We talk a lot about wild hogs being invasive, non-native species and whether or not that’s a justification for the extensive efforts to eradicate them from various locations.  However, as some of us may have seen in yesterday’s news, they’re not the only critters that have slipped the confines of domesticity and caused various conflicts.

For example, in last night’s news there was quite the uproar after reports that a couple of ranchers down in California’s Central Coast area (basically between Santa Barbara and Monterey) shot three feral zebras.  Yeah, you read that right… zebras… those striped, horse-like critters.

“What the heck were zebras doing running around out there,” you might ask?

Lots of people asked.

The answer provided through news reports is that they recently escaped from the grounds of the Hearst Castle near San Simeon.  When William Randolph Hearst built the place, he brought in a pretty wild assortment of critters to live on the grounds.  After his death, the property was finally conferred to the State of California to be managed as part of the State Park system.  Most of the wildlife was sold or donated to various zoos and organizations.  However, a handful of herbivores remained behind… namely zebras, a few goats, and some exotic sheep.  As to the fate of these, reports I’ve heard from locals vary.  Some say they were simply released to fend for themselves, while others say they were kept on the ranch’s 128 square miles of property.

Apparently at least some of the sheep and goats spread into the nearby hills and have reportedly been pretty well hunted out.  As invasive, non-native species, there is no restriction on shooting them if they are on your own property or on public land (where hunting is legal, of course). The meat is good, and the skins and horns are pretty cool trophies… and as a result, you won’t find many of them in the wild, despite persistent rumors.  There’s a lot of wilderness in those mountains, so who knows? 

As to the zebras…

If you read the newspaper reports, like this one in the LA Times or this one from the SF Chronicle, you’d get the impression that these animals are well confined behind the fences of the Hearst Castle grounds, and that the escape of these zebras is a rare occurrence.  The truth is, however, that the animals are out regularly and have been for years.  As one of the Cambria locals points out, they’re so common that tourists often stop to take pictures of them grazing. 

Steven Hearst, grandson of the newspaper mogul and muckraking master, expressed shock and disappointment at the “unneighborly” actions taken by the ranchers involved.  He suggested that the right thing to do would have been to contact the Hearst Castle park employees to have the animals rounded up.  Maybe he’s right.   What he’s not saying is that this is not an isolated incident, nor is it a recent problem.

Four or five years ago, I was talking to the folks at Legacy Arms about trying out one of their new big-bore, Puma lever-guns.  I thought it would be fun to take one of these guns out for a big boar hog or something, and did a little searching among my hunting and outfitting friends to see if they could find me a good opportunity.  I got a call back from one of them who had contacts in the Central Coast area, wondering if I’d be interested in using the rifle to shoot a zebra. 

Honestly, I had no intention of shooting a zebra (and still don’t), but my curiousity wouldn’t let me leave this be without some follow-up so I returned the call.  It turns out that the zebras, from the Hearst Castle herd, had been harassing a rancher’s show horses.  The rancher had been happy to just let the zebras be for years, but when they started to pose a threat to his stock, that relationship changed. 

Now what most people don’t know about zebras is that they’re tough as hell, they’re territorial, and they’re mean.  Besides the obvious kicking, which is bad enough, they also have a bite that makes a pit bull seem like a puppy.  All horses will fight, and can do serious damage to one another, but zebras take it to a whole new level.  They’re entirely capable of killing a horse, and have been known to do so. 

So while most casual observers just see these unusual and beautiful animals grazing the hills above the Pacific, the ranchers see them as something else entirely.  When you’re raising show horses, with values well into the tens of thousands of dollars, you can’t have them subject to attack by feral animals.  So the request/offer to come shoot a zebra was entirely genuine.  If I wouldn’t, they’d get someone else to do it.  While I totally understood why they wanted it done, I told them I couldn’t be the one to do it.

I never heard anything in the news after that call, so I don’t know if someone did it quietly under the tenets of Shoot-Shovel-Shut up (the three S’s), or if the zebras moved on and lived another day… maybe even until January 5, when two ranchers had apparently had enough. 

The point is, the animals were feral, not controlled, and apparently had at least some history of being a problem to the ranchers in the area.  I don’t know how much interaction there has been between the ranchers and the Hearst Castle management, nor does my knowledge of the local conflicts between livestock and zebras go beyond my personal experience.  But from what I do know so far, there’s a lot more to this than the emotionally driven claptrap you’re reading in the papers.  It’s certainly not a new thing, and the fact is, the ranchers did what they felt was the right thing to protect their stock.  If it had been my horses, I’d probably have done the same, sentiment be damned.

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