roflmao

When I was 17 I was an army cadet. We had a laundry and drying room connected to each other but separate from the barracks themselves. A few of us were doing some laundry etc when one of the guys come running out of the drying room explaining that there was a possum in there. In New Zealand we have brush tailed possums that are just a little bigger than a cat. We all went in and the game was on, who could catch it by hand. We where starting to get right into it when a corporal walked past us and grabbed it by they tail and started swinging it around like a lassoe as he walked outside with it. We were trying to explain that the possum hasnt got the stregth to climb up its own tail (Funny how we can be experts but not know anything at the wrong time). Anyway when corporal had got outside looking like John Wayne ready to rope a hog, he gave it one last heave.....As he did this, his body position changed and ole possum managed to get a hold on his trousers.
Corporal screamed
Possum held on tighter
corporal let go
Possum did wheel spins all over corporal
Cadets all over the ground laughing
Corporal very embarressed
Cadets do extra duties and commit to a confidentiality agreement

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.........

Okay so it's war stories now. My introductory experience with the original Sus scrofa, the european wild boar.
Shortly after being stationed in Grafenwohr, Federal Republic of Germany I stepped out into the motor pool and watched GIs scattering like quail. It seems a wild boar had wandered in and was having difficulty finding it's way out. Well shucks, being an old country boy I figured I could handle this one since I had been around livestock since I was old enough to lift a feed bucket.
I was really digusted with my fellow soldiers when I saw that all this commotion was caused by just a single little old sow that couldn't have been much over a buck and quarter. Well I went into it with a good old soooeee hog and made for her.









Shamed to say it was yours truly that got treed in that deal. I guess them european pigs nein sprechen (no speak) redneck. LOL

? how far can a skunk dig?
got a call while on a road trip for supplies for daughters wedding,so I'm about 200 miles out.told customer what was going on she said skunk was in a window well( easy money)and wasn't going anywere.
so 4hrs later I get too the house,sure enought the skunks in there waiting! drop cage down,skunk runs to hole in corner and hides,no problem! left cage returned no skunk? so water goes in hole it fills,no skunk? get out see snake look in hole NO SKUNK!?
no exit hole no odor but no skunk?
so what's your opinion how far can they tunnel?
Oh! no pay also!
bob evans cwcp

Should have got a set-up fee the day you showed up! I have had them dig their way out before and avoid the trap!

Lt your right.if i had been closer and not so long in getting there may be the skunk wouldn't have had time to tunnel out,so i excepted the blame!
bob evans cwcp

Win some,lose some...thanks for sharing. Might save someone the trouble if they have a similar circumstance. They'll remember you next time they have a skunk in a window well. I have also heard of people using a board covered with outdoor carpet placed on a slant so that the animal can climb out.

Soooooooooo...... The other morning I show up early to check a cage......And who is there????? Yes mister Raccoon!!!!! Playing out side the trap.....Not quite sure he want to go in......I wait.....He sticks his head in the door...and goes no further///
.......I throw my trusty t stake and it sticks in the ground next to Rocky......Rocky leaps forward in a started daze.......trap door falls.........

Well too bad they aren't all that easy! Ha!

Once while up North, I decided to take this 6 year old boy out trappin' muskrats through the ice.... He didn't really know what to expect. As were walkin' on top of the ice ( about 3" thick) , a muskrat comes swimmin' along right underneath our feet. I drop to my knees and with a hammer(that I'm carrying to bust the ice) I hit the ice.. WHAM!,( this stuns the muskrat) WHAM!..( 2nd hit breaks through), I grab the 'rat by the tail and WHAM!...roundhouse body slam on the ice! I look over at the kid, who is white as a ghost... and as I slide him the hammer...I say , "Well there's one!...You get the next one". I thought the kid was gonna cry. Ha!

good one Vinke
I saw a big coon go into a culvert so I grabbed a live trap and my dog and bailed into the ditch. First thing I did was to put my dog at one end and then I ran over the road and put down a live trap at the other end. I then went back to where the dog was standing guard and took out my .38 cal starter pistol. Now this is a REALLY loud pistol. I stuck that pistol up the pipe and fired. That coon literally had a pink ring around it's neck where it dove through its self trying to get out of there. It came out of that pipe and into the trap so hard that it drove the trap 4 ft down the ditch line. I amost peed myself laughing.
Pete

Hahahahahahaha....

