We call them forest rats. They're just larger rats. But twice in the last eleven years Blue Tongue disease has killed a lot of them. I had one die about 100 yards from the back door, imagine holding a 10 day dead mouse under your nose. It was impossible to breathe outside the house at all for about eight weeks.Grumpy said:nobody wants to cull Bambi, or foxes. Now, if they looked like large black rats, I'm guessing the problem would soon go away.
But I spoke with an older gent about the numbers and he told me when he was young that it was very rare to even see a deer. I have them in the back yard almost every night. SE Kentucky. Too few hunters now. It's easier to go and buy hormone/antibacterial laden beef than to hunt and dress a deer. So they thrive. And this feeds the coyotes and wolves ( two of those behind the house a few years back) which will also take your pets and even attack us if we are alone against two or three. I personally know one hunter that was attacked when squirrel hunting and he fortunately had an auto Browning shotgun, killed four coyotes. I no longer take long hikes in the woods without a pistol or rifle. As the population nationwide here grows in the cities and shrinks in the rural areas the antigun thoughts seem rational. Especially with the mental cases that kill so many (and those seem to be mostly city dwellers---it is the crowding of rats that causes the violence in controlled lab experiments, not the cocaine). But if one lives in a rural area, where the drug crazed desperadoes can and will attack like a rabid feral dog or an opportunistic forest predator, one cannot fathom the antigun hysteria.
Back to near misses, huge buck sliding into my lane as he tried to avoid me, I could have slapped his face as I slipped by at 50 or so. I also have had a wild turkey hit my helmet at about 40mph, it hurts. Last week a near miss at 5am, a coyote closing on one of my cats. Next time I'll light his ass with a lazer before firing.