30 points

(Thanks to Dad for this one.)

Shown is a 30-point Wisconsin buck taken by a 14-year old Amish boy with a handmade long bow (the picture is of a neighbor posing with the rack, not the boy himself).

Fox urine

A 50-year-old man who told authorities he was fed up with teens toilet-papering his house decided to defend his property — with a squirt gun filled with fox urine.

- AP/ajc (link here)

I was thinking of fox urine as a possible gift for the pass around game.

Wisconsin wolves bite the big one

Authorities are investigating the deaths of six federally protected gray wolves.

The suspected wolf killings compare with only one wolf killed in 2007, said Adrian Wydeven, a wolf biologist with the DNR. In 2006, nine wolves were killed during the season, he said.

Wydeven said that some wolves are killed by hunters who believe Wisconsin's wolf population is too high.

- jsonline (link here)

Some hunters just blast anything that moves.

Global warming vs. Moose

They said that while disease, parasites, predation and other factors all contribute to moose mortality in northern Minnesota -- on the extreme southern fringe of this historic moose range -- heat stress from a documented rise in temperatures appears to be the root cause of the decline.

- Star Tribune (link here)

Beware coyotes

A nine-year-old boy from Erie was snowboarding with a friend on a golf course Thursday when a coyote lunged at him and grabbed his arm.

- Denver Post (link here)

Gotta watch out for those coyotes.

Wolves ruin deer hunt

Jim Cunningham of Chetek, a deer hunter for 30 years, splits his time each fall between land near his home and farther north near Mason. Through time spent in tree stands, walking the land and in images on trail cameras, he says he's convinced the predator population is higher than ever and significantly impacting the deer herd.

"I see 50 wolf tracks for every one deer track," Cunningham said. "The wolves have changed our hunt."

- jsonline (link here)

I am going to have to get out my abacus and run some numbers on this one.

There are 550 wolves and 1.5 million deer. Wolves really have that great an impact?

How many deer does each wolf eat per day?

Ring found in fish

A class ring lost for decades in an East Texas lake is back with its owner after turning up in a fish caught the day after Thanksgiving.

- AP/Dallas Morning News (link here)

Truth can be as strange as fiction.

Revenge of the deer

The buck rose up, knocked Goodman down and attacked him with his antlers in what the veteran hunter called "15 seconds of hell." The deer ran a short distance and went down, and died after Goodman fired two more shots.

- AP/azcentral (link here)

Never underestimate the deer.

Ivory-billed woodpecker

Last year, Allan Mueller thinks he saw the elusive ivory-billed woodpecker. The wildlife biologist wants to make sure of it this winter.

Mueller plans to head back into the swamps of eastern Arkansas with a scaled-back search team consisting of 26 volunteers and three expert field biologists.

- AP/azcentral (link here)

Very optimistic.

Zircons & Very early life

In the new view of the early Earth, life could have emerged hundreds of millions of years earlier. “This means the door is open for a long, slow chemical evolution,” Dr. Mojzsis said. “The stage was set for life probably 4.4 billion years ago, but I don’t know if the actors were present.”

- NY Times (link here)

Never underestimate the value of zircons.

Minnesota Cougar

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources is disputing hunters' claims that a cougar ate a deer shot north of Duluth last month.

But two DNR biologists who conducted a necropsy on the deer carcass say they did see signs that a large carnivore -- a wolf, dog, bear or possibly a cougar -- could have grabbed the deer by the throat after it was shot.

- AP/StarTribune (link here)