Click on this link to read all about O’Neill in part 1 of our series
Richard (Interviewer) – All right. So I’m here with O’Neill Williams. Due to the length of our interview, we will break it up into two sections. Today, The bear facts-Varmint fun with all type of guns! Please keep checking for the second part of our interview, where we will cover fishing, bees and other fun talk!. Find out O’Neill’s answer to our poll question on who would win in a dual between Dirty Harry (Inspector Callahan) and The Outlaw (Josey Wales). You may be surprised at his answer! I guess today the tables are turned a little bit. Aren’t you the one that’s always interviewing?
O’Neill – I’m usually the interviewer. Maybe you should sit behind my desk!
HUNTING
Richard – As an artist, I have always admired the hunt drawn on cave walls of Lascaux. I can just imagine Raul the caveman telling his wife to put some water on the tree bark and fire it up for a Wildebeest!
O’Neill – All right. We’ve been hunting for 2 million years, and the way they know this is they study the marks on the animals bones and I guess where there’s scratches on the head, where things are dug up.
They can tell by the bones that something else had gone into the cavity or it wasn’t a cavity, but it made a cavity.
Richard – Where’s the best place to hunt?
O’Neill – Well, it’s according to what you want to hunt. Georgia has 1.3 million white tail deer and white tail deer is the number one fur bearing animal that’s hunted in the United States. When, Columbus landed probably there were 5 million white tail deer in the United States. Now there’s 36 million because it’s so very well managed. The United States has the best wildlife management system and policies in the world and it’s funded by Robinson Pittman Wildlife Restoration Act, which added 11% taxes to everything. Because see in the 1910 or 1920, something like that, that, there weren’t any deer. The hunting was pretty much unregulated and there wasn’t anything left to hunt. It was all used up. So there’s two, two congressmen, Pittman and Robertson, one from Arizona, one from I think North Carolina and they came up with the Wildlife Restoration Act, which acted, so they went to the hunters and to the fishermen and said, this is what we want to do. We want to add a tax to everything, just virtually everything that you buy. And the hunter and fishermen raised his hand and said, proceed. And that’s where all the money comes from that operates the Department of Natural Resources and all the land management. For instance, right over here, you’ve got the Boston Forest. Somebody had to buy that. And that’s owned by the state and it’s managed by the state. It’s all government funded. Okay, and that’s the reason we have so much wildlife here in the United States.
Richard – Okay. That’s good to know. Cause there was the white kind of stripe on the tail. You know I have no experience with hunting and am learning from you!
O’Neill – Well, he’s called a white tail because when he runs his tail flares out like that and bounces around, that’s his warning to other deer. Most antlered animals have a light colored rear end. Oh, so they can follow each other.
Richard – Funny, men follow women because of their tail.
O’Neill – There are 1.3 million white tail deer in Georgia. And after the season runs, there’ll probably be 900,000. So there’ll be 350, maybe 400 thousand deer
Richard – And are hunters looking for food or trophies or both?
O’Neill – Mostly it’s just being out there. If it were, if it were only to fill the freezer, you wouldn’t shoot the bucks. You shoot just the does.
Richard – Meats better?
O’Neill – Oh yes. Very much.
Richard – I’ve never dressed an animal and if I did, I’d put a hat on it or something. So, uh, give us a brief description of how you do that. I know there’s parts you need to stay away from.
O’Neill – you want to remove all the entrails. Of course, I always hang everything upside down and it needs to be over a bucket or something or be in the woods where it can be. You won’t have to fool with any of that, especially hogs. You see hogs, uh, many of the hog diseases are transmittable to humans, so hang them upside down. If you’re going to do the dispose of the entrails, they need to be in a bucket. You got to have good sharp knives, several of them and a sharpening stone.
Richard – you have a smile on your face.
O’Neill – Well, it’s funny because you need gloves that go all the way to your armpits.
Richard – You don’t want to touch any of that stuff.
O’Neill – The blood and all that. No, absolutely not. Especially with hogs. Deer, you can clean a deer in 10 minutes.
Richard – when you go to cook the hog parts, uh, does that eradicate the disease?
O’Neill – Most of the diseases that are transmittable come from the blood or the, the entrails. And when you say enteral, with the guts, intestine, stomach, things like that.
Richard – What’s the biggest animal you’ve ever killed? I see a bison on your wall.
O’Neill – He weighed 2700 pounds. When you go to Appalachian gun, when you walk in the door, that black bear skin, that’s mine. That was a 350 pound bear that I killed in Idaho.
