Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Egan_BW]

Routinely maintaining and testing a blade outside of a survival in the wild situation *is* a little creepy.

It is?

[wierd]

If somebody carries a dangerous tool, I would rather they be very familiar with that tool, than not.

I fear the incompetent user more than the competent one.

[heydude6]

They have great difficulty conceiving of reasons why Farmer Joe would own guns, if not to shoot them at people. (Many view guns as existing exclusively for shooting people. when this is simply incorrect.)

Dear God yes! A family friend of ours  lives on a farm and he gets a lot of coyotes trying to invade his property. Recently they killed one of his sheep. The way he deals with coyotes is by shooting them. If he didn’t have guns, his life would be a lot harder.

And before you say he should build a fence, he has. Somehow it doesn’t stop them.

[Jopax]

Because it's not a gun-fence obviously

[wierd]

say what?

O.o

No-- Coyotes are pretty smart bastards. They dig under fences just like a dog trapped in a back yard does.  They see the tasty sheep, and they want to eat them, just like your dog in the back yard sees the cars go by, and he wants to chase them. 

Fences are good at keeping large herbivores contained.  They are not so good at stopping carnivores (which can either climb, leap, or dig), nor for stopping small herbivores (up to the size of a deer, as deer can leap, and can jump over some pretty crazy tall fences.)

Coyotes are also very cowardly. The size of their pack determines how brazen they will be in approaching dangerous hunting situations, including those where farmer joe shoots at them. Small packs are content to eat rabbits and such, and they do well.  It is when they get larger than about 5 members, that they start needing more than small game can supply them with reliably, and they get more brazen in their hunting tactics, and start taking livestock.  Monitoring pack size of local predators is a subconscious skill that many older farmers (the older codgers in their 60s or so) keep. and some even proactively thin local predator populations if they get above certain thresholds. (again, for coyotes, the magic number seems to be about 5 adult members. By the time they get to 10 or 12 adult members, they are typically taking cows!)

But this absurd idea of a "Gun Fence"-- Somebody has been playing too many JRPGs or something.

[Egan_BW]

Or tower defense!

[Jopax]

Spoiler: Slightly large example of a big boy gun-fence (click to show/hide)

[wierd]

Uhm...  Farmer joe is not interested in installing the Maginot Line on his property, just to be clear on this. He complains enough about having to maintain acres of ordinary wire fencing. Keeping sensors, actuators, firing mechanisms, and all that shit involved with keeping an artillery fence operational, on a shoestring budget, and with little more than his own two hands to maintain them with, makes the idea again--- ABSURD.

[Egan_BW]

What about self-maintaining AI robots to autonomously keep the cyotes in check?

[wierd]

Runs afoul of "Man-trap" laws.

https://definitions.uslegal.com/b/booby-traps/

Farmer Joe is not interested in going to jail, because the neighbor kid wandered close to the creek, and had 20 sentry guns auto target and open fire.  Many dont even set live traps for this reason, and if they do, they monitor them very closely.

[Eric Blank]

Hmm.. I have a hypothesis.

People, in aggregate, respond to things outside of their immediate sphere of familiarity with irrational fear.
There was a time when a pocket knife was a common place as carrying a cigarette lighter is.  You could whip out a pocket knife to cut something and nobody would bat an eye.

Fast forward to today, where most people are not in a vocation where having a knife handy is very useful, and so people dont carry them routinely. When somebody whips out a knife, "OMG, DONT CUT ME BRO!" is the first thought they have, and further, they cannot conceive of circumstances where somebody would carry a knife without intent to do such cutting on people.

Eventually, I forsee the carrying of a lighter to have equal "OMG!" factor, as people eventually stop smoking. (possibly adopting new and different vices.)  Somebody in that distant future will whip out a lighter to melt the ends of piece of rope, or perhaps an old shoe lace so it doesnt fray out-- and "OMG! DONT BURN MY HOUSE!" will be the irrational fear.

This is currently seen with pocket knives, but also with gun ownership.  City people by and large have an irrational fear of farmer joe, because farmer joe owns a gun. (Possibly several.) Farmer Joe does not have wild fantasies about shooting city people, yet you would be surprised the number of people who are afraid of going on a summer jaunt out into the rural counties to see the trees and wildlife, because they are CONVINCED that farmer joe is waiting for them to show up, gun in hand, and that he will start discharging it at them with heated passion or something. They have great difficulty conceiving of reasons why Farmer Joe would own guns, if not to shoot them at people. (Many view guns as existing exclusively for shooting people. when this is simply incorrect.)

Strangely, very few people seem to reflect on this kind of thing though. Certainly not enough to question their own behavior, and impulse reactions to seeing things that to them, are out of the ordinary, but are really completely harmless.

This is all a fairly good explanation of the phenomenon, i am going to save it if i may.

Also fuck wire fencing. I always manage to cut myself trying to fix it.
We have coyotes around here too, and at one point they did attack our sheep (singular). However it appears the pig chased them away before they could do anything but pull her wool out and give her a nasty cut on her shoulder. Wool counts as armor i guess.

Ive been unable to catch the bigger pack in action (though i can often hear them howling and chasing shit nearby), but there is this one lone coyote that runs around in daylight yipping, probably trying to find its pack. Either that or its sick and gone loony.

[scourge728]

I've heard dogs do well at stopping predators from eating sheep

[Trekkin]

This is all a fairly good explanation of the phenomenon, i am going to save it if i may.

If you want a thousand better ones, google "fear of the unknown"; it's been studied to death, and it's at the point where even the sci&tech journalists have caught on. Admittedly the explanations by legitimate scientists leave out the smug remarks about everyone else's lack of introspection, though, and generally more fully explore the rational component of the underlying psychology instead of chalking it up to other people being silly and emotional.

[Eric Blank]

But wheres the fun in that?

[scriver]

I've heard dogs do well at stopping predators from eating sheep

The most common eater of sheep are dogs