"Thank God! there is always a Land of Beyond, For us who are true to the trail..." --- Robert Service
Attachment 7582
Really? I think that you really do need to get out more, and as someone who has drawn bear tags before with the intent of hunting them on the ground with a bow, and someone who has been involved in all sorts of conservation that stems way beyond maintaining hiking trails I think that this is ridiculous.
As for killing the mice. They are considered vermin and there are generally no such regulations for them. State-to-state there may be a variation on the traps that can be used, but I've never seen someone before get so worked up about killing a mouse.
Do you plant your own garden? If not, then you cannot ensure that hundred of rodents aren't killed when plowing every year.
I don't think that there is a Leave No Trace 'Creed'. It's not a religion, it's a set of guidelines."Leave nothing but footprints, take nothing but pictures, kill nothing but time" is the creed - right?
Now UL hiking - THAT's a religion.
Seriously, though, I'm a believer in LNT, but I don't know who added the 'kill nothing but time' phrase. It's not mentioned in the 7 principles.
The problem is that people who are setting the mouse traps are not the ones who were careless about storing their food and cleaning up after themselves. The careless hikers came through weeks before, and caused a mouse population explosion. If the mouse population is large, then the mice will be even more desperate for food, and will be chewing through packs and equipment with no hesitation. I don't see any problem with hikers faced with a shelter full of mice due to someone else's negligence setting mouse traps.
Myself, I never sleep in shelters. But if I ever had to, I would not want to be totally at the mercy of the mice.
Formerly uhfox
Springer to Bear Mountain Inn, NY
N Adams, MA to Clarendon VT
Franconia Notch to Crawford Notch
Anyone have a list of the animals we can kill in state and federal parks?
We have established its OK to kill mice (see the above post) but what else?
The person who harvested this bird was probably mistaken with the ID.
Far more likely that he bagged a spruce grouse.
They are among the most tame of birds along the trail. Many a hiker has come within a few feet of one-- or even closer.
Unless it was protecting its chicks (and even then), the chances of getting within leki-kill distance of a ruffed grouse is far, far lower.
True, but they are more of a vermin with respect to cattle barons, much like prairie dogs, and its easier for the average person to believe that his cattle is being killed by wolves and lions instead of coyotes and wild domesticated dogs (which by last report that I read, are far more likely to kill cattle, especially calves)
Also, with our agriculture, I see no near future shortage of mice, or careless hikers/people using shelters.
I do see a shortage of though.
BINGO! Mice mainly eat plant material. We dont have to be dirty littering clods to have mice, especially concidering the fact that the common house mouse (or many other types for that matter) seeks out and survives best in the presence of humans -- they just dont survive without humans. Just the simple fact that we plop down human shelters in the middle of nowhere, will mean there will be mice. Or better put -- No People, No Mice.
If the mice really bother you, jump on top of the picnic table and scream for help
What if I were to hike with a large corn snake, would that be better than rat traps?
This is, of course, assuming that I'd sleep in a shelter, which i did do once, because it was built in a very rocky area in Arkansas, and it looked better than the rocks.
Lets face it leave no trace was dead before it left the farm. You walk down a trail thats so heavily traveled it's cut into the ground. There's steps, rocks and retaining logs everywhere. Bridges and benches, cleared spaces just so you have a view. Privies and self composting crap smears blighting the woods. The silence is violated by drunken idiots who think they have the right to yell and scream. And every stick within two hundred yards of a shelter is scarfed for firewood by the air polluters. Now somebody is worried we might kill a mouse? NEWSFLASH there all going to die anyway and the sea won't rise or the globe get any hotter.
In all seriousness;
We started the mouse problem we should have the obligation to reduce the numbers to an ecological balance so they don't tax the shelter areas ability to sustain them in the off season. Better a swift death than to slowly starve and become aggressive toward the local bird populations nests. They are as bad as feral cats IMO. And rats have been documented to outright kill sleeping birds for food.
Miracles; they are by nature unbelievable so the mind must rationalize them or justify God is real.
All three can carry diseases that can kill you. I don't consider that BS. Do you? Really?
The fact is that human activity created the environment for the additional volume of mice. It is actually a LNT to kill them and bring their numbers down. It is akin to cleaning up after others.
Fear ridges that are depicted as flat lines on a profile map.
This is ridiculous. Mice (parasites on the fleas on the mice) killed one-third of our population a few hundred years ago. It's time for revenge!
The Black Death II: Humans Strike Back