Richard – if you had to eat something in the next two days and you didn’t have the food, would you rather hunt or trap to get it?
O’Neill – Trap, I’m not capable. You know, I hunt, I get that shotgun and shoot some squirrels.
Richard – There you go. They’re all over the place.What is necessary to be a good hunter?
O’Neill – Patience. Patience. Patience and knowledge. You have to know what you’re doing, where you are, how to get in, how to get out. You have to know what the animal is, but you have to be patient.
Richard – Have you ever struck out deer hunting?
O’Neill – Oh, absolutely. I’s not just automatic.
Richard – Have you ever bow hunted before?
O’Neill – a long, long, long time ago. But I haven’t been bow hunting with the modern equipment because one of the sponsors of my show is a rifle company, so I never use archery.
Richard – Okay. So if you get an archer sponsor, you might pick up a bow?
O’Neill – I would, yeah.
Richard – That’s cool. This is in an area that I know nothing about, but are you keenly aware of your surroundings if you’re hunting. What are the birds doing? Is that a signal?
O’Neill – Absolutely. What the hunter needs to do is keep quiet. Shut up. Walk slowly. And I learned that from my grandfather. My grandfather worked for Georgia Power Company. He drove a locomotive and he was from Wiley, Georgia. I used to go with he and my grandmother into Lakemont, Georgia and stay two weeks every summer. I learned from him, walk slowly. Slow and quiet. Take three steps and stop. If you’re moving, you won’t see things because they see you and they stop moving.
Richard – Would you rather slowly walk through the woods or set up a deer stand to kill a deer?
O’Neill – You don’t hunt deer by moving around. You go in one place and stop. You have to go to.. to his food source. Stay there.
Richard – So if the Deer was hunting us, they would just hang out at Speedy Burger? How do you find the food source?
O’Neill – Most people put in food plots. They put in, you know, 10, 20 acre food plots. Wow. And they plant various grasses and turnips and all kinds of greens and nuts. It’s legal to put out corn to attract them. White-tailed deer do not do much other than the breeding season. He just kind of wanders around in the woods, sleeps a great deal. He’ll lie down. He’ll curl up like a dog and he’ll wake up and look around like that and then go back to sleep.
Richard – Last year we saw a mother leave her doe in our backyard and the doe curled up and slept and did just what you were describing. So was the mother just forging for food to bring back?
O’Neill – She was feeding.
Richard – It was a couple hours later, but did she bring food with her?
O’Neill – No, she regurgitates food, and she does that because it’s easier for the doe to digest.
Richard – And is that regurgitated food studied and used in the making of some of these things to lure the deer to the stand?
O’Neill – No, because nobody cares. If you’re a deer hunter, you don’t want the fawns
Richard – Oh, that’s a good point. But I thought maybe they had, from an early age, been eating that regurgitated food and then….
O’Neill – A couple of three or four weeks, that’s all. They’re looking for the real thing.
Richard – This reminds me of the movie Doc Hollywood, but can deer smell the difference between human urine and animal urine and if you pee in the woods, what’s going to happen? What about a bear? Can they smell human urine?
O’Neill – They’ll recognize the foreign scent. They won’t say, you know, that’s that guy that lives in the world. No, or that’s the guy that was here last week. No, he just goes, I don’t like this. I’m leaving. OK.
Richard – In the woods, are you wearing an orange vest?
O’Neill – Yeah. That’s legal. You need to wear an orange vest. But of course, to the whitetail deer… the orange vest looks beige. He can only see one color. He can… Whitetail deer can see various shades of blue, but with camo, you can get away with using an orange vest and hat.
Richard – They’re the worst artists in the animal kingdom, right? What does happen with the birds? Why are you looking at the birds?
O’Neill – Just a signal sometimes by activity that if you’re hearing birds and you start moving around and they stop, you’re going too fast. You need to slow down. Because they warn each other.
Richard – And then if another animal comes, are they going to signal it?
O’Neill – Not usually. Because they’re safe. Well, crows might, but that’s the smart one. He’s very, very smart. Think about you see hogs that people run over turkeys, that people run over, owls that people hit with their cars, hawks that people hit with their cars. You never see a crow. And they’re the ones that seem like they’re in the middle of the road all the time, but you never hit one of those. They know what’s going on. Yeah, they have do they have some kind of extra sensory. They’ve got a better brain and they are a smarter bird.
Richard – What can you observe about trees and other vegetation patterns while hunting? Is it is that any kind of a factor at all?
