550 yards !? Someone knows how to operate a shot . Well done.

Blackies Blend Fur King bait attracts and works for skunks and of course coons too. It is a sweet pleasant smelling bait that I've caught skunks with but never have caught house cats with it. He also made a bait specifically for skunks but I can't for sure remember it's name.It seems like most all the Trapper supply houses still sell this bait.

Oh mercy ! That would be more like sentence as.opposed to a diagnosis.

Echinococcus cysts. It's not just the liver here, there are lesions on multiple other organs and most likely throughout the body, including the muscles. If you eat it, the larvae will travel to your liver, lungs, brain and other organs and make the same bubbly cysts where they settle. They are very difficult to treat because the cyst walls protect the parasites from drugs, so some of these cysts can only be removed surgically, if the location permits. Not fun.



They say foxes spread them, too, but stray dogs seem to be a key vector. Echinococcus spreads though dog poop.

What's that saying? He could sing the phone book?

Many years ago I sorta got kinda got semi-shanghai-ed into taking care of a black lab. It belonged to a friend of a friend and I had to take care of this dog 'smokey' for about 2 years until I was able to return him to his owners in central Florida. Good dog , no problems. But I had to reach into my pocket to feed him about 95% of the time.

One day one of the dog's ' relatives ' reached out to me to help out with the dog somewhat. They had received a nice gourmet spiral ham from their employer as a bonus. However due to the fact they had changed addresses several times in a short period , the ham bounced around 3 different addresses and had a bunch of address correction stickers plastered all over it as it went from wrong address to wrong address. It had gotten delayed quite a bit in the shuffle. She contacted the firm that sent these out for her employer and they agreed to send her another one directly to her correct current address.

So she had this ham that was probably ok to eat , but iffy. And just got the replacement that was fresh to replace it that was 100% food safe.
So she gave me the 'passed around' ham to feed to the dog.

I cooked up the ham and it made my house great. After letting it completely cool off , I put it a plastic tub so the dog could eat it.



Here comes the funny part......
Smokey was a good dog. Obedient. No problems. Very civil.

He was tied outside by his doghouse. I brought the ham out in the plastic tub , uncut/intact but a spiral sliced ham.
I placed it in front of him.
He just looked at it and gave me this look like -
" You gave me the wrong food "
Because I was feeding someone else's dog , he was getting Sam's dry kibble as it was cheap.
I encouraged Smokey to eat , but he still did not because he thought something was wrong.
On the Third attempt to get Smokey to eat , he very cautiously took a small lick while watching me the whole time thinking I was going to yell at him or worse for eating that human food. With much more encouragement , Smokey started eating. It took him about 3 days to eat that ham. I finally got him back to his owners a couple years later by driving him 1200 miles to his owners in Florida.

I was amazed at the dog's reaction to the human food and his reluctance to eat it.

Are they cysts?

Always a good idea to check the liver before eating anything you catch, no mater how "safe" they say the animal is.

These are among the most dangerous parasites to humans. Beavers are not "supposed" to have them but eating grilled backstraps from this one would have been a huge risk.

Today, 11/29/25 would have been Jack's 70th birthday. Today he was "released" to once again ride the winds, above the wilds he loved so well.

Are you sure it's a 2003?

I don't think they made the 440 2 carb past 2000 but I could be mistaken

The 330s and 440s of that era were fan cooled. 0

I would pay 1500 to 1900 for it if I was interested, you might be able to get 2300.

I have owned 6 different Bearcats from the 440 to the z1 and the best trapping sled I've owned was the 440 single carb.

I grew up in the 50's and 60's. Kids were a lot less stressed then. Everything was much more simple. There was a lot tighter family bond. Kids were a lot less supervised and we got along just fine. Whoever writes some of this stuff wasn't even alive back then to experience it. I was a High School Counselor in the 1990's until 2009 and I could not believe how stressed out kids became over the years and it is probably worse now.

I agree with that too. An odd smell to be sure.