I am somewhat surprised by some of the comments to my portion of the post. There apparently are some regional differences that maybe lead to part of this, I don't know, but I will indeed check to see if bats are a protected species in Georgia. I would be surprised, simply because of the sheer number of them
I am not taking about a few bats, I am taking about thousands of them that come out at sunset. One of my sons has a few acres in an adjacent county, part of it a nice three acre or so little valley nestled between hills. Very pretty place, his back porch overlooks it, and we sit there and watch deer and turkey roam all the time. One of the other things we enjoy watching is swarms of hundreds of various butterflies. This little valley is perhaps 4 to 5 miles from a world reknown facility that, among other things they do, raises and displays in several large buildings butterflies from around the world. It is clear that they have loses in their population simply due to so many people going in and out of the doors to the buildings where they fly freely. The facility is called Callaway Garden, some of you may know it for their enormous gardens areas, lakes, and a nice golf course. There are hotels that cater to convention groups, it's a big and well known place.
We just guess that some of the escapees have adopted this little valley as their home and have reproduced there into large groups. We love to watch them. Guess what, the bats love them, too. We have seen bats dive in and decimate a swarm of butterflies in short order. That's perhaps the principal reason we started shooting the bats.
It seems that every three or so years, there is an explosion in the bat population around here. It must be a cyclical thing. Anyway, they are a blasted nuiscance when they fly in such numbers, and that's my defense. Right or wrong, we prefer the butterfly swarms to the bat swarms.
We'll check this out, we may well have to alter what we are doing, but I just cannot imagine that these bats are endangered in any way. There's simply too many of them, and I am taking about only a single isolated example of thousands of bats.
Now, having said that, I think being called "irresponsible" and a "slob hunter" is just a bit over the top, not having all the above information before now. "Dumb-a$$ed idea", "I doubt any counsel will help," come on people. I am a responsible hunter, shooter, contributer to this bbs (whether you agree with my postings or not) and will certainly check this out before doing it again. I still think this must be a regional issue, and I definitely think some of these personal comments toward me are, well, premature at the least. I'll find out about the legalitites, I hope it's legal to shoot them, just to assist the wild butterfly populations to grow. I'll bet if many of you could see those beautiful swarms, you would agree with my position. To put an end to it, if I determine it is illegal, I will stop, bottom line. I just would have expected more gentle warnings than some of the above remarks. Thanks for reading this far.
