Feral Dogs

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OkieGentleman

New member
I read an article a number of years ago about hunting feral dogs in the SE part of the states. Has anyone here ever done that. I sounded like a heck of a hunt. The author said once the action started in got nasty fast as the dogs had no fear of man and would come straight at you as a group.
 
A pack of feral dogs can be no joking matter. They will attack a target of opportunity, be it goat, deer, calf or human.

I've never heard of them continuing an attack if fired upon.

Feral dogs and cats are the only animals where I am not too concerned about a clean kill or ethics. I prefer a semi-auto to down as many as I can, and do a coup de grace on the wounded.

Baiting and calling sometimes works.

FWIW, Art
 
Art wrote: I've never heard of them continuing an attack if fired upon.

I've heard a couple of tales about such, but don't know how reliable the reports were.

Two suggestions, though--
1. Don't hunt them alone.
2. Carry a reliable sidearm.

Best of luck, and please, give us an after-action report.

Johnny

MOLON LABE!
 
Please! somebody tell me where I can hunt these Feral Dogs?I shot a Feral cat two yrs ago in SD. Miss Tabby was all alone in the middel of nowere.7.62X39 HP out of a SKS, can really get them up and dancing.
 
Well,I sure catch a lot of feral dogs in my traps,but I have to release them here in Georgia.I believe they are more damage to our native game then any coon or fox.
 
In Germany a hunter is required to shoot any feral cats he sees in the woods or more than about 100 meters from the nearest house. If the authorities find out the hunter saw a cat and did not shoot it he can lose his licsense, and in Germany it may have taken you several years to get that licsense.
 
There have been packs of the dogs here. They usually run 5 to 7 or so in the pack. We had a pack a few years ago on some of our land and you could FORGET about rabbit hunting. They had aboput cleaned them out. The 22-250 worked wonders on the dogs after the sugar cane was harvested. You could see for miles and they had no place to hide.
There used to be a feral cat problem in 2 places where there were old garbage dumps that had been close. They ain't there any more :D.
 
PDshooter, feral dog-packs are sorta "where you find them". They range throughout the country, just as do coyotes.

Pawcatch, I guess you've heard of "Shoot, shovel and shutup."? Now you understand why.

OkieGentleman, Wisconsin had a law on its books which required hunters to kill feral housecats. Dunno if it's still on the books, but in today's PC world I'm sure it's not enforced.

A study in Wisconsin a few years back concluded that a feral housecat will kill up to 100 songbirds a year. It estimated a population in Wisconsin of as many as one million feral/rural housecats. Y'all do the math.

Some years ago, a friend of mine just outside Georgetown, Texas, killed some dogs which were killing his sheep. They all had collars; one had the owner's name and phone number with the current rabies tag. He called the owner and asked if he had a collie/shepherd-looking dog. "Yes." "He's out here at my place; come get him." My friend drove the owner out to the scene of dead dogs and dead sheep. "Aw, MY dog wouldn't do THAT!" Yeah, right...

:), Art
 
I've never gone looking for them, but the order of the day when deer hunting in GA was to shoot any dog that is in the woods where we were. None of them belonged there (5000 acres of prime deer, turkey and quail hunting), so none of them were spared. Never had a pack come after us, but then, we were up in stands.

One of my buddies used to bait them on cattle farms during calving season and use shotguns as backup when they would get in too close for comfort.

Feral cats have been eliminated where I deer and turkey hunt and the quail are making a comeback as a result. Now if we can just get cut down on the number of coyotes and foxes. Recently moved to a little farm and found more than enough feral cats to eliminate my barn rodents, so I have taken to twilight target practice over various and sundry leftovers fom squirrel (and cat) shooting. It's amazing how many of them are still around. I have to eliminate them before I set up my jenny pens for the pen-raised quail for bird-dog training. I figure our place will have a standing rule like my great-grandfather's did: "Don't touch my blacksnakes or my bird-dogs. Anything else on the farm is fine for shooting as long as it's in season. Or it's a cat." He never had a rodent problem and the quail population was quite prolific. Of course he had lots of kids, grandkids, and great grands to take care of the predators.

ERRainman
 
Here in Ohio (Athens & Morgan county)even the game wardens tell you to shoot wild dogs. I had run into a pack of them a few years back and to be honest I didn't know what to do, if anything. Later that day I talked to a game warden that was out in the field. He said they are a taget of opportunity. If you see them kill them. As said above, they kill anything that they can catch.

As for waiting for a clean killing shot. I always try to kill an animal as humane as possible. Even wild dog don't deserve to suffer when it's time to go.
 
