5AM the farmer was awakened to a ruckus at the calf huts. He grabbed a rifle and killed one dog and wounded another. The wounded one was a female German Shepherd from just down the road. The dead one was a pup of hers a neighbor the other direction owned. Needless to say, the killing stopped and no mountain lion was ever seen.
Another such incident involved a neighbor man and woman calling a friend of mine telling him a mountain lion had just crossed the road in front of them. My friend drove to the spot of the sighting. My friend is a federal ADC agent. In earlier years he had also guided mountain lion hunts. So you see he is quite knowledgeable about such things. There was fresh snow on the ground that night. A thorough search of the area revealed only coyote tracks. My friend's neighbors remained adamant that they were familiar with what a mountain lion looks like and weren't about to accept my friend's findings. He finally just said "OK, it's a mountain lion with coyote feet". Just a couple of examples of how stories get started.

So that's how they stay so incognito? They's some smart critters.

 

[bluealtered]

First things first, your experts don't know any more than you probably do unless they have been quietly checking for years, and if they are like the forest service or ODFW experts here in Oregon they are lying anyway. While winter hunting here in northeast Oregon i have seen pack tracks and pairs of wolves for over five years before so many people started seeing them in other places as well that they finally admitted "that there could be wolves here."
You should remember that your expert will put keeping their job over everything else. When they admit to you that there may be wolves here it means that there are already enough breeding pairs that you as a hunter won't be able to stop them. Next will come we have to study them for X-amount of years to make sure. By that time you have been losing livestock and prize game animals for years.

The next step after that is, well we have be careful and don't need to kill them. There are a half dozen B.S. programs, (hoops) your state will make you do, the whole time your losing your livestock and record game animals. And the whole time they are breeding and the packs are increasing in size. Oregon went from no wolves to so many packs that they started going as far as California and back looking for mates in less than ten years.

Just so you know, i took a picture of one in our spring creek area in 1983 and loaned it to a forest service person to show to his boss, that photo "got lost" somewhere in their headquarters. If you simply keep track of what happened here in northeast Oregon you will see whats coming your way. Good luck.

 

[timeout]

First things first, your experts don't know any more than you probably do unless they have been quietly checking for years, and if they are like the forest service or ODFW experts here in Oregon they are lying anyway. While winter hunting here in northeast Oregon i have seen pack tracks and pairs of wolves for over five years before so many people started seeing them in other places as well that they finally admitted "that there could be wolves here."
You should remember that your expert will put keeping their job over everything else. When they admit to you that there may be wolves here it means that there are already enough breeding pairs that you as a hunter won't be able to stop them. Next will come we have to study them for X-amount of years to make sure. By that time you have been losing livestock and prize game animals for years.

The next step after that is, well we have be careful and don't need to kill them. There are a half dozen B.S. programs, (hoops) your state will make you do, the whole time your losing your livestock and record game animals. And the whole time they are breeding and the packs are increasing in size. Oregon went from no wolves to so many packs that they started going as far as California and back looking for mates in less than ten years.

Just so you know, i took a picture of one in our spring creek area in 1983 and loaned it to a forest service person to show to his boss, that photo "got lost" somewhere in their headquarters. If you simply keep track of what happened here in northeast Oregon you will see whats coming your way. Good luck.

I'm curious who "your experts" are? I can assure you that most of the men in the field at Wildlife Services do know what's going on. Where things get muddled is in the office. The left wing agenda has pretty much taken over there in many places. To some degree it is happening with conservation enforcement also. Many are no longer persons who grew up in the out of doors. They are more and more college graduates with a degree in progressivism. Kind of reminds me of the deep state happening within the FBI. I'm betting the majority of the guys/gals in the field are doing their job correctly, while those in the office push an agenda.

 

[bluealtered]

Timeout i completely agree with you, what you have written is my point. Over the many years i worked in the woods i met many people from different government agency's who were the salt of the earth. However the "old school foresters" in the forest service (here) were given a memo that they could retire early or be put under the "new" incoming leadership of those fresh out of college. Their 20-30 years of doing what was really best for both the forest and the people was over.
The experts i'm talking about are the ones who are now and have been for the last 10-20 years in control of the state and federal land. Look back to when the locked gates and tank traps started blocking you way into your forest or grasslands and you will know when it changed.
What i have written in my above post is simply sharing with you the facts as best we can get them printed in our liberal papers of what is now happening in the state of Oregon regarding wolves.
Those of us who live here where it's happening know the true facts of the wolf program. You are about to learn the facts, however you won't get it until it can't be reversed. In five years if what i have written above hasn't been correct for the most part, i will be very happy to send you a bottle of scotch.