Ethics of Varmint Hunting

+1 on squirrel bein' good eats. That's why I hunt them. Not for pest control. They don't pester me. Besides that, they can be difficult to hunt; for me there's gratification in getting a good lot for a meal. Oh, and I'm still on my quest to have a black squirrel stuffed and put on a table in my basement.

When I'm going about my day through out town I can see a bazillion squirrel... for some reason when I'm walking through the woods with a .22 they know to hide. If only they'd let me hunt in town. :D

I also sell the tails for fishing lures. No real money in it, but at least it gets used for something.
 
I have rock squirrels here around the house. Full-sized, but sorta dark-gray in color, not quite black.

I've watched them kill baby quail.

So, I do some control of the total number to sorta keep a balance as I want the balance to be.

:), Art
 
"Yes, we humans continue to really **** up nature, don't we.":eek:

Leadcounsel-I realize this was most likely meant to be a generic "we" however I must disagree. There are literally THOUSANDS of men and women who devote all or a large portion of their free time to IMPROVING NATURE!

This includes myself and many others here in MI.
As far as your issue with eradicating vermin...
Last time I checked you were not the Almighty himself, and until this fact changes I will continue to do the following:

1- I will continue to improve the habitat quality of not only my own property, but that of any other willing participant, for the ultimate benefit of nature.

2- I will continue to kill (or if we want to be PC "euthanize") any disease carrying creature that enters my portion of this great country.

These things I feel are not only my privilege as a intelligent human being, but also my responsibility as a landowner and hunter. If we do not leave a quality environment for future generations...then we are no better than the sheeple we fight against. The day we stop trying to improve the quality of our land, air, water, and soil, is the day we begin to sink into "suburbanitism"

I do not pursue vermin to an drastic measure...however when an opportunity presents itself I do not let it pass either.:) IMM if the Good Lord presents one of these creatures to me, when a firearm is present...Then it is that creatures time to leave this world.;) It may make you happy to know that while I see these creatures often, the opportunity rarely shows.

FYI- I have always been taught this way and will always be this way. It has always served me well and gotten me where I needed to go. So, until someone shows me a better way, along the dirt road I'll be.

Sorry for the long post y'all I just had to get that off my chest.:D
 
When I'm going about my day through out town I can see a bazillion squirrel... for some reason when I'm walking through the woods with a .22 they know to hide. If only they'd let me hunt in town
Click to expand...

They must somehow be related to doves.
 
Killing varmints also brings economic pluses to the table as well. In a place i know of in SD there is a praire dog town that is so large, even with people hunting it EVERY DAY of the open season, it grows every year. Ive kept track of the people i see out there shooting and large number of them are from out of state. They are bringing valuble tourist dollars to a small town that has few attractions. Look at me for example. List of expenses hunting varmints for one year (2005)

ammuntion complete and reloading compontes- about 1200$
license- $7.50
gas- $150
reapirs to rifle- $175
Upgrades and accesories- $150

So lets add that up. I added $1682.50 to the economy of a small town that it otherwise woudnt have had if i wasnt hunting varmits.

SW
 
Hey Art glad to hear I'm not the only one who hasn't seen an animal with a broken leg due to prarie dog holes. My father has lost more cattle to hunters during Pronghorn season than anything another animal has caused. He owns a ranch in eastern Colorado and whe have quite an infestation of the little critters at times and we have never lost one animal to a broken leg caused by prarie dog mounds. Most animals break legs when they are fighting for dominance in the herd this happens more with bulls than cows but their is times when the old herd cow will establish her presence.
 
Sorry to drag this up again, but I just had to tell you all about the horse I had as a kid. He was named Sir Cam (because his mom was named Cammie and I was 6, Sir Cam made sense), He was great, and he was my pal. Anyways, in the spring of his third year he put a foot down a wood chuck hole while running around in one of our fields. The vet said the leg was shattered, and we should put him down. This was a big Michigan woodchuck hole; I don't know how they compare to P-dog holes.

Point being, it may not be common but livestock can put a leg in a varmint hole. I can't say I hold any grudge against gophers, but it pretty much was the worst thing I had happen as a youngster.
 
Varmit killing a must

Come on ya'll, I thought I found a web site with some common sense on hunting and such. I have been hunting ever since I was knee high to a grass hopper and have always been taught to kill and eat your game BUT the other time to kill is for protection or to protect your land from land scavengers or varmits that act as such. That includes Groundhogs and Opossums, which, is fixed right both are very tasty, especially the younguns....

The others, like fox ,coyote or even a bobcat that are not neccessarilly good for hides or anything like that anymore are varmits that can tear up some property and livestock...Heck,My mother-in -law lives in Akron, OH and she has opossums, raccoons, groundhogs and squirrels tearing up her property and there isn't much she can do because they belong to the city and if they can't or won't catch them she just has to deal with them, while it cost her a fortune to maintain her property and house.

So we have to have population control someway somehow, like the report I saw a few years ago, if you keep catching and releasing fish back into the same pond and never take any out there will be more fish and less food and some will die earlier and others will remain smaller and catching bigger fish will
deminish.......And on the surface it just becomes more hazardous, dangerous and expensive for humans to exist with an over populated wildlife.