O’Neill – No, not really. If I’m hunting for bucks, I’m going to hunt where he does, because that’s what he’s looking for. If it’s not during the rutting period in which he would be looking for those does, is he looking for a mate? That’s the mating period. Which is determined by the number of hours of daylight. That’s why it’s always the same time every year. According to the species and where he lives. His heritage and that’s the reason that in Georgia you had about eight different species when they replanted or redistributed bucks into Georgia. They got some from Wisconsin some from Alabama and some from all of the Carolinas. That’s why in North Georgia the rutting period is in December and October if it’s in on the coast. If it’s in central Georgia. It’s November and always will be.
GUNS
Richard – I tell you, we should never take for granted life where we live. I was recently asked if I wanted a free condo for a week in Charleston. I replied “Thanks, but it doesn’t get any better than my own backyard!” Okay. So here’s a funny question. This is also our poll question on the homepage of the website at www.Jaspermountainlife.com. Who wins at 40 paces? We have San Francisco detective dirty Harry Callahan against the outlaw Josie Wells. The outlaw Has a pair of 1847 revolvers. Dirty Harry’s got a model 29 Magnum.
O’Neill – Josie Wells because those are longer barreled weapons, better accuracy. Okay. The, the dirty Harry’s pistols are designed for killing something at four feet. He’d use hollow points or something like that.
Richard – All right. So Josie Wells wins that one. What’s a good rule of thumb on how much ammo we should stash away just in case the poop hits the fan?
O’Neill – I don’t know the answer to that. I know I have one friend who’s got 50,000 rounds and I’ve got probably 20 or 30 small boxes around here. Yeah. But I don’t expect much to happen. I mean, there’s not much to protect up here. So, but you never know. I guess you gotta be ready. So if you come to this door and intend harm, you will die. And I think that’s the way we all feel up here. So just don’t come up if you want to steal. On my night stand in my bedroom, there are two pistols there. I have one on one side. Gail has another one on her side. She carries. And so do I, I
find just go to Jasper. I carry.
Richard – you’re limited to five guns and it could be for anything, self-defense, hunting, you just, you can only have five. What would you consider the perfect arsenal to be if you lived in the mountains?
O’Neill – You’d have to have a shot, double-barreled shotgun, an AR with multiple rounds and pistols that you can carry and it can go in with you in your vehicle.
Richard – with the AR, I’d imagine how many magazines do you think we should keep on hand?
O’Neill – Those are 30 round mags, you know, just a couple. Okay. You’ll never shoot it more than three or four times.
Richard – What kind of accessories do you think you need if you buy a gun? Like a scope or?
O’Neill – Again, it’s according to what you need. If you’re going to go out West or you’re going to hunt deer here, you need scope. Okay. You know, shotgun, of course not. An AR, no.
Richard – Assuming you have no time to build a trap, would you rather have a 9 millimeter pistol against a raging black bear or a feral pig, a 400 pound feral pig?
O’Neill – Well, the pig’s not going to do it unless he’s being chased. Okay. The bear might. You know, the bear, they can get in your front door and get in your truck. Right. Get in your car. They can open the door.
Richard – How do you know if a gun is a good fit for you, literally and purposely?
O’Neill – A woman who’s carrying might have a much smaller caliber so the gun should not be a burden. It should fit. That’s why you go to the range. They will help you decide based on your needs and abilities.
Richard – I watched a little video on one of the guns I have the Magnum Judge, and they were talking about how the grip is manufactured. So that when you have a gun that’s got a big pop and when you shoot it, it’s made to slide in your hand. That’s what way it’s supposed to be. Now even a woman’s purse can be made to hide a pistol and shoot right through it. That’s the stuff of James Bond movies!
O’Neill – My daughter used to own a salon and I always told her because she would be the last one to leave and she likely would have some money with her, and she carried, she’s very aggressive. And she should remember if anybody ever tries to steal from her, then if they shoot and try to kill her with her own gun, they have to beat her to death with it because it’s empty. In my wife’s family, one is a retired police officer and the other one died not from an accident, but died while he was a police officer. And they always said center shot. You don’t shoot him in the hand or the arm or the leg, you shoot him right in the middle. And the reason is because it’s the biggest target. That’s right. Easier to hit. This we know from all these old movies somebody pulls a gun. He shoots the pistol out of your hand. Oh, no, no, no, no. And don’t even go for the head. I mean that would be great to say. Oh, I got him in the head. But it’s probably not great to say anything at all if you have to be in that predicament. Because if you shoot somebody in the chest first of all, you’re going to stop them. Absolutely, and then you can do whatever else you need to do after that. if you miss they’re going to keep going. So that’s pretty obvious.
