I think the shoots for the
Phyllostachys vivax bamboo is coming up early this year. Connie first spotted a few a couple of days ago when she was running down compost to dump among the big bamboo grove. Now I'm seeing at least a dozen poking out of the ground already. I had planned on putting the hunting blind out before the shoots came up in order to try to wipe out as many squirrels in the area as I could before they could get a chance to destroy those new shoots. But so much for that! I thought I had another month to go before we would be seeing new shoots.
I guess I'll be putting out the blind this week, even though I haven't seen any squirrel damage yet. Maybe they weren't expecting the shoots this early neither. But I seriously doubt they won't be showing up sooner or later. Last year I had to kill around 15 (confirmed kills) of them, and there were still more chewing up the bamboo when I had to take down the blind because Connie and I were going away for a bit. In previous years it was only one or two problem squirrels, and once I killed them the problem stopped. But last year was REALLY bad for the bamboo, as the squirrel population seemed to have exploded over the Winter months.
I had to get a new squirrel rifle as my Remington 597 in 17HMR exploded on me. Come to find out that Remington has had a recall out on the gun for years, but I never heard of it. In any event, I sent the gun back to them, and while waiting for them to send me a bolt action (ugh) Marlin as a replacement, I bought a semi-auto Savage model A17 in the meantime. Sighted in the gun yesterday after mounting a scope on it, and I think it will do the job nicely.
Honestly, I don't really like killing squirrels, but the declared war when they started tearing up my bamboo. You just don't mess with my bamboo. If they would just leave it alone, they would be welcome to stay, but they made that choice, and there have been consequences to pay.
Anyway, took some pics of the new shoots coming up. Still trying to get the hang of getting the most out of that 15mm to 30mm lens I got recently.
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