>Rock chucks had no closed season, bag limit or weapons restriction when I lived in Oregon. Has that changed? I always thought it interesting that rock chucks were open season but chipmunks (as well as some squirrels) were protected.

I don't know. I'm not a hunter nor do I have any desire to kill little critters. When I was a kid I had a Daisy pump BB-gun. I started with just shooting targets, then bottles. It was fun. My buddy down the street talked me into going to the frog pond out in the woods in back of my house, and we'd shoot frogs (never could hit the suckers ... the BB's would go crooked as soon as they hit the water). But it was still fun. He also thought it was fun to shoot squirrels ... that was actually kind of funny, because it didn't really hurt them, but it sure pi**ed them off!!! They'd make such a ruckus!

But one day, I was off in the woods by myself with my BB-gun. I shot at a chickadee ... I don't know why, they're such cute little birds and I'd always liked them ... maybe I thought I wouldn't hit it. Well, little birds are a bit different than big ol' squirrels. It killed the poor little guy. I picked it up and held it in my hand and cried my eyes out. I took it home and buried it in the pet cemetery in our backyard and went back to shooting targets and bottles ... I never shot at wildlife again.

~~Bonnie



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>>I *love* those cute marmots (or rockchucks, as you call them) ... of course, I'm not trying to grow a garden either. <g>
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>>We're trying to get our backyard planted with mostly native plants ... we *want* to attract wildlife, marmots being some of the wildlife we want. Behind our property is a huge pasture where our neighbor occasionally has goats or sheep grazing. In the middle of this pasture is a pile of rocks that criss-cross most of the pasture (he says that way-back-when, someone who owned the "ranch" before he did, cleared the pasture of all those rocks and piled them there). Anyway, right now, that's where several marmot families live. We'd love it if they'd set up house-keeping in our backyard (we even have rock piles that I'm sure they'd like). So far, they only come over to eat our weeds (which is fine with me too! <g>)
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>>We *do* get lots of different kinds of birds, which is a great start.
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>>~~Bonnie
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>>>Hi Dragan,
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>>>I feel your pain. I lost half of my garden to Rockchucks. The good news is they didn't bother the tomatoes.
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>>>http://www.toynutz.com/nature.html
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>>>Scroll down a ways.
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>>>>Our attempts to grow real tomatoes in the patio were largely disappointing for two reasons. One is the neighbor's tree, roots of which suck all the water and nutrients from the soil, and the other is that something was eating whatever grew. In the end it turned out to be rats, but we didn't know that until we bought a squirrel trap. We did see squirrels coming often - they even had a nest in our attic for a while - but never saw any rats until the squirrel trap caught one.
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>>>>While we are in a process of getting rid of both the rats and the tomatoes (and cucumbers) altogether, I got a very interesting link about squirrels while trying to learn about them:
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>>>>http://www.maniacworld.com/squirrel-obstacle-course.html
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>>>>I still think the squirrels are rats de luxe, the only difference being the fuzzy tail and warm and fuzzy tales about them in Disney production (until the most recent one, but that's still about 100 to 1 in favorable coverage).