Was sitting in a blind with my brother Saturday night and in the last 10 minutes of shooting light what shows up at the feeder but a pair of donkeys. We've never had them on camera, our landowner doesn't keep donkeys and neither do the neighbors, but there they were. Likely explains why we had deer on camera around that time every evening for two weeks, but none that evening ...

Sounds like free ranging exotics to me.

Target practice…coyotes & buzzards have to eat too.

Now that I've hunted deer for years and harvested my share - IMO the #1 way to ruin a deer hunt is to kill a deer. Then the work starts!

JR

Had a Japanese Snow Monkey walk into the sendero and start eating road corn when I hunted a place in Big Wells. That ruined a hunt.

We discussed perforating one to teach the other a lesson, but decided to wait and see if a shooter buck would show up in the last couple of minute of shooting light.

I remember hearing about those monkeys years ago.

Quite a few years ago, a lot of landowners were raising and selling ostriches, emus and other big birds for pretty good money. I know some that sold their cows, horses and started raising birds. Then the market crashed, the big birds somehow got out on the rural roads, and scattered. I wound up with some. I asked the GW about them. He said that they were somebody else’s livestock and that it was illegal to shoot or harass them. Yep, he knew that they cleaned out spin feeders and sometimes damaged them. He recommended not approaching them. They could be dangerous. He also said that neither he nor the sheriff wanted to talk to me about this matter.

We took care of “our” problem.

Yeah, back in early to mid 80s, some escaped from a medical research facility down near Artesia Wells. Rumors they had been tested with HIV. Think a rancher near San Diego area shot and killed one that he claimed was attacking either his donkey, his dog, him or all 3. Made the local newspapers and it was a big monkey, maybe 85-100 lbs. Was speculation it was related to those prior escaped ones. Believe he underwent some medical tests as it bit or scratched him and the animals. Real Sci Fy movie kind of stuff back 35-40 years ago.