Lets say your a landowner who often deals with pest animals like feral dogs, cats, various wild animals, or Canadian geese deciding to make your pond their permanent home and crapping zone. These animals can cause disease, kill domestic animals or prefered wildlife, or just be a general nuisance (ex. a family of skunks in your barn). Trapping or scaring them off usually only works to a point so to deal with them you have little choice but to shoot and kill them.
Now a neighbor who likes to blab and brag about doing this talked too much and the local game warden came out and issues a citation and took his gun. So the other neighbors have adopted a “shoot, shovel, shut up” approach where if you are forced to shoot a feral animal, you quickly bury it and dont tell anyone and for Petes sake dont blab it at the local cafe.
It’s not a new idea, it’s pretty much common sense to anyone who thinks that shooting a problem animal is the best fix.
Personally I wouldn’t kill animals just because they are annoying, I’d find another way to make my farm not appealing to them. The problem with killing invading animals is that you’ve just opened up a nice hole for new residents to move in - nature abhors a vacuum, after all.
It’s more time consuming and possible more expensive to make an area not attractive to whatever’s bothering you, but in the long run it’s much more effective.
Such as keeping feed in chew-proof containers & cleaning up dropped feed to discourage rats. Not leaving pet food out over night for the coons and possums to eat. Those two things should also help discourage roaming cats. Closing off areas where skunks might want to den. Getting dogs or noisemakers to make ponds unfriendly to Canada Geese (Thank you Telemark, that’s a pet peeve too )
Such as calling the animal control folks EVERY time you see a stray dog, and making sure your property has dog-proof perimeter fencing. Contact a TNR group if you have a feral cat problem, though a few cats around a farm are useful.
I think you can shoot stray cats and dogs if they are on your property. You could also call Animal Control, but that’s going to take a while and they may not treat a stray cat on a farm property as high priority.
Depending on the state, you may be able to shoot skunks, but poison is more problematic. If you shoot those fucking geese, it is illegal but I would never turn you in - I hate those things.
Even if it is legal to shoot feral cats and dogs in your state, I wouldn’t tell anyone - the various sanctimonious snots and PETA jackholes are going to be all up in your grill about shooting the cute little kitties instead of sending them to a four-star pet hotel for the remainder of their natural existence.
Exactly. When raccoons became problematic in our barn, I spoke with the PA Game Commission and got their OK to trap and relocate them. When A possibly rabid raccoon was caught, they picked it up and it tested positive. I received a one year approval to trap and destroy (or relocate; my call).
We were just talking about this last night as a way to deal with a mouse problem in our house as well as squirrels and other varmints in our neighborhood. So far the best solution was this. 1,000 FPS of 5.5mm will more then take care of most problems and your neighbors will never hear your shots.
Given some other threads lately, I almost expected this to be about burglars ------- which I have no doubt has been done in some rural areas. But that’s beside the point. Thank God its about critters.
As a last resort have I done this? Yes - but that’s after trying to work with/through the PA Game Commission and other less drastic methods. I wouldn’t recommend it as a first or routine choice.
In Houston, the semi-official preferred method of dealing with feral cats is trap, neuter, and release, due to the above noted habit of other animals to come in to fill the vacuum.
Hardly a new idea. In fact, in my neck of the woods, I’d say it’s a tired old meme.
Agree with saje that other methods can and should be employed before this one.
I recently had a Western Spotted Skunk (protected species) take up residence in my hen house. It occurred entirely as a result of my own carelessness. Not the skunk’s fault. She just took advantage of an opportunity I created to give her a warm, safe place to ride out the winter – free chicken dinners included! Shooting or poisoning her would have been the easy way out. Instead, I went to a bit of trouble and smoked her out, then fixed the hole that had worn through in the fencing in my chicken run which caused the problem in the first place. I hope the skunk sticks around (although not in my hen house). They’re wonderful for rodent control.
I’ll shoot a stray dog or a cougar if either is posing a threat to my livestock. I am within my rights to do that so long as the animal is posing an imminent threat of harm and it occurs on my property. No need to shut up about it. I don’t much care for Canada geese either, but my dogs keep them off my pond. If I didn’t have a dog, I’d get one. Passive aggressive methods with a bit of innovation can be very effective.
In most places it IS legal to shoot a dog that is endangering or harassing livestock or wildlife, but that can be tough to prove unless you’ve got shredded calves or sheep for evidence.
I know a couple of people who got tired of trying to convince neighbors that their darling doggie could ever kill anything (despite proof of dead chickens, mauled sheep, and horses run through a fence) and took the SSS route. As sad as it is, I think that was their only option since Animal Control is virtually non-existent in their part of the world, the neighbors wouldn’t contain the dogs and flatly refused to believe that the dogs running livestock in the field was anything more than just a Disney-movie-fun playtime.
Funny how a fence went up to contain the new dogs…
In my experience animal control will NOT come out or help with stray/feral cats. You can have a neighbor who is a animal hoarder and has dozens of semi-feral cats roaming around outdoors and they tell you sorry don’t with cats.
When Mrs. Gap lived in the mountains above San Bernardino, she had a bear problem on occasion. Once a black bear charged her car and dented it. She contacted Forest Service and the Ranger told her it was within her rights to kill it if it showed up again. She declined. Bears were frequent there, poaching the apple tree and so on, as were mountain lions, bobcats and various other critters. We took the attitude that we were guests in there area and practiced a lifestyle that minimized our contact by not making things overly attractive to them. If wild animals cause you or your property or livestock damage I feel you have the right to discourage them but outright killing them may be more harmful than good. As **Aspenglow **pointed out, these animals can be useful in a general sense if you take measures to keep them from being a problem.
Living in Western Canada all of my life only one step removed from agricultural folk, I can’t imagine farmers trying anything other than Shoot/Shovel/Shut up. I think they’d use the usual methods to keep pests out, but picking up the shotgun* and taking care of a dog or skunk that was causing problems - I don’t think that would be given a second thought. Farmers aren’t known for their love of government involvement in their lives, and they’re pretty pragmatic about killing animals.
*I would also be very surprised if there were no guns on a farm.
)