Richard – What would happen in a scenario where they come to take our guns away?
O’Neill – They would have open rebellion, and in a second. Against the Second Amendment.That’s what I think. The only difference is that we’d have all the guns. So it would be harder.
Richard – And it makes me wonder what the military would ever think about that, you know, because half of those people more than half, they’re all carrying guns. So how are they going to feel if they’re ordered to take something away?
O’Neill – I don’t think that’s remote concern.
Richard – Do you think they messed with the ammo prices when there was a shortage?
O’Neill – Sure, I’ve heard a lot.
Richard – I mean, but is that something that the government needs to stay out of it?
O’Neill – Yeah. And should be capitalism supply and demand. I make bullets and I sell them.
Richard – Absolutely
collection reiterating some of the people and the places that I met along the way.
BEARS
Richard – Yeah, I had a bear get into my refrigerator in the garage and he pulled out a chicken. Luckily I have an Akita and he said, “no, sir.”
O’Neill – You know, obviously the thing about bears is you don’t, want to be between the mother and her cubs. And that’s what really pisses them off.
Richard – So I thought the season at least for bears. I thought was September. Is that wrong?
O’Neill – Like hunting season. No, it’s October-November. But we’ve ruined all this up here for bears because people feeding them.
Richard – Let’s talk about that. By feeding them, we are doing them a grave disservice. I know you have a neighbor where the DNR people have been out to talk to them. And the folks that live there say we’re not going to stop what we’re doing. Is it it’s not against the law to feed a bear?
O’Neill – I don’t know if it’s against the law but or not. I would guess no. Your property so you can do what you want. Yeah. You’re doing a disservice to the bear and you’re doing a disservice to all your neighbors because if that man up there feeds the bears and he he gets done eating. He’s going to go. I need another place that smells like humans. I’ll go down there to this house. Well, I’m not going to feed him. I’m going to shoot him. Right. I’m going to shoot him with a BB gun. I can go out there and I can take that little daisy BB gun and I can just shake it and he’ll run
Papa bear photographed by Richard Russell away, because he knows he was stuck by a mosquito bite. I don’t shoot him in the face. Okay, just in the butt, and they’ve got a lot of padding back there.
Richard – a Good plan for discouraging our Bear friends without killing them.
O’Neill – And to think well, he’s so hungry..… The black bears have4 been in Georgia for 11,000 years since the since the last of the Pleistocene epoch (Ice age). And they’ve been here for 11,000 years and it wasn’t a single human in Georgia feeding them. They’ll do just fine. Just leave them alone.
Richard – he’s he’s not a good neighbor. Right.
O’Neill – Yeah. I again, I hope they listen to this because that’s one of my big pet peeves and absolutely. I got up one morning to find all four doors of my truck were open. Lock your door. Keep that door always locked because it’s a lever and they know how to get in. I just changed cars and I noticed two prints and scratches where he was trying to get to the handle.
Richard – What do you do if you’re face to face with a bear?
O’Neill – Raise your hand. Be loud. Don’t go after him. But don’t turn and run! If you turn and run, he’ll think you’re prey, and he’ll check. He may chase you. I know somebody in the neighborhood that feeds them by hand. I tried to tell him and I don’t mention it to him anymore because he knows how I feel about it. A bear could pick you up by the neck and climb a tree. Yeah, he could jerk your arm completely out of the socket and not think anything about it. If he’s just having a bad day. I mean he’s strong as ten humans put together. Run like a racehorse, you know, smell stuff from three miles away. Don’t fool with this guy. Leave him alone. I know the methodology by the bears is to forge for food and we’re in that equation now up here.
Richard – we had one on our porch, which is 20 something feet up in the air and we thought they’d never climb. These are just metal poles and they got to the bird feeders. So now we can’t keep bird food out and they will be coming back over and over again and people think well the DNR will come by and they relocate them. Yeah, they relocate them all right, about six feet deep.
O’Neill – He’s got 27,000 acres right over there. So I going to scare him aware from here. That’s right. You can eat but you don’t need to eat over here. Invited over there just down the street. So it makes it hard. And that is something when I reach my hand out. That was what happens with somebody who moves to the area with no experience.
Richard – You know, we all have to learn and that’s one of the purposes of this website. Don’t mess with the bears.
