Greetings from Santa Rosa County, Florida USA

[barnetmill]

Greetings to all.
A few details about me.
I am retired biologist living on 8.3 acres with my three White English farm dogs off of Georgia Stock.
I live in Santa Rosa County, FL in the extreme west of of the Florida Panhandle. The biggest fauna here are bears raiding garbage cans, feral swine that tend to stay out of sight, alligators, coyotes, etc so life can be interesting along with mosquitoes venomous snakes. So one can tell some very good stories.

From time to time I have questions about airguns and this seems to be a knowledgeable forum to look for and to ask for information and I see also there is some firearms related information. Also it is good to see how things are in another country that is English speaking, from whence we in the USA got our common law and also our language.

Airguns tend to have less regulation here for now. People my age all started with a daisy bb gun that fired a steel ball of about 0.175 inch through a smooth bore barrel at about 290 fps. But we have much better airguns about these days and as an avid gardener and fruit tree grower, that is an amateur pomologist, obviously Airguns could prove useful. Much safer to use than a .22 rimfire, even when loaded with CCI quiet loads

[Unframed Dave]

Welcome aboard Sir. Very interesting intro, living on the Norfolk broads, I can relate to your landscape completely, we too have some terrifying wildlife, being plagued by rabbits, Chinese water deer and otter.

In all seriousness, the everglades are a fascinating place, I've enjoyed a couple of fan boat rides amongst the alligators and took an early morning balloon ride to get a more overall view of the landscape. Love the place and quite jealous. The bird life was amazingly diverse from what remains of my rapidly failing memory.

Dave

[barnetmill]

Welcome aboard Sir. Very interesting intro, living on the Norfolk broads, I can relate to your landscape completely, we too have some terrifying wildlife, being plagued by rabbits, Chinese water deer and otter.

In all seriousness, the everglades are a fascinating place, I've enjoyed a couple of fan boat rides amongst the alligators and took an early morning balloon ride to get a more overall view of the landscape. Love the place and quite jealous. The bird life was amazingly diverse from what remains of my rapidly failing memory.

Dave

Thank you sir for the kind welcome. Your environment sounds fascinating and I would like to know more about it. I remember years ago a Louis L'amour book on 16th century fens that were very wet places that were difficult for the authorities to penetrate and also regulate. I believe the civil engineers drained most of those areas a long time ago.
The everglades are hundreds of miles to the south of me and is a completely different environment. Florida is a very long state and google says I can drive 673 miles or 1083 km from Pensacola to Miami, which takes about 9 hours, 22 minutes to drive.

Large fauna nation wide were quite reduced when people were poorer and small farm holdings including share croppers (tenants) were more prevalent. Basically people lived closer to the land and they were hungrier. Some rural folk lived very much off their gardens. White tail deer became rare in many areas and feral swine populations were kept in Check. The eastern wolf (Red Wolf) for practical purposes was exterminated and the Alligator was on the road to extermination in many areas along with the black bear. All of that is reversed one way or the other. Nationwide the entities that regulate wildlife often downplay the presence of predators and in my state do not want people relative to bears in their backyards taking the law into their own hands. They typically will deny the existence of our major wild feline, the cougar that is now making quite a comeback.
I did not want to say too much more because I do not yet know all of rules of this forum.

[rapidresponse1]

welcome to the forum nice intro

[Garden Guns]

Hi!

Great intro. Way better than the one I just wrote! I feel like I should have tried a bit harder now. 😣

Sounds like an interesting place. Not sure about the crocs and the snakes though!

All the best

[barnetmill]

Hi!

Great intro. Way better than the one I just wrote! I feel like I should have tried a bit harder now. ��

Sounds like an interesting place. Not sure about the crocs and the snakes though!

All the best

The Aussies are really the ones with snakes and they have salt water crocs.

Last week I nearly stepped on a molting water moccasin pit viper while taking cloths off of the cloths line. One of my dogs that is very afraid of that kind of snake badly wanted to come inside the house after I neutralized it.