Remind Me to Not Eat Meat on a Stick
When I stumble onto it somewhere out in the wild.
when he stopped to examine a possible surveyor's marker embedded in the ground.
That monument is in the wrong place, get out the vice grips....:-O
:coffee:
If that is true, it certainly is not good. However, the source being Huffington is certainly subject to a little scepticism.
Here is a story that I used to warn our crews against the M44 coyote gun which is still in use in our area. As I recall the pipe this surveyor set off was set at the intersction of several fences and had a scrap of flagging or red rag tied around it. No one recognized it for what it was and the man died in his motel room.
In all the years that NaCN ejectors have been used, there has been only 1 accident that caused a human fatality. It happened about 30 miles southwest of Fort Stockton, Texas, in 1966, when 1 man in a party of 3 land surveyors touched a privately-set CG. The device exploded and hit him in the hand, where ejected material penetrated the skin. The injured man consulted a doctor in Fort Stockton approximately 1 hour after the accident, but was not treated for cyanide poisoning as neither the victim nor his surveyor companions realized that the exploding device was a cyanide gun. This unfortunate lack of awareness resulted in the victim not receiving proper treatment, and he died in a Fort Stockton motel room about 3 hours after the accident.
The acting coroner concluded that “. . . the cause of death was by cyanide poisoning following a penetrating jury to the left hand by a cyanide loaded pellet” (Willey
1966)."
At least 17 human injuries were caused by CGs from 1965 through 1971 (Anonymous 1973).
Source: Inventing and Reinventing Sodium Cyanide Ejectors A Technical History of Coyote Getters and M-44s in Predator Damage Control
F. SHERMAN BLOM, Manager, Pocatello Supply Depot, U.S. Department of Agriculture,
Animal Plant and Health Inspection Service, Wildlife Services, Pocatello, Idaho 83201
GUY CONNOLLY, Wildlife Biologist, Western Regional Office, U.S. Department of
Agriculture, Animal Plant and Health Inspection Service, Wildlife Services, Fort Collins,Colorado 80526
Remind Me to Not Eat Meat on a Stick
The problem isn't finding something with fresh bait on it. The problem is where the bait has rotted off or been taken without triggering the device. If you aren't familiar with these gadgets, it is quite understandable to be investigating one.
