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redneckpaul
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# Posted: 3 Feb 2019 16:29 - Edited by: redneckpaul
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When I bought this 28 acres of Eastern Montana prairie I also bought a prairie dog town. Spread out over my place and the state land next store was 40 acres of prairie dogs. It took 2 years and hundreds of rounds of ammo and the dogs are gone. A few remain on the state land but if they start moving into my area I dispatch them. My biggest problem was the rabbits, at first I let them be but it was only a matter of time before they start burrowing under the cabin or outhouse so if I see a rabbit I shoot it. There was a family of badgers in the area digging holes and a dispatched 3 of them. This one met my wife at the outhouse one evening, those thing are fearless. Some skunks decided to dig under the outhouse, that's a no win situation. Had to shoot them and the outhouse area stunk for 6 months. There`s coyotes, wolfs, foxes, bobcats, MT lions, porcuipines and a few others. I shoot the coyotes if they get near the cabin.
Of course there the deer, antelope and elk. They are a food source for us. My wife and I enjoy hunting and she does the shooting any more. Any way we enjoy seeing critters at the cabin as long as they don`t become a nuisance.
So what is your experience with critters at your cabin, good and bad?
outhouse badger
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antelope at the cabin
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mule deer
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frankpaige
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# Posted: 3 Feb 2019 18:34
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Dude! You sound like you purchased a zoo!
The "rats" prairie dogs, good shooting/good riddance!
Skunks and Badgers! And me? Just worried about the mice. Glad to see the occasional bear, deer and now and then the elk.
Love the song of the coyotes. But leash the dogs.
Have fun and enjoy!
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Aklogcabin
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# Posted: 4 Feb 2019 08:09
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Spruce hens, similar to partridge. We don’t shoot them near the cabin. A few rodent squirrels. Bears are our biggest issue .
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FishHog
Member
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# Posted: 4 Feb 2019 10:01
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i'm kind of jealous redneckpaul. Sounds like fun to me.
I have waged war on the squirrels after they chewed a hole right through my 1" thick siding. After a couple years I've got them under control.
Mice are a constant battle, but I seem to be keeping them at bay.
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KinAlberta
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# Posted: 4 Feb 2019 12:58 - Edited by: KinAlberta
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Well, years ago my brother’s dog was always getting skunked and learned the hard way about porcupine quills. One offs so didn’t shoot them or anything.
One winter a porcupine completely stripped a grove of 30’ pines we’d planted years before. Just when I thought they’d reached the point that most would survive.
A carpenter ant colony moved from a fallen spruce into the attic of our second cabin. (Some ant killer took care of them).
Beavers came back big time and have built about 8 dams up the creek. The big one at the lake’s edge was raised by cutting down an acre or two of the aspens near our cabin and it flooded over our steel bridge just before freeze-up and so the ice bent the bridge and popped some welds. (Put in a beaver dam leveller and spent $1,000+ on lumber, beams etc and did some backbreaking work to raise up either end and slide under beams add supports and build ramps. The loss of the acre or so of trees by the cabin was no big deal. That’s nature.)
Decades ago beavers cut down trees around the cabins (we wrapped the remaining trees with page wire).
Mosquitoes and wasps are just the usual nuisance.
Squirrels, gophers, moles, mice, bats, birds, coyotes, cougars, moose, etc haven’t been a problem. (years ago when we ran horses on the property my brother and his buddies would shoot the gophers but now they serve as eagle and hawk food. I need to seal up a couple sheds to keep the mice and squirrels out as its just disgusting to find droppings on tools and things. Plus there’s the hantavirus risk. I don’t think we’ve ever had mice in the cabins. Can’t recall anyone ever even putting out mouse traps. We don’t have rats in Alberta so they aren’t an issue.)
Come to think of it though, one unidentified critter really freaked me out. Maybe a farm dog or goat or pig or something. I even pulled out my phone and video’d a bit it. It was driving a farm pickup truck on the road to our cabin. At first it was driving down the middle of the gravel road. No big deal everyone does it Then it drifted to the left a few times. Then it drifted over to the left and stayed there - right over a couple rises in the road and right around a corner with a hill - all the way for a couple miles on the wrong side of the fricken road. Wish the farmers would just lock up their critters or at least not let them have access to their keys.
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Just
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# Posted: 4 Feb 2019 13:34
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Otherwise known as a bottle picker we see them often !!!
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