loose rivet
Petty Officer 2nd Class
- Joined
- Jul 31, 2011
- Messages
- 151
Re: Punxsutawney Phil . . . I'd like to choke his little hairy neck . . .
I'm in NJ now, the area here gets infested with the little furry pests. I had one eat up nearly a whole row of lettuce last year, it took a game cam to figure out he was climbing over the 6' chicken wire fence to get in and out. Even a 12" overhang didn't stop him. The only thing that got him was that he got too fat to climb back out one day and that was fatal.
They don't flop over here, they usually just sit there. I'm too close to other houses to use big fire power, so my old 22 with a scope will have to do. I did take a few out with my 40 but that makes too much noise and draws too much attention.
The part I don't get is that the cats don't bother them, the dogs will till they get really big. They destroyed a neighbors watermelon crop, undermined his storage shed, and dug out a 4' pile of dirt from under his garage. The bad part is we never saw one of those things until a few years ago, then every so often one would pop up, now their everywhere. They eat just about anything, they love beets, forget growing cabbage, beets, corn, lettuce, or squash, they won't let the plants get an inch tall before they gnaw them off to the roots. They don't just nibble, the gorge themselves till they can't move. The one I caught last year in the lettuce patch had eaten or destroyed 40 heads of lettuce in less than two hours. The game cam showed it was only one that got in.
He weighed just over 19 pounds. Never did they try to burrow under the fence, which is buried a foot below the surface for just that reason. To me, groundhog day is just the reminder to buy ammo for the coming season.
I'm in NJ now, the area here gets infested with the little furry pests. I had one eat up nearly a whole row of lettuce last year, it took a game cam to figure out he was climbing over the 6' chicken wire fence to get in and out. Even a 12" overhang didn't stop him. The only thing that got him was that he got too fat to climb back out one day and that was fatal.
They don't flop over here, they usually just sit there. I'm too close to other houses to use big fire power, so my old 22 with a scope will have to do. I did take a few out with my 40 but that makes too much noise and draws too much attention.
The part I don't get is that the cats don't bother them, the dogs will till they get really big. They destroyed a neighbors watermelon crop, undermined his storage shed, and dug out a 4' pile of dirt from under his garage. The bad part is we never saw one of those things until a few years ago, then every so often one would pop up, now their everywhere. They eat just about anything, they love beets, forget growing cabbage, beets, corn, lettuce, or squash, they won't let the plants get an inch tall before they gnaw them off to the roots. They don't just nibble, the gorge themselves till they can't move. The one I caught last year in the lettuce patch had eaten or destroyed 40 heads of lettuce in less than two hours. The game cam showed it was only one that got in.
He weighed just over 19 pounds. Never did they try to burrow under the fence, which is buried a foot below the surface for just that reason. To me, groundhog day is just the reminder to buy ammo for the coming season.
