LSONews.com
LoneOStar Outdoor News
December 22, 2017
Page 17
Snow hunting Continued from page 1
assistant principal in Brownwood, harvested his first mule deer in the snow on the Horseshoe Mountain Ranch in Brewster County. “It snowed on us the whole time the first day,” he said. “We couldn’t see very far and didn’t see much — we did see several small bucks with groups of does.” The next day, they glassed a nice 10-pointer. “We noticed the acorns on his tines,” Feist said. “We worked our way closer to him and then crept to within 225 yards in the snow. I laid down, used the bipod and made the shot. When we got to him and saw how big and unique he was, it was high-five time.” The wintry mix of rain and snow occurred over South Texas from the morning of December 7 to the early morning of December 8. It was the first wintry precipitation event in South Texas since the icing event in 2014, and the first measurable snow event since a Christmastime snowstorm in 2004, according to the National Weather Service. Most of the southern Coastal Bend saw at least 1 inch of snow. Victoria Regional Airport received 2 inches, its sixth highest snowfall total. Laredo’s official snowfall total of 1.3 inches ranked as the third highest snowfall total in the city’s history. And now, meteorologists are comparing weather models and some are predicting a white Christmas for parts of the state.
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The mule deer buck taken in Brewster County by Chayden Feist of Brownwood had unique acorns on its antlers. Photo by Terra Peters. The National Weather Service map showed the extent of the snow coverage.
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Nilgai Continued from page 1
King Ranch made several purchases of the animal from zoo stock and released them in Kenedy County in the 1930s. Almost 90 years later, about 35,000 nilgai are believed to roam South Texas. Many are still found along the Texas coast, where the hotspot for a surge in cattle fever ticks has been Cameron County. That led to the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge being put under a cattle fever tick quarantine in 2014, according to Ranger Marion Mason. The quarantine is administered by the TAHC and the USDAAnimal and Plant Health Inspection. For hunters, that means placing a tarp on their vehicle to eliminate contact with a deer or nilgai carcass. And any hides or heads removed from the refuge will be frozen on-site for a minimum of 24 hours to kill any cattle fever ticks. Mason said the precautions are nothing to “be scared of.” “You can still eat the meat even if it had a tick on it,” Mason said. “If anything, it’s just a minor inconvenience to hunters.” Close to 400 nilgai roam the 98,000-acre wildlife refuge. “They are considered a non-native, invasive species,” Mason said. “It’s not open season on them, though, on the refuge. We have established hunting seasons here. During deer hunting season, you can take unlimited nilgai. We also have exotic animal hunts.” Harvest logs show 47 nilgai were taken in 2016. Scientists may soon have an alternative to culling nilgai to stem the tide of cattle fever ticks, however. Goolsby is working on a spray to kill the ticks catching rides with nilgai. “We can’t round nilgai up and dip them like cattle,” Goolsby said. “But their one
weak link is they make common latrines. It’s an instinct developed in India. They defecate in one area. It’s believed to be a defense mechanism to confuse their main predator, the tiger. It can’t follow droppings to find them. “We’re setting up sprayers around the latrines – using a commercial product sold worldwide. We still have a lot of work to do, but the early indications are promising.” The spray transfers nematodes – microscopic, parasitic worms that burrow into the ticks – onto the nilgai. The Agricultural Research Service deployed three sprayers on a ranch near Brownsville to test the nematodes’ effectiveness. “They’re cheap and available, already occurring naturally at the wildlife refuge,” Goolsby said. Las Huellas, a South Texas wildlife conservation group, paid for a graduate research student to help with the project. The student will study the common latrines. “The research can help us find out how many latrine sites there are, whether nilgai go back to each latrine or just use several and whether usage varies among males and females,” Goolsby said. “The more we know, the better. For example, we may find that we don’t need to put sprayers at every latrine, just the bigger ones.” U.S. Rep. Filemon Vela Jr., D-Brownsville, wants to seek funding for additional sprayers in the new farm bill. “We could do a lot more, a lot faster, if we had more funding,” Goolsby said. Goolsby is hopeful, believing the issue of stopping the ticks transcends party lines. “Everyone knows we can’t let this pest get farther north,” he said.
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