Hey Vinke...you still on or did you go out to the Islands again?

I am an "Island Boy"................again...........and again.......just starting one and two to finish.....Then I am going beaver trapping................

Ahhh you sure got it made! Start skinning those beaver if they look as good as Pete's.

LT The Beaver are just starting to crank up. I scraped frost off my window in the morning twice this week which is always a good sign. Lt. the squirrel poles start to go up next week I will send pictures
Cheers
Pete

A raccon customer, had a lake home he was doing some soffit work on. He only had time on weekends and buttoned up the soffit work on a sunday. By the next friday night when he returned he found the inside of his weekend cottage ransacked. They called me because they new there was a critter in the house but after spending the whole weekend cleaning up the place and staying in the house, they could not find the unwanted house guest.I first arrived at the job location on the monday after they went home.I swept the house like a bomb squad. and found my client inside a boxspring in the spare bedroom upstairs where she had given birth to four pups. The interesting thing about this story was that the way she surrvived the week from starvation and dehydration. On the coffe table was a gallon size bowl of hard candies individualy wraped in plastic which was found empty and the wrapers everywhere. And for drink, under the kitchen sink where the liquor was stored a resently opened whiskey bottle standing upright was found with the lid off, and emty of its contents. The customer told me that the bottle was 80% full last he checked. I had to put the poor girl out.

This is a (you would have to be there )
Doing some beaver work for a big landowner and he sent the guy who lives on his place to show me the drainage. This guy was a real outdoorsman who had a redtick hound and a beagle that followed us into the bottom. After blowing about 5 dams, the guy says (I think the beavers are in this bank), and we decided to put a charge through the top, into the tunneled out area under the old slough. Smoke came out of the opennings for 30 feet. All of a sudden, the dogs rushed in and started digging at one hole under the bank. He said (Shes got one now), the more they dug, the more he expected the hound to go in and breing out a beaver. Bank dens are not uncommon in this area so my helper and myself were really expecting to see a big fight. Me and the guy were standing in knee deep water and all I had was a tater rake. My helper and him had a pistol and were ready for the beaver to come out. What happened next turned into a blur as far as time. The beagle (being smaller) dove in the bank first and barked, came out and laid down. Before we realized what happened the hound went in and came out with a water moccason as big as my arm. She had it close to the middle and was shaking it violently from side to side. I knew that she was going to sling the snake and I was way to close. I also realized the other two had a pistol(I wasn't worried about my helper as I didn't know the other guy that well). All I could thing about was the mad , big, snake being slung like a bolo around my head. Turns out the hound slung it on the bank and kept on till it killed the snake. Wasn't the first one I could tell. These dogs run loose. The beagle got hit but got over it.

I was in a hurry the other day trying to grind all my venison up. Yup, you guessed it, now my left thumb is a little shorter than my right one.Could have been alot worse I guess.

I ground up a half gallon of castor last week and had a hole in the glove on my left thumb. Not nearly the same but I was reminded what a blessing it is to be married to a woman who has no sense of smell....

Lovely ! Hahahaha


Driving in a light rain, I saw the car coming toward me strike a groundhog, crossing the road. I check my rear view mirror,....no one coming, so I swerve over, open the door, reach down and snatch the groundhog,( on the roll) tossing him in the ( driver's side) floorboard, (which is a common practive for me) close the door and continue on.

Did I mention that this was in town?

What I didn't realise, was that the groundhog was only "stunned" and not dead as I had thought...

The groundhog comes to and wants out of the vehicle ...only I'm driving through town doing 40 MPH and trying to stomp the groundhog and the brakes at the same time, without getting bitten or kill myself and some other poor innocent soul in a head on collision.

What I didn't see, was the officer sitting at the light I nearly ran...Oh, but he saw me and on came the flashin' lights as I pulled over to the side!

"What seems to be the prob...?" ,he starts to ask as I jump out of the vehicle followed by an angry groundhog...which ran toward the officer (causing him to shriek like some little school girl)! and then ran under his car.
I had to get a catch pole and try to retrieve it, only to have it run out into traffic and get struck by a second car...this time killing the groundhog.

I got a ticket anyway, dispite by best effort of explaining my intentions...which I made up as I went along.

The officer did take my business card however...so maybe I may get a few referrals. I may need them to help pay the fine for faliure to controll a vehicle!

