In a strange turn of events, a group of coyote hunters stumbled upon a mountain lion in Missouri and shot it out of self defense.
The group was coyote hunting outside of La Plata, Missouri when a 130-pound lion appeared just 20 yards away. Startled by the cougar, one of the hunters shot it and one of his partners also shot as the animal ran off.
Mountain lions are uncommon in the state and attacks are almost unheard of there. It's illegal to kill mountain lions in Missouri unless they are eating livestock or threatening a human life and the Missouri Department of Conservation ruled that this shooting was indeed self defense. No charges are being pressed.
Gear Editor John Taranto reviews Gerber's new Metolius Exchange-a-blade. Gerber gives you one knife with three different blades: a standard drop-point blade, a saw blade and a gut hook blade.
The blades all exchange easily with the one handle and come with a convenient carrying case.
My identical twin sons just turned 10 years old. It’s a day I’ve been looking forward to for, oh, about a decade now.
My family has two traditional gifts for this milestone birthday. One is a first pocketknife. The other is a bicycle. Not the gimmicky tasseled-handlebar bikes that my kids learned to ride on, but real machines, with derailleurs and cable brakes. On my 10th birthday I received a three-bladed Schrade Old Timer folder and a 3-speed Schwinn.
I still haven’t decided on the specific bike my boys will get. It’s likely to be a higher-end mountain bike, one with enough adjustment that it can grow with them.
The bear population in New Jersey has been steadily increasing over the past few years, and the influx of bruins has caused residents headaches. Garbage cans have been raided, pets have been eaten, and suburbanites who are not use to seeing black bears have been worried.
So this year, the Garden State opened it's first bear hunting season in five years. The state organized a six-day season that ends Saturday, and so far hunters have killed 441 bears. They're right on track to hit their management goal of 500-700 harvested bears … and everybody lived happily ever after right?
Well not exactly. The hunt has been highly controversial and has drawn heavy criticism from animal rights groups all over the East Coast.
People in the affluent Cape Town suburb of Constantia, South Africa are being overrun by drunken baboons.
Ok, not all of the baboons are drunk. But many are. All of them however, are destructive, frightening and deadly.
At the 325-year-old vineyard Groot Constantia the primates have stripped vines of fruit, entered and raided kitchens and other rooms, and ripped thatch off the roofs. Some have eaten fallen grapes that have fermented in the sun only to pass out. Away from the vineyard, baboons have killed farm and ornamental birds (such as peacock) and pets as large as a Great Dane.
I was walking back to my office with my friend Ky today. We were both carrying guns—in broad daylight—down the main street of our town (God bless rural Montana), on our way to a field day for kids sponsored by our local National Wild Turkey Federation and Ducks Unlimited chapters.
Maybe it was the moxie of our plain-day display of firearms. Maybe it was the prospect of spending the next four hours alternately terrified and thrilled as we introduced youngsters to guns.
But Ky turned to me and said, “When was the last time you were in a fistfight?”
Outdoor Life correspondent Gayne Young looks to the past and the present to find the outdoor personalities that prove just how wimpy the rest of us really are.
Among my many accomplishments at age 16 were getting a driver’s license, having a part time lifeguarding job at the city pool, and making out with Jenny Evans on her living room couch while her parents were obliviously unaware in the next room. How do these experiences compare to those of 16-year-old Australian teenager Jessica Watson? Well…they don’t. Because compared to her, I’m a wimp.
If things continue as well as they have, in the next week or two Watson will officially become the youngest person to sail around the world. Solo.
Outdoor Life correspondent Gayne Young looks to the past and the present to find the outdoor personalities that prove just how wimpy the rest of us really are.
As of this writing Ed Stafford is on day 745 of walking the length of the Amazon River. Yes, walking. And for those of you that are math challenged – such as I am - 741 days is a little more than two years. What have I done in the last two years? Other than spend about 2 months on hold with my internet provider, watched several days worth of Jonny Quest reruns with my kids, and cut my life expectancy through excessive beer consumption, pretty much nothing.
Last week, while at the spa having my shoulders oiled and massaged by two completely gorgeous Japanese women, it was suggested that I have a doctor look at a few moles on my back.
“Whatever do you mean Kiki?” I asked, tilting my head to the side for another sip of the bubbly.
Ok, it was a beer. And it wasn’t a spa. It was my back deck. Likewise it wasn’t some Asian models; it was my wife. She was shaving my shoulder hair with a dog trimmer and her reminder was a yearly one. “Think it’s about time Dr. Stafford checked you out.”
I was on my office phone last Thursday when I spotted the first of the smoke, drifting over town on the wings of a 40-mile-per-hour southeast wind.
Within minutes the smoke grew black and billowing, and I knew it was bad news. With winds like that, gusting to 60mph, no fire is intentional. I wouldn’t know for hours that the blaze hit very close to home—literally. It was my neighbor’s barn, torched when a power pole snapped in the stiff wind. The old barn was consumed in minutes. It was all volunteer firefighters could do to contain the blaze to the structure and prevent it from catching the dry prairie, including my fields and pasture.