O’Neill – They are not friends. They seem like they are. They’re cute as they can be, but they will kill you. They now I have to admit this:no human in the state of Georgia has been killed by a black bear, but it doesn’t mean they’re not mauled. So just because you’re not dead doesn’t mean……..I could go on for hours. Me talking about the bears and talking about the hogs. Well, it’s about time for the DNR to come back and make another roundup. Yeah, I see it’s been about five years since they collected.
Richard – So the guy down the street knows that he’s hand feeding like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And those bears are going to be terminated.
O’Neill – Yes, put to death! And well, I don’t know if he did admit that but yes, yeah, he knows because I know enough people have sent him messages and Facebook.
Richard – If you’re going to do it, kill them. Make a good shot.
O’Neill – A reminder thatI tell my friends not to keep their bottom windows open when they are cooking. Shut those windows. Not up here. Not in this environment.
Richard – They’re everywhere. We’ve seen up to six bears on the porch of our guest house. And I tell family and friends before they come up here, realize this is part of the deal. And, you know, don’t be afraid. Just know how to deal with it.
HOGS
Richard – We talk about hogs because they are a huge problem up here on the mountain. Would you carry just walking around in case there’s a hog loose or no?
O’Neill – No. Okay. Cause we go for walks and I used to, and then I just didn’t want to mess with it. But well, it’s all if you don’t mind carrying, if it’s to me, it’s all right to shoot whatever hog you see. As many as you want. It’s an invasive species. It doesn’t belong here in the United States. It eats the same food that the deer and so many other animals eat that we need. We don’t need the hogs. And here’s something, this, this is not an exaggeration, but it’s perfect state. If you have a mated pair male and female. Okay. And in five months they have a litter if you will, and in five more months, all of those live and they have litters and all of those live and they have litters. Okay. In 15 months, those two become 108.
Richard – Good grief. And that’s just those two. So, they’re abundant up here. I asked John Cagle, who’s the Captain for Pickens and I said, John, what if I’m on the road, can I shoot one from the car? And he said, “Well, yeah, it may not be a great idea to shoot from a car, but he said, who’s going to say that you shouldn’t, you know, of course we’re on private roads up here, so that makes a difference. Maybe on monument you shouldn’t do that, but probably would anyway.”What would you do with the, with the animal once you’ve shot it?
O’Neill – Just kick it over in the woods. The other hog will eat it.
Richard – That’s, I have heard that if you can’t kill the hog by shooting it where you should, I guess that’d be either the head or the heart. If you just plug him in the side, if it penetrates that the other hogs will finish them off for you.
O’Neill – Yeah. Correct. So he’ll die and he’ll be eaten. Yeah. And that just shows you why we don’t need the hogs up here. They have no natural enemies except us.
Richard – How many days in the woods is the typical Georgian with a rifle?
O’Neill – He’s in there during deer season. Otherwise, why is he in the woods with a rifle? It’s deer season. Right? and regrettably if he’s in a deer stand and hogs come out where he is, he doesn’t want to mess up his deer hunt. So he probably won’t shoot them either. Yeah. So there’s no time. Rifle never makes any difference whatsoever. Okay. You have to be trapped.
Richard – So you can’t shoot one?
O’Neill – You can, sure. But I mean, it’s not going to affect the population, except for that one. these professional trappers trap 30 and 40 at a time, and they kill them all in there and then dispose of them. I think it’s a great idea. Put the traps up, just manage them. It takes a long time for the hogs to get trapped. I have been involved with the department of natural resources on many of their properties where they have gone in South Georgia, but it’s a huge wildlife management area in the territory of about 70,000 acres. The farms that were around it had a real hog problem. And those hogs that were in on the DNR property filtered their way all around and everywhere. they, in the corn, the hogs actually set up housekeeping inside the cornfield. They go in the middle of the cornfield and they sleep and eat there. And they destroy. They’ll destroy a 50 acre field.
Richard – They are a, a menace. Oh, absolutely. Um, do you know how they got their start up on the mountain? Uh, up here?
O’Neill – They got their start in the United States. They came over with the Spanish. Okay. When they, uh, explorers, they brought hogs with them for food.
Richard – I just had heard that a guy brought them up here from somewhere and they got loose and they came back and put he and his wife in the hospital. I don’t know how much of that is true, but that’s the story I had heard.
Thanks again O’Neill for your valuable insights! And for our readers, please keep checking for the second part of our interview, where we will cover hunting and guns. Find out O’Neill’s answer to our poll question on who would win in a dual between Dirty Harry (Inspector Callahan) and The Outlaw (Josey Wales). You may be surprised at his answer! This has been a real learning experience for me and I know our readers appreciate you sharing the afternoon with us. Bye for now!!!!