Besides, a lot of the wild are cute and great on small little sandwiches.......:D
 
Given the "don't shoot it unless you'll eat it" approach, my next question is... what differentiates a bullet through the heart of a groundhog from...

the sole of a boot on an ant,
a flyswatter on a fly,
a phonebook on a spider,
Raid on bees,
and the Orkin Man on the friends in your walls and foundation...
 
did I mention groundhogs getting under building foundations and causing them to collapse?I shot groundhogs for a farmer that had several buildings, all of which were heavily infested with them.Id drive back between the buildings and see at least 10 scatter in all directions.the buildings were still up but sloping from the foundation sinking with all the dens.shot 73 there that summer and still couldnt get all of them.

many farmers round here that plant beans really hate groundhogs.a groundhog can destroy an entire acre in 1 season if left unchecked.the dens wreck havoc on everthing that doesnt see them and steps into them,not to mention the problems groundhogs also cause when they get into the drainage tile and cause that to collapse from their scratching and digging.Ive had groundhogs get into the basement of an old 2 story country home with a dirt floor,what a mess.

I have had a summer job with one farmer that had a bad problem with groundhogs..paid me 5 bucks each,was the best summer job I had as a kid.
 
When I was younger, my Grandpa had a "ground squirrel" (or some other earthen varmit) problem... they were somehow damaging flower beds and digging around the foundation of his house. The final straw was when they, looking for food, chewed a hole through a styrofoam beer cooler that was in his garage... not sure if the cooler was of sentimental value or not, but it ignited a small war.

He went to True Value hardware, snagged some traps, and captured several specimens quickly. He didn't have it in him to whack them over the head with a hammer, didn't wan't to shoot them (maybe no suiteable guns?), and certainly didn't want to release them into the wild to migrate to someone elses property.

So he put the traps in a large trash bag, tied it to the exhaust pipe of his van, fired it up and revved the engine a few times.

During the execution there was a brief (less than a second or two) period of thrashing, then silence.

I wouldn't classify this as 'hunting' but I am curious to know if it falls under the umbrella of questionable ethics.

I love threads like this.
 
adephue, my first priority is to protect my property. It doesn't matter if it's rats in feedbins or chewing on electric-wire insulation, or digging under foundations.

Prairie dogs are about like fire ants with fur. The mounds are humps of dirt bereft of grass. If you're in the cow business, that's reduced income. And unmolested, a prairie dog pair can produce two or three female pups which can breed within two months. The math of this geometric progression is left as an exercise for the student. Suffice to say that were it not for what predators do exist, we'd be bum deep in PD poop.

I'm not running livestock, so coyotes and bobcats don't impact on me--but for one thing: I like to eat quail; so do they. I resolve this conflict to a rather casual extent, but in my favor. I like to see the occasional bobcat and I like to listen to yodel dogs in the moonlight, but there's a balance.

There is a balance that suits your economic needs and/or aesthetic needs. Only by living on the land and watching critters can you know the approximate numbers that work out right.

I just figure I'm a predator, an omnivore, and the stud-hoss of the local food chain. Only my opinion counts when I'm in my territory. The pitiful PETA people ain't payin' my taxes to the school district for me. Outsiders' opinions are irrelevant to anything, anyway.

That's probably the biggest part of the problems of today, anyhow: Yeah, everybody has the right to have an opinion. Nowhere is it written that all these opinions have meaning, relevancy, or the value of a teaspoon of warm spit.

:), Art
 
First Freedom,
You call that hazing/flaming? You ought to go to a linux forum and go on about the benefits of windowsXP. Then, you'll see real hazing. Those people are, for the most part, extremely liberal, too.

We have pecan trees in my yard. Every 2 years, the pecans drop and we end up with a rat problem. Instead of using poison, like most of liberal suburbia would, I sit out back with a .22 revolver and cb's. I enjoy blowing their nasty little heads off and they don't go out and poison poor little coyotes like the one in NYC, or hawks or owls or bald eagles, etc.... Obviously, I don't eat rat . Is this unethical? Why, because it's a rat?? Or because I enjoy it? Rats are pretty smart. After you pop a couple, the rest will look at where you were sitting before coming out. Kind of like squirrels, but smaller. I hear it tastes like chicken but there are some places I just won't eat at.

I've used linux since 1999. The clowns getting flamed on linux forums usually deserve it, just like someone else I won't mention. If anyone is interested in using a free, secure, well supported by forums like this one, operating system, feel free to PM me. All it takes is good bandwidth, an old computer, and a little bit of time.

I liked that turn of phrase, too, btw. :D
 
That's probably the biggest part of the problems of today, anyhow: Yeah, everybody has the right to have an opinion. Nowhere is it written that all these opinions have meaning, relevancy, or the value of a teaspoon of warm spit.
Click to expand...

+1 For that.:D

LC-Why do you put yourself in these conversations if you don't want or respect the views being given?

I spent my weekend trying to sight in my .177 only to figure out some 30 shots and adjustments into the process that someone ruined the scope.:( For a gun that didn't come with a rear iron sight this is extremely inconvenient.:mad: Needless to say, the rats with wings(blackbirds, crows, etc.) are gaining in numbers in my absence.:barf:

Oh well, the war rages on...:rolleyes:
 
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