I hunt, fish and trap.
I don’t have a lot of feelings about it anymore like I did when I was a child.
We had a cat once that had an injured rear foot. Maggots had gotten into the wound and were eating the flesh. I squeezed out as many maggots as I could,the cat didn’t cooperate at all.
The next time I saw the cat the maggots had eaten half way to its thigh.
I again squeezed out as many as I could,put the maggots in a cup of kerosene and poured the rest on the wound. Magots exited quickly.
The next time I saw the cat the maggots had eaten half way up its thigh.I shot the cat.Kinda felt a little sad but I had done all I could.
I put down one of my pet guinea pigs myself when I was a teenager. The piggy was 6 years old and getting weak; a vet told us its muscles were wasting away and there was nothing he could do. A few days later I found it lying on the floor (we let the guinea pigs run around a bit) and it was obvious that it was dying. It was late in the evening and I wasn’t sure if there would even be a vet’s office open at that time; I knew that even if there was nothing could be done and I also knew that I couldn’t stand to watch it suffer for several hours. I put it on my lap and then held a sweatshirt over its face so that it couldn’t breathe. It died in a few seconds. I was sad that my pet was gone, but I felt that I did what I had to and I’ve never had any remorse over it.
When I was about 5, I was at my grandparents house and we were having a frog invasion. They were everywhere. Grandpa was burning the garbage in a can out back and I picked up a frog, walked over and tossed in in. Then I stood there waiting for it to jump back out. I guess I thought it would jump out going “Ouch, Ouch!!” or something.
So I just stood there for the longest. Waiting.
…
Grandma comes out. Asks me what I’m doing. I tell her.
BOY, I never heard the end of that. :smack:
As I got older, I’ve killed many mice. Usually while screaming, jumping and stamping uncontrollably.
I’ve shot rats with a rifle. They used to walk throught our apartment at nice, and I was just paralized with fear. They were the size of cats!
I have fished and cleaned and eaten them since I was little. With no remorse at all.
Once, after my husband bought an air rifle, he went out into a field to target pratice, and shot a dove. Unfortunately (for the bird I guess) he only injured it. Our completely untrained Labrador cross breed went and fetched it. Laid it on the ground in front of him and, in a doggy way, smiled.
My husband just looked at the suffering bird. “You shot it, you eat it” says I.
“But it’s not dead!” he says
So he tries to finish the poor thing off, riccocheting stupid little bb’s off its apparently rock hard head.
I wouldn’t let him leave it there to suffer, and he couldn’t kill it.
I picked it up and twisted it’s little neck.
I felt so terrible. I still do. I wish I could have made him eat it, then at least it wouldn’t have been such a waste. He didnt’ do it anymore though. :rolleyes:
Oh, OK.
Did feel as though your first post was misleading; glad you clarified so I could retract my unnecessarily nasty comment.
Sorry
I was just having a discussion yesterday about how almost all Americans of 100 years ago would have seen a dead animal by the time they were 10, be it a food animal or a human animal, and likely even be there to see it die (and we are not talking road kill either!). But nowadays a city dweller might never see anything dead (and not wrapped in plastic) until they were well into their 20s or 30s.
The reason it came up was I had to kill yet another rabbit. Our town is infested with rabbits and ground squirrels. Our yard, garden, concrete patio, nothing was immune to their nibbling and tunneling. Heck they even eat the raspberry canes, thorns and all! So when my brother offered us a friendly farm cat… we took it. Now letting your cat out unattended to roam the neighborhood is against city code in most places in the US, as it is here. Yes, I am breaking the law by bringing in a hired killer to rub out our rabbits.
Little did I know that our cat was not a hit man, but a torturer. My children have well learned how a rabbit screams in mortal terror. He catches the bunnies, birds, mice, moles, voles, shrews, trout my neighbors brought back from Canada, and groundsquirrels, wounds them, then plays a game of catch and release. When we notice him playing “The Game”, I usually go out and put the animal out of it’s misery. After distracting our girls from the cute little baby bunny, POP he goes into a plastic sack and WHACK he goes against a tree. The first few times, it made me sick to my stomach. But after 15 or 20, you kind of get numb to it. I will admit that when the cat sneaks out at night, and I hear a rabbit scream at 3 am, I let the Game play out to it’s natural conclusion. We try to clean up the 1/2 eaten rabbit before the girls notice.
There are still rabbits are still in our yard, but at least now we can grow a few flowers. And when my neighbors found a rabbit with broken legs in their yard, they immediately thought “Hey! I’ll bet BoringDad could off this rabbit for us!” So now I have joined my cat as the neighborhood hit man. I have become a coldhearted killer of cute fuzzy animals. My arm is strong for tree whacking tiny bunnies, and my axe is sharp for the larger rabbits. I feel like a real pioneer of the American midwest.
Oh, and my oldest girl at 6 seems to be developing a fondness for fishing. Soon perhaps I can slaughter many bluegill. I second the post early in this thread that bluegills are the tastiest fish on the planet.
But mercy killing my old sick pet rat? Blubbered like a baby doing that several years ago.
I’ve been known to kill a mouse or two.
I didn’t feel sorry for them at all. Little buggers.
I did feel bad about the possum I ran over once, but it seemed to escape under its own steam. I hope it survived, but a 2Kg possum vs a V6 Ford Falcon is not likely to survive.
Max.
