While the hot weather has slowed many anglers and hunters, I've had my hands full dealing with typical garden and lawn pests like rabbits, raccoons and groundhogs.

I have my personalized DMZ around my flower beds and garden areas that are no-crawl zones for destructive pests

Early in the garden season, I had to deal with deer and rabbits. Without exaggeration, I replanted my cabbages five times before efforts with smelly sprays, marigolds and a few extractions allowed the plants to take hold.

I did do battle with one persistent groundhog last year that was digging up the ground near the foundation of my house and eating the flowers.

He was a cagey fellow and foiled me time and time again until I stacked huge rocks over his excavation site and he moved on.

Currently, we have at least two huge woodchucks that stay away from the house and we honor their existence with a live-and-let-live arrangement. A couple of my buddies own farms and they adhere to the opposite philosophy because of injuries to livestock and equipment destruction caused by the holes they leave in the fields.

My friend was laughing about the raccoons that he's seen all over the corn cribs. In the past, he removed 30 such pests with the help of his trapping and hunting acquaintances.

Wildlife is a wonderful experience when the animals are in their native settings and don't cross paths with humans.

However, more and more wildlife habitat is being encroached upon by expanding suburbs, and animal interactions take place more frequently than people expect.

We should all know that everything has its place, and when you relocate living things, they will fill in areas — including your backyard, attic or garage — that best suit them.

The Pennsylvania Game Commission has specific regulations that don't allow you to disturb much of the wildlife.

Keeping baby animals, for example, is absolutely forbidden and will cause you to face a potential fine.

Removing a home pest generally results in a death sentence for the animal once you have captured them. You aren't permitted to relocate or transport wildlife to another geographic area. The reason primarily is due to the spread of diseases, such as distemper, rabies in small mammals and CWD in deer. Mange in bears, fox and coyotes can be spread by infected animals and their den sites, as well.

Hunters and trappers play a vital role in animal control efforts. Native species can pose problems for their specific locales. But when non-native species are introduced, the issues are greatly magnified.

The best examples are animals, insects and blights introduced through unchecked or accidental exposures.

Gypsy moths, ash borers and chestnut blight are examples of exposures that have caused significant financial losses and destruction to our native forests.

Starlings, English sparrows, Norway rats and gobies are examples of species introduced to our environment that have created many undesired issues.

A problem with feral hogs has been the newest issue for farmers and even suburbanites. They used to be an issue only in the southwest and south, but they have rapidly spread and are now entering Pennsylvania's borders.

A friend shot a feral hog outside his country home near Harrisville and you can imagine my surprise when he reported the size of the "hog" he had bagged with his varmint rifle.

A good sized groundhog weighs about 13 pounds, but his feral hog weighed about 200 pounds on the hoof.