Visitors in the vineyard

[grapeman]

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My sister called this AM about 7 and told my wife she had three moose in her back dooryard which is between my two vineyards. I looked out the window and sure as sh*take mushrooms there were three moose! I figure a cow and two calves from last year by the size. They did a loop almost to the road and ran back behind the house. I looked a minute later out the back door and there was the cow standing next to my driveway about 50 feet from the garage.

I went to the office and grabbed the camcorder, but couldn't get them out of the woods to shoot with the cam. I went down a while later into the vineyard and sure enough, they had gone around the edge of the vineyard and into the woods. Holy crappes batman. I hope they don't take up residency. Just so you know I am telling the truth here, I got a few pictures of the tracks. The big one has tracks almost as long as my shoe and wider.

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Hid-In-Pines Vineyard
Morrisonville, NY</TD></TR></T></TABLE>

 

[redmust]

Wowser.... sure hope they don't like grape! What red would you serve that with?

 

[ibglowin]

Woa! How do you keep that out of the vineyard?

 

[fivebk]

30.06 would do the trick

BOB

 

[grapeman]

Unfortunately I don't have the wildlife clause for moose here. There is a $10,000 fine for killing a moose! I saw the first moose track in the area about 12 years ago about 2 miles from home and back then they were just roaming through, but they are steadily increasing the population. The DEC sent out questionaires to hunters last year requesting sighting reports in the Adirondacks outlying area.


I hope they don't eat grapes also! You would need a heck of a wildlife fence for those suckers!

 

[Scott]

Maybe they will move on. That would be a fine howyado to meet them in the vineyard!

 

[JimCook]

Perhaps this is a whole new label idea, Rich? I know there's Moose Drool beer - maybe a Mooseprint or Moose Tracks is in your future?

Otherwise, you might need this.


- Jim

 

[grapeman]

What will they think of next!

 

[uavwmn]

You have moose in upstate NY??????YIKES

 

[grapeman]

Moose, bears, cougars, coyotes, wolves, fisher, and almost every imaginable predator (well moose aren't predators but can be dangerous). Of course we aren't supposed to know about them until there are too many sighting to deny it any more. The state DEC has a policy of "Plausible Deniability" in place- they don't tell what they have done to protect the re-introduced wildlife. I have personally seen all of these at one time or another. I stopped reporting them years ago when they published an article denying them and mentioning me by name and basically calling me crazy. A few days later the pictures nobody wanted to see were taken from my home! (or should I say I must have "misplaced them").

 

[ASAI]

Unfortunately I don't have the wildlife clause for moose here. There is a $10,000 fine for killing a moose!

How can you be fined for Smoking something that does not exist?

 

[grapeman]

The state now acknowledges that the moose are here. There are too many to ignore now. Now they will fine you if you kill one, no matter what. One charged one of my cousins a couple years ago while he was hunting a ways away. I asked why he didn't shoot it and he said he couldn't afford a fine that big. I will tell you, if it came down to me or him and I had a rifle- I hope I would be the one walking awy!

Anyways- here is one picture that isn't too bad that my sister got. The others are just to blurred because she was trying to get pictures of running moose-not easy. I wish I could have gotten them with the camcorder with the zoom turned up..........

 

[ibglowin]

Thats obviously been Photoshopped....

Yours truly,

State of NY, DEC

 

[grapeman]

Thats obviously been Photoshopped....

Yours truly,

State of NY, DEC

That would be funny, butI have been there!
The pictures I had of the cougar tracks were in the snow- no mistaking them. I went home, got the camera, carried a rifle back just in case, brought a ruler and took careful pictures. I laid the rifle down between steps of the cat- it fit between walking steps no problem- obviously a housecat with 4 inch wide paws, because I set the ruler in the track. I snapped a number of the pictures. When I contacted the press- nobody would even look at them. I brought them home, put them on the desk and called the DEC to ask if they would like to check them out. Sure, he would be down. The guy never showed. The next day there was an article in the paper discounting my report as a person with an overactive imagination. The tracks that were there were obviously dogs they reported. A few days later the pictures disappeared off the desk never to be seen again.


A lady down the road called me and asked me over. She had taken some video of the cat walking in thedistance in a field- a 5 foot long black cat. She took it to the press and they said it was a house cat. Yea, a 5 foot house cat with a long hooked tail and tufted ears!My Mom and a friend watched it across the road chase down a deer and kill it- more imagination. That one was black, but the one I watched in the apple trees a few years ago was the regular buff color. I didn't bother to report that one.


The report they had a hard time discounting was when the State Trooper had one run across the road in front of him!

Mixed Emotions.
Anyways I have learned to enjoy the wildlife and to Hel........ with the naysayers.

 

[dragonmaster42]

No, Mr. Appleman, those are obviously just big deer. Yeah, that's it. Don't want to go causing a panic.

We get reports of mountain lions around the state here periodically that are instantly discounted by the fish and game "experts". I'm waiting for someone to shoot one and haul it into their offices with the press in tow and see what they say.

 

[Scott]

The pictures dissappeared from your desk?? You never even heard the black helicopters?

Lots of reports of cougers here toobut..........like dragonmaster said they are instantly discounted.

 

[PeterZ]

There was a cougar that lay as road kill on the side of the highway I commute on daily. Surprised the heck out of me, but they say there are cougars in west TN. I knew there were cougars here, but I thought they were 40-something women who liked 20-something men.

 

[hannabarn]

We have the same problem in Northern Wisconsin. We have the DNR (do nothing right). They denied that there were cougar in Wisconsin until some trackers and the DNR wardens chased one for 2 or 3 days before the trackers refused to chase it any more. Now they admit they are here.

 

[grapeman]

Yep, here it is the DEC (Deny Everything Coverup). I even had one of the officers that was doing a fish count survey tell me about the Plausible Deniability Policy in place. It is designed to help protect the re-introduced wildlife! To heck with residents safety.

 

[Wade E]

We have mountain lion sightings here once in awhile and Moose and brown bear but never knew we had Bobcat also. My brothers friend who lives not very far from me was seeing animal skeletons way in his back woods in the fields and he has money so he set up some infrared cameras out there with a dead animal as bait and captured a unusually big bobcat on film, it looks to be around 75-90 lbs. I have not seen this tape yet but my brother has and he is submitting a copy to our wildlife people here.