Possum ATTACK!

[tallyho8]

Just leave it where it lands. Another possum will eat it that night.

 

[F.L. Jennings]

Possum potpourri

I had friend that said he kicked a dead cow and possums galore ran out of it.

I was coon hunting one night and my Bluetick treed. I approached a tree and noticed a steady dripping sound on the leaves. Turning my carbide light to the leaves I saw it was blood. Then turning the light up the tree, there about six feet above the ground was a huge possum (possumasaurus) with it's tail bitten cleanly off right against the hind end. I just called the dog and went on. That possum earned an escape, though it probably didn't live without that very necessary prehensile tail.

When we first moved to the country I trapped six possums that had esconced them selves under the house.

A possum that was regularly stealing our cat's food was good at escaping. One day at work my wife called and was excited that she had finally shot the varmit. "Iheard it on the fron porch, so got the 22 and threw open the door and shot it. It just fell over. She was so proud. A little while later she called and said that when she looked back on the porch a while later the "dead" possum had vanished.

 

[wushaw]

Ya know I have spent a good bit of time shooting in my time. But very little shooting animals.

This afternoon I went out and setup a few targets to check the ole aim..
should have taken a picture of the target, I'll do that tomorrow...
15 shots (5 standing, 5 kneeling, 5 sitting) ~40 feet under 2 minutes.
stock metal sites..
All but 1 in a 3 and 1/2 in grouping.

So with a one shot one kill, mode I am positive I could do it..
And with a spray and pray method, I could do it too!
BUT that dang possum well he was evil!!

Reminds me of an ole Master Gunnery Seargent I worked for...
But that is another story!


Later,
J

3.5" group at 40 ft. You should be able to bring that down to 1" group with practice.

 

[RadarTech]

3.5" group at 40 ft. You should be able to bring that down to 1" group with practice.

Well, it is an old rifle- and the eyes aren't as good as they once were..
I think the off hand killed my accuracy..

If I took a little more time I could do better..
Been a long time since I went thru grass week...
and did much shooting.

anyway..
Later,
J

 

[GeneD14]

Don't forget that some possums are good and you don't want to harm them.

 

[Taylortractornut]

Ive raised several baby possums and have a friend thats paraplegic and she has a 6 year old pet possum that rides her wheel chair i her lap and stays with her all the time. Acts better than a cat lol. I try not to kill them when they get treed here. I think they were put here for a purpose. But in the old days they were a popular revenue source. Dad's family was like most in this part of the country getting by back then. They used to trap them for fur. Dad said you checked dead ows by kicking them with a burlap sack over the posterior end and then hit the rib cage with a stick. resulting in a bag o possums. Theres popular saying here that results from the way you dispatched them. When reffering to some one that is afraid or cautious of some wone you 'd say he's scared of him as a possum is an ax handle. you would take a possum out of the bag by his tail and put the handel behind his head with your foot on the handle and give a quick jerk up. resulting in a permanatly sulled possum. Also its fun to put on in the principals car in highschool.

 

[Dargo]

As some others have said, sometimes they are very hard to kill. I have a nice scar on the outside of my right leg from one. I used to trap way back when I was in high school. A possum pelt would only bring about a buck or so so we never really kept them since they weren't hardly worth skinning. Generally we'd just scare them into 'playing possum', and then hold their head down with our boot and let them loose from the trap and let them go. Yeah, some were stupid enough to be back in the trap after we re-set it and were moving on.

One time this huge possum was just really ticked off about being in the trap and flat wouldn't play possum. It just wanted to attack us when we got close. I had a Ruger 10/22 and ended up unloading the entire mag in it's head. Man, what a bloody mess! Figuring that we may as well skin it, I grabbed it by the tail and started walking off to check other traps. Yeah, you guessed, it wasn't quite dead. That blasted thing popped it's eyes open and lit into my leg as I was carrying it. Maybe it was fear or instinct, but I tore up a good 10/22 beating that thing off of me and making sure it was dead. I didn't have anymore ammo, so I sort of used the rifle as a bat.

You should have seen the people in the emergency room when I walked in, all covered in blood, my pant leg ripped to pieces and carrying this bloody mess of an animal! I didn't want any rabies shots if I didn't have to have them, so I brought the thing with me to the hospital. Fortunately it didn't have rabies. It was just really pissed off. I think I got a half a dozen stitches out of the ordeal.

At that time the very first "Friday The 13th" movie had just started playing at the theaters. We called that possum "Jason" after the guy who wouldn't die in those movies. A funny thing though, it seems like you just show a possum a car tire and they're dead! I don't get it. You can empty a mag into one, beat it for 15 minutes and they will still get up and walk away but one clip by a car tire and they're instant road kill. Go figure. I shoulda carried a car tire with me that day trapping!

 

[excelagator]

I had a possum getting into a chicken coop when I was a kid. We found it one night climbing the coop. We beat the heck out of it with a stick and would not move. Dad came back with 12 gauge point blank.......I got clean up duties!

Dan

 

[riptides]

Dargo Dang!

My possum story - me ontp of a pile of stacked logs with a chainsaw. I hit one and noticed mulching. So I ease up. I am straddling the log, ready for the log to go.... you guessed it.

Out of the end poked a pissed off possum. Now with a chainsaw in hand, and a few logs high.... I freaked.....


I went the other way in a hurry and decided that pile could wait for another day.

 

[Bird]

There is one possum story I never forgot because I got kidded so much about it. My grandparents bought a house in town in Ardmore, OK, in 1943 when I was 3 years old. It was built in 1921 and had a dirt floored detached double wide garage. And I was probably 4 or 5 years old when I went out there and ran back in the house to tell everyone there was the biggest rat I'd ever seen in the garage. It was only a half grown possum, but I learned the difference between possums and rats.