Okay - my latest. Get a call for a raccoon trying to get into a screen porch in broad daylight while there are people on the porch. Out I go, get there expecting the coon to be gone. Nope there he is about a 100 feet away from the porch (did I mention it took me about 25 minutes to get there). So I walk up to the coon with a 4 foot catch pole - coon just stares at me. Make noise and funny faces at the coon. Coon runs around tree to the other side and stares. Slip catch pole on coon, tighten up noose, coon moves and I catch one leg. Back to truck - didn't expect coon so no traps out. Did I mention the big trap was stuck under a small trap - fight (one handed) with trap. get trap out and pull out keys to prop open - coon slips out of catch pole and runs. Stop long enought to get trap propped open. Chase coon who stops and stares at me. Slip catch pole over coons body - tighten loop - coon moves catch by tail. Back to truck and trap. Lift coon to put in trap - coon graps trap tipping it over and tail comes out of catch pole. Coon stops and stares at me (by this time I'm getting a bit un-nerved because this coon won't really seriously run away). Catch coon with noose - this time full body. Coon goes in trap. Renter happy - owner of property shows up and for unknown reasons throws dog in truck and spins out of driveway throwing gravel as he goes - no idea why. Coon starts to drool and twitch and then falls over in cage. We won't even start on the horses

Varquar (AKA ACODavid)

Oh the joys of being a W.O.

Where's Dave Vinke? He's gone too long without an accident? How's the face healing up, Dave?

Sooooooo....I check the time on my Phone......15 minutes to 6....I think...Hummmm, better get going "we wouldn't want to miss our ferry"......
....So I clean up.....Lock the building and head down the trail to the next gate...
At the gate I get out to open the combination lock.....But I CAN't Read the Numbers....I am blind......Oh boy.........Luckily I was able to take a digital picture of the numbers and upload the image to my computer..use the "zoom" feature....and count from there...........Next day I remembered my glasses.....

.......did you miss the ferry? Or was this another "You're 15 minutes late, sir"? Sorry.


hahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahaha!

For those of you that don't know...I missed my flight, when Dave took me to the airport in Seattle! ( Not his fault).

DT Warrow...are you out of stories this week?

So Im minding my own business .......La dee da.......Vacuuming out a 10 foot high wall cavity from the second story,,,,,,,Hoping to find gold or some treasure,,,,,When I hook on to the "Mother Load".........................And my hose falls off............ Then I'm on a ladder using the remainng 40 feet of hose and i drop an attachment ........and It goes down the cavity.........

There goes your profit!
How much is Duct tape in Washington State again?

Inspection today (fliers) lean over to look into a chaseway. My PDA drops out of my shirt pocket so in I go. Down a circular hole about a half inch bigger than my waistline. Once in the tight spot my trusty never fail light fails. Fortunately my trainee happens to be standing nearby learning what not to do LOL and hands me his light.
Inspection done and sitting down with the customer I learn that we had run the squirrels down into that wall over there while we doing the inspection. It sounded like a herd of elephants coming down LOL.

I am used to seeing mothballs on the job but nothing prepared me for this ladies house I was at. She must have had 40 lbs of mothballs in and around her house. There were mothballs completely surrounding her house on the exterior. Mothballs on every sill. She even threw mothballs on the roof.

I wanted to put my respirator on in her house. She had mothballs everywhere. You had to walk over them on every threshold. Add the snake-away repellant and other undefined powders that she had down, the odor in her house was enough to knock you over.

What did she have? She heard a barking noise and thought it was a raccoon. It was a gecko. I removed the gecko and informed her that it is probably not healthy to be living in a mothball house and that they don't work anyhow. I doubt she listened. She would have been better served by calling a psychiatrist than a wco.

I had a interesting call the other day, a skunk in a grave hole, did not get pictures, the hole was dug the day before, when the funeral home guys arrived to put the cement vault in the hole they found the skunk digging into a wooden casket that was exposed by digging the new hole, he had pieces of the wooden casket which was very rotten in the new grave, when they called me the funeral was to arrive at grave site in 15 minutes and they did not want put the recently deceased in the hole with the stench of skunk---- no pressure ---- I used my cat tongs to set a skunk tube- carefully in the grave - next some 1' x 4' strips of plywood as a drift fence/funnel to keep him from going into the old grave and spray bottle to move him into the tube and tripped the door on the tube with the cat tongs. a quick $75.00

I have had two skunks in homes one in a kitchen one in the bath room, used tubes and wood strips to isolate and guide them into the trap wise popcorn in the trap and sometimes a trail to the trap - no spray - I just picked them up when the customer called and said the door was down.