I’ve been fishing since I was a little boy. I don’t feel any remorse. My purpose was to eat fish. I don’t sport-fish; I wouldn’t go out fishing for sharks.
I slaughtered a goose once. Somebody held it, and I chopped its head off. Spooky. I was really nervous about it, and the axe wasn’t sharp, so it took two chops. The goose stupidly made the process easier by stretching its neck out in alarm once it was picked up.
We had planned to eat the goose, and we ate it.
I would not choose the slaughtering of animals for food as a profession, but if I had to do it I would. The point is that it’s for food. I eat beef, pork, fish, shellfish, and poultry, so I’m ethically enjoined to consider the life and death of those animals.
I oppose hunting that is not for food.
I have killed or helped to kill many animals, mostly birds. I grew up in the country, and we raised a lot of food animals. So, I had a hand in killing countless chickens, turkeys, geese, rabbits, and goats. No regrets or bad feelings or anything; to me, it was basically harvesting a crop. When I told my girlfriend about it, she was shocked. “You killed your pets?” Um, no, honey, they weren’t pets…
And of course there were the fish. Of course, when it comes to fish, she’s more brutal than I; I can’t bring myself to stick a hook through a minnow’s eye.
I grew up on a farm where my father killed animals regularly. Mostly cows (emergency slaughter) and kittens (this was before the pill). The only time I had mixed feelings about it was when he killed our hens and my mother cooked one for dinner. But it tasted great.
Not sure if I’ve actually killed anything myself (besides birds, mice, frogs, snakes), not for many years now anyway, though some time ago I was about to kill a roe deer who had been hit by a car. As I was about to use the knife it died on its own.
I have never felt bad about putting animals to death; on the other hand nothing infuriates me more han witnessing somebody mistreating or being cruel to animals (I have a dog). And ref the above posts, americans are probably the most animal-caring people I have met.
However, drowning, burning or choking animals are not a good way to kill them. It’s faster, and much more painless, to knock its head against a stone or a tree. Breaks the neck instantly.
I stepped on a fledgling robin once, purely by accident. I was trucking down the sidewalk, nose buried in a book, when I felt something solid, yet soft, underneath my shoe. I figured it was mulch or something and didn’t turn around until I heard the agonized screams.
I guess he’d fallen out of the nest or something, 'cos he was still all grey and fuzzy. He wasn’t alive for long - by the time I got back to where he was (and had chased away the very angry mother) he was dead.
Fortunately I was at my front door, so I picked him up with a dustpan and buried him out in the back yard. Felt horrible for about a week afterward, and I still get a twinge when I think about it ten years later.
Never hunted, and fished occasionally when I was a lad, but if I were to do it now it would be for food. Especially if I get onea’ them thar halibuts. Mmmmm!
Good on ya, mate!
Those buggers are right dangerous when they get behind the wheel!
well, i can probably draw all the anti-animal-killing ire off of everyone else here.
i was an active foxhunter for over 20 years. while my hand never actively did the deed, i’m sure all the rabid PETA types will be foaming at the mouth at the mere thought of hunting a wild animal using a pack of hounds. just for perspective, however, in the entire time that i’ve ridden to hounds, i’ve been present for 3, MAYBE 4 kills in that period. the terrain in the U.S. (well, at least in Virginia) gives the odds to the fox. plus the American practice doesn’t include stopping up earths (dens), so the fox has a good chance of escaping underground if it doesn’t manage to lose the hounds through cunning alone.
additional perspective: we have 3 stuffed foxes in our home. all of them were road kills that we found after the fact. you’ll find scores more foxes dead alongside the roads than foxhunting will EVER account for, at its most ardent. and the song of a pack in full cry is some of the most spine-tingling music that man will ever encounter.
as for my personal culpability – it runs mostly to bugs, with maybe a squirrel and a bird via car (i’m a pretty careful driver; the only time i ever hit a dog, i managed to only break a leg (thank you God) and made sure we found the owner so he could be taken to the vet). but my main claim to fame was rat hunting at the barn. the UL running around at the time was that you could catch one by the tail and smack it against something (wall, ground) hard enough to kill it. (they were very fond of sitting on the edges of the horses’ feed bins, grabbing anything they could find while simultaneously presenting a big fat rodent ass to the world.) well, by gum i DID manage to sneak up and get one by the tail one day, and gave it a good swing. unfortunately, it seemed to only be stunned, rather than dead. i wound up beating it to death with a grooming tool.
the next hunt wasn’t nearly as gratifying. sneaking up on rat? check. grabbing by tail? check. pulling and swinging? ummmmmm… SOMEthing came with me, but the rat scuttled away. when i looked at my hand, i discovered i’d managed to pull its tail off. and it had, through the power of inertia (pull momentum / body resistance = recoil power) wrapped itself around my hand. :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: <insert barfy smilie HERE >
rather took the edge off my desire to do anymore rat hunting after that. but i always wondered, whenever i’d find one drowned in my pony’s waterbucket, just what level of involvement he might have had…
You are probably right.
I have had to kill a number of disabeled birds and mice. What seems to work good for me is to wang them with a big shovel. Like swinging and axe, only use a spade or coal shovel. Umm, smash them. Gotta be quick.
In this thread from last fall I tell my hunting story.
[Lobsang=quote]America, with it’s bizarre gun culture
[/quote]
Emphasis mine. Just a suggestion, but you might want to stop while you’re still ahead and this thread gets hijacked. 