I was half kneeling, half squatting.....looking at what was left of my daughter’s young horse. The forested woods of the Virginia wilderness is beautiful, but like all wilderness areas everywhere it can be deadly. The young mare had been gone for only a few days....I had found her about a mile into the heavy forest from our wilderness home, because of the buzzards. Only bones were left, (there is a picture of it in my Leveractions book).

The whole area around the remains had heavy tracks of both her and her killers. She had fought well but they pulled her down. Feral dogs. The sign back at our home...we had a three acre area fenced in under trees and heavy shade grass for the horses. One acre will feed three large animals in Virginia, the grass is that lush. The sign there, showed at least four dogs had come in and pushed her into a corner of the fenced area...frightened she broke thru the rail fence and ran. Hours later, my daughter discovered she was gone, I lost the trail in the streams and heavy back country...but days later the buzzards showed the way. Gruesome.....we lost 40 farm animals to dogs in five years. Most were small like ducks and cats and such...but some like the horse were large and very valuable.

My neighbors were also raided and lost sheep, young cattle, farm dogs, and worst of all people themselves were attacked. As I have written before both my daughter and I on different occasions were attacked. Many of my neighbors also. In Virginia from 1970 to 1975 seven people were killed by dogs. If society were to break down drastically, our pets would become our enemies to a great extent. In 1984/5 while writing my book on leverguns...the statistic then was there was over 15,000,000 feral dogs outside of the cities in America.

Since then it has gotten worse. PBS had a special showing that New York City was spending several million dollars a year trying to control the wild and feral dogs inside the city itself. Other large cities are I’m sure having similar problems. Efforts to control the out of control breeding and populations of these animals in cities, are hampered by those misguided people that feed them and bring political pressure against efforts to eradicate their numbers. Just think of all the nonsense and damage the touchy feely type groups have caused to stop using animals in testing medical procedures and new drugs over the last ten years. A number of so called expose’ productions have been shown on T.V. about the needless cruelty of research programs...exposes’ which were proven later to be misleading and untruthful.....

Wild Horse Annie an activist for the wild horses of the west and her organization, got Congress to pass the Wild Horse Act...all wild horses are protected totally...it is a federal crime to kill one of them. Unfortunately the burro was also placed under this act. The remnants of the old prospectors animals, it was never indigenous to the west. And because of this act the burro has grown out of control, and the desert big horn sheep is now just about extinct. The desert big horn stays with a water hole all his life. The burros come in foul the hole and move on...the sheep die.

In Tucson where I live, shooting has been just about shut down around the city. The gun range that had been on the outskirts of the city for decades was shut down...the city has posted open land all around the city to stop shooting....heavy restrictions about firearm use inside the city have been passed.

And what is happening. First of all the coyotes are coming right into the city, their fear of man is gone. Even though it is illegal the tree huggers feed them, and it is winked at as an activity...Feral dog populations are climbing...they call them ‘loose dogs’, that connotation takes the realism out of the situation and hides the danger. Dog maulings rarely get on the news anymore...but just shoot one that’s damaging your property and you get crucified by the press and all kinds of groups. That’s even after a long and fitful investigation by the police finds it justifiable.....I am sure other cities of small and mid size are also beginning to see the problem develop.

I have a special load for a 24 inch rifle. It’s almost silent....take a long barrel rifle that has a cartridge case about the size of a 30-30 or larger...get the heaviest cast bullet possible and work with fast powder like Bullseye or 231 and work down to the lowest charge that gets the bullet out. I deep seat a 260 grain cast bullet in my 38-55 cases over around 2 grains of Bullseye....I get a loud pop and near 600 fps...at close range it’s 200 lbs of muzzle energy will do the job...without the neighbors calling police about shots fired.

The coyote is now a very over populated animal in our area. Small game populations are down to the lowest level I have seen them in the 20 plus years I have lived here. Rabbits used to be prolific, but now are actually scarce. They used to graze the sides of the roads and median strips at night...now they are all gone. Even the quail are having a bad time during a good wet year for them....’yotes gobble up the babies....

Cats don’t go feral as often as dogs. They usually just find a new home where someone will feed and take care of them. But if one does go wild, and he picks your place to raid.......it will be exceptionally tough to stop him. They can be killing machines on small creatures. The cat is of course the one of the world’s finest hunters....whether it is the simple house cat, the mountain lion or puma, or the huge predators of Africa and India. They are on the top of the hunting list...just under man.

When a predator loses it’s fear of man...it becomes a dangerous animal. We have a number of bears on our north mountains in Tucson that have been fed by people living up there that should know better. Also visitors to the national and state parks misguidedly feed the bears. We have had six attacks in the last two years. Not all bear attacks are fatal, but the person involved in one is usually disfigured for the rest of their lives. The common black bear is not considered a threat by many. How silly...he is like all bears, territorial, and will attack anyone or thing he thinks is invading HIS territory. Even if he just moved in the day before to get the free eats....

I’ve told the story of the black bear back in Virginia that decided to climb into my neighbor’s pig pen and grab a young pig for lunch. My neighbor said it sounded like world war three...he was running out of his house with his shotgun toward the noise when he saw the bear trying desperately to get back out of the pen...and the momma pig and her quite large youngin’s trying to pull him back in and rip him a new brain pan in the seat of his backside! My friend missed the only shot he had, from laughing so hard, as the bear headed for the deepest forest he could find.

Man is the worst predator. Farm country used to be fairly safe....crime was for the cities for the most part. But now the criminal has learned that law enforcement in the country is far from able to protect rural people because of the distances. In times past it was known that rural people protected themselves, and quiet well. But because guns have been demonized over the last few decades...especially in the last eight of the Clinton years...many country folks now don’t or won’t own guns. They have become easy pickens for the criminal...and now the violent types realize they can practice their sick violence on poor rural people without any worries over noise or discovery. Just look at the latest spree killer...the Railroad Killer....he concentrated in outlying areas. And would have never been caught if he didn’t give himself up.

The Supreme Court in a land mark decision back a few years ago stated the police could not be held responsible for the Populus’ safety. Populus, that’s you and me. So it is up to us to protect ourselves...and until the folks in the U.S. generally agree that the country today is a very violent place from animals and man...the idea that guns are not needed will grow. As soon as the idea spreads that guns are critical to survival not just hunting and sports....the gun in the home will become an accepted part of American Tradition again. And we shooters can spread the word...in fact we shooters need to spread the word......