Where is DT warrow these days anyway...I know he is in trouble somewhere.... Ha!

Great stories! Here's mine.

Got a call for "scratching sounds in the attic". It happened sporadically.
Sometines daytime, sometimes in the night but mostly in the a.m. when the client was getting up.
I went all over the roofline looking for squirrel entry-points. Checked the attic and didn't see any squirrel or mouse sign. Finally the noise started!
I followed the sound across the attic and through the insulation and came upon an old radio tuner and amplifier wired to a speaker left over from the previous homeowner. It wasn't tuned into a station so it would create a static sound every so often that sounded a lot like scratching. I guess he was going for the "home theatre" idea ahead of his time.
The client and myself both had a laugh and he was happy to pay my inspection fee to solve his dilema.

[quote= Coons are a likely rabies host, and the salivary system is the primary "avenue" for the virus to spread. The saliva is the first thing checked for the rabies virus when testing. Sure is amazing how many "experts" are out there spreading the wrong info. [/quote]

Ron I enjoy reading your post but I disagree with "The saliva is the first thing checked for the rabies virus when testing" I went to the link you provided and it said "Experimental inoculation of raccoons (Procyon lotor) with rabies virus of skunk origin".

Center for Disease Control site: http://www.cdc.gov/rabies/diagnosis.html
" Rabies diagnosis in animals The direct fluorescent antibody test (dFA) is the test most frequently used to diagnose rabies. This test requires brain tissue from animals suspected of being rabid. The test can only be performed post-mortem (after the animal is dead).

[quote= Coons are a likely rabies host, and the salivary system is the primary "avenue" for the virus to spread. The saliva is the first thing checked for the rabies virus when testing. Sure is amazing how many "experts" are out there spreading the wrong info. [/quote]

Ron I enjoy reading your post but I disagree with "The saliva is the first thing checked for the rabies virus when testing" I went to the link you provided and it said "Experimental inoculation of raccoons (Procyon lotor) with rabies virus of skunk origin".

Center for Disease Control site: http://www.cdc.gov/rabies/diagnosis.html
" Rabies diagnosis in animals The direct fluorescent antibody test (dFA) is the test most frequently used to diagnose rabies. This test requires brain tissue from animals suspected of being rabid. The test can only be performed post-mortem (after the animal is dead).

~
Well,thanks to your good friend El Nino... it's December 1st and it's sleeting. Looks like another wet one....goodbye cruel world....I'm off to set snares...see ya' in February. Don't forget if you're in Cincy in January, give me a ring and come ride along with me on my trapline.
I'll be around here somewhere........

Lt Grey little do you realize you and I are just about cut from the same mold. You of course got the larger half of the mold.LOL But in terms of work ethic I do have that as do you and with respects to having fun all the time believe me I dont.
But I do try to make the best of things.

I emensely enjoy my professions but I dont think many would really want to walk in my shoes a very long time unless they would have our work ethic and passion for what we do.

I have learned to balance my high intensity work schedule that runs about 7-1/2 months each year. Then I fur and live trap most of the winter into early spring. Its a cycle that I have come to like and look forward to when things get a bit hectic. I live for the winter months.The call of the cats, coyotes and fox keep me forging ahead until that time of year rolls around.

Kansas and other western states have lots of ground to trap on and there is much for the taking if you really wish to get out there. I cold rolled many an area in different states over the years before I got a good line out and got adequate ranch permissions. It takes time but well worth it.

Each day is another adventure for me.Even an old timer like me still has fun and looks forward to running traps each morning. Get so tired I fall asleep skinning at times at nite.Now thats a fella having a good time. LOL

I could go on and on but I am sure you get the point.

Well it was 36 degrees and raining today (again!) ......soooooooo i went to check a area I trap for the Port........The old dam was backing up water (maintainace crew was suppose to remove) I decided I would drop the level........Started digging away......There was a big branch that needed to be removed.......I pulled / It broke...slapping me in the face and sending me backward into the pond......... Good thing the water was 38 degrees or it would have been cold.........