Good deal! One less to whelp pups this Spring. Not that I mind having yotes around, but just now we've got too many. A neighbor, half mile down the road spotted a cougar day before yesterday....right in with cattle and calves. Don't really know what's legal with that, but if it goes after my livestock, it'll be shoot first, ask questions later. That's why my guns are loaded and ready. No kids in the house, and you can grab them in a second's notice when you need them. The "ready service locker", for you Squids, is right next to the back door. With fox, coyote, wolves, bear and now cougar around here.
A few years back, at about two in the summer morning, windows open, I heard my young steers bellowing to beat hell. They were up on a field about 300 yards from the house, so I grabbed a 12 ga., shot it in the air, grabbed a .308 and raced up there. There was a tractor road going up there, fenced on both sides, open so the critters could come down to the barn for water. I got into the road with the rifle and a flashlight (torch for you Brits), and here they came. All 20 of them galloping down the road. All I could see was the whites of their eyes in the beam. They were 4 to 600 lbs on a dead run. I couldn't go any where and neither could they. I thought I was dead. They simply parted around me and continued to the barn.
I felt myself to make sure I was still alive and continued up to the field. The bear obviously charged the calves from outside the fence, which was 3 strands of barbed wire on cedar posts. Three posts were snapped off and the insulators were jerked out of 3 more. The wire where he hit was covered with bear hair. I never saw bruin, and he never came back.
That's the best arguement I can give you for having loaded, unlocked guns in the house. I can imagine trying to unlock the 12 ga. and the.308, then finding ammo to put in them and then go. I'd have probably lost a young steer.
Pete
