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)

Reindeer droppings

Staffers make decorations out of droppings from the zoo's two reindeer, Ealu and Rika.

- AP/azcentral (link here)

Waste no resource.

Beware elk droppings

Elk droppings in the Evergreen area contain the same strain of E. coli bacteria that sickened eight children in three mountain counties, state health officials reported today.

- Denver Post (link here)

I try to avoid eating elk droppings at all times.

The toughest mile

Authorities in Arizona say a jogger attacked by a rabid fox ran a mile with the animal’s jaws clamped on her arm and then drove herself to a hospital.

- AP/ajc (link here)

I am not sure that I could do that.

Lead in the food chain

North Dakotans who ate wild game killed with lead bullets appeared to have higher lead levels than those who ate little or no wild game, according to a study released Wednesday by the North Dakota Department of Health.

- Duluth News Tribune (link here)

Reminds me of the good old days of my youth when I picked lead fine shot out of my teeth while eating small game killed with shotguns.

Orcas and salmon

But Ms. Morton and researchers like Martin Krkosek of the University of Alberta and John Volpe of the University of Victoria predict that some local salmon runs will disappear unless the farms are altered or removed. And because salmon loom large in the diets of orcas, bears, eagles and other animals, their disappearance would unravel the region’s web of life.

- NY Times (link here)

Interesting article on orcas and salmon.

Eating bugs

Derek Mamoyac, a climber who survived five nights alone on a southern Washington mountain and ate insects while crawling toward safety, remembers well how his mountain meals tasted.

The centipedes? Like Doritos.

And the ants? Spicy, like hot tamales.

- AP/ajc (link here)

Wild boar

Massachusetts State Police say a 200-pound Russian wild boar was euthanized after being struck by a vehicle on a road in Lancaster earlier this week.

- AP/azcentral (link here)

When I was in Michigan last time, I heard that wild boars (escaped from hunting preserves) were becoming more common in the northern lower peninsula.

Dinosaur dance floor

Utah geologists say they have discovered prehistoric animal tracks so densely packed on a 3/4-acre rock site, they're calling it a "dinosaur dance floor."

- AP/azcentral (link here)

Life in the deepest mines

Duane Moser went looking for life near the bottom of the world's deepest gold mines and found it thriving in a world of its own: a place with no sunlight to support it and water that's millions of years old.

Las Vegas Review Journal (link here)

Endangered Feces

http://www.earthsunmoon.com/products/item.php/512

Aerosteon

(Thanks to Elizabeth for calling my attention to this story.)

Discovered by Sereno and his colleagues in 1996, the new dinosaur is named Aerosteon riocoloradensis ("air bones from the Rio Colorado"). "Aerosteon, found in rocks dating to the Cretaceous period about 85 million years old, represents a lineage surviving in isolation in South America. Its closest cousin in North American, Allosaurus, had gone extinct millions of years earlier and was replaced by tyrannosaurs."

- University of Chicago (link here)

Cute Little Beagles

http://www.queenelizabethpocketbeagles.com/

Garzilla

Interesting story in the Atlanta Journal Constitution (link here) about a guy who caught a big gar.

I liked the part where he shot it twice with a handgun.

Copperheads

Interesting article on Maryland copperhead snakes in Saturday's Washington Post (link here).

Frank Mundus, RIP

http://www.fmundus.com/

Web site of famed shark hunter Frank Mundus, who recently bit the big one.

Temnospondyl

The animal resembled a modern crocodile but was actually a temnospondyl, a prehistoric amphibian that was an early relative of salamanders and frogs. Because of their odd mixture of characteristics, members of this group are sometimes nicknamed "crocamanders" or "frogodiles."

- Discovery (link here)

Crurotarsans

At the end of the Triassic, around 200 million years ago, crurotarsans and dinosaurs were probably in competition for the same resources.

Compared with modern-day crocodiles, Triassic-era crurotarsans were surprisingly diverse. There were huge biped predators, and quadrupeds such as the Deinosuchus (meaning 'Terrible Crocodile') that ate herbivorous dinosaurs.

- Discovery (link here)

Very interesting article.

What is more important, good genes or good luck?