When I was a teenager growing up in Ohio my best friend and I used to spend most of our free time at the local sportsmans club that both our fathers belonged to. There was always work to be done, and usually, when the older guys were working, they were armed for dogs. You would be doing something (dragging roads, roofing the clubhouse....) and a deer would run across a field. Everyone would lock and load. Within 10-15 seconds a pack of dogs would be right behind them with a beagle in the lead with it's nose to the trail. The other dogs just followed him. I saw my friend make one of the greatest field shots I have ever seen. We were working on a tractor and a deer ran across a field between 150 and 200 yards away. The guy we were with said; George, get my rifle and get ready (A Browning BAR in .30-06). George got in a sitting position and here comes two dogs in hot pursuit at a dead run. George fired two shots and piled up both dogs DRT. I was bowhunting from a tree stand the same year. I got in my stand long before daylight. The stand was about 15 yards from a well used trail. In the darkness I could hear a pack of dogs on the trail far off to my left. Over about a half hour they worked their way clockwise until they were on my right. In the first hours of daylight they came right down the trail in front of my stand with the beagle in the lead. I put a broadhead right behind his front shoulder.
Note: I am possibly the biggest dog lover alive today, and don't know if I could shoot a dog like that now. If it was loose in the woods and obviously aggressive towards me, that is a different story; I wouldn't hesitate to defend myself. I realize all the implications of wild dogs, but I am growing soft in my middle age.
 
Near one of the closed and covered over garbage dumps I mentioned in an earlier post in this thread, was our rifle range. It was simply an oilfield board road but back in to the swamp at the end of which we had dumped several loads of dirt for a backstop. We had a portable bench that fit in the back of a pickup and it was carried back and forth whenever we used it. We discovered that if the wind was calm and no one but the shooter was in the truck, on the shooting bench it was fairly sturdy, with little if any movement. Each Sunday that we met and shot whoevers job it was to carry the bench ALWAYS passed by the old gargage dump first. :D :D. Best shot I ever made was a huge old tomcat at 450 yards, with my old 22-250 (not the one I have now). Problem was I bragged on that shot, and one of the men got ahold of a blackcat decal and stuck it on the side of my old truck and painted a small X under it :D. Kinda like kills for a fighter pilot. Well after a few years I had more X's than Dick Bong had on his Lightining.
There was 7 or 8 of us that asked permission from a landowner, that we knew, who lived near another closed and covered old city dump, to make a rabbit hunt on his land aided by beagles. He said "Of course you can but the damn feral cats have killed all the rabbits. You can try but in return for letting y'all hunt you have to try to kill any cats y'all see." It's amazing how many loads of HP #6's it takes to anchor a full grown cat. I think the final score was 12 cats and no rabbits.
 
Wild dogs will damn sure keep coming at you after you start shooting.

Happened to me twice.

The first time I was at home when my neighbor started blasting. He raised Barbados sheep and a pack attacked his sheep.

I grabbed my .22 full of stingers and went out the front door.

He had dropped 5 dogs with his 12 Gauge shotgun and it had jammed on him.

This one BIG dog got back up and charged right for him, it was some sort of St. Bernard cross from the looks of it.

So I emptied my .22 auto in to the sucker putting the last 3 into his head at close range just to be sure that it stayed down for good this time. I put 18 rounds in to him, tougher to kill than you would expect.

Something to know #6 shot at about 30 yards will NOT for sure kill a dog.

The second time I was rabbit hunting on the prairie with my brother and about 10 dogs decided we were prey. We dropped 2 right away and tagged another 2 that ran off. The other 6 just kind of stood there bleeding. Then one, I assume the pack leader, charged right at me. About another 5 rounds in to him and he went down. We dropped all but one of the others just standing there before we needed to reload. That one last dog went all submissive on us and rolled over on its back like he was our pet! We finished him off because he was gut shot and would die anyway. Didn't find the others maybe they were just scared off and went home.

Lessons learned:

WILD DOGS ARE HIGHLY UNPREDICTABLE!

Sometimes they can be tougher to drop than you would expect.

Dogs behave completely different in a pack than they do as individuals.
 
The only thing worse than feral dogs and cats are feral humans!

I've worked in the woods for 25 years and the only thing that has ever treed me was 4 feral dogs. Kept me there for almost an hour. That was 12 years ago and I have never gone into the wood unarmed since.

Feral cats are God's way of providing targets.:D
 
Fellows, I bet that PETA is just loving this post!! :D :D :D! But as Rhett said to Scarlett ....... frankly my dear (PETA) I do not give a damn! :D
 
Nobody ever accused PETA people of having the first clue about wildlife and what actually goes on in the boonies. They live by touchy-feely emotions, without regard for any rational way of looking at anything. If they could actually think, they'd be dangerous.

They don't have productive day-jobs, either. As a PETA person slides down the bannister of life, I'd like to be remembered as a razor blade in his career.

:), Art
 
I get your drift Art. There was another thread recently, where I posted about a run-in I had with them. The main branch of the parish (thats county to you non Cajuns :)) library, loans rods and reels to kids, as they would a book. Kids that are not lucky enough to own their own use the hell out of them during the summer. They fish the hell out of the bayous and ponds that they can reach on their bikes. Keeps em out of trouble and off the streets. Well, PETA got wind of it and staged a big demonstration in front of the library. They had to import people from up north to do it as PETA had little support here. They even had some idiot dressed up like a fish. I was taking my daughter(she will be 9 next month)to the library for books, and we got caught up in it. They tried to give me some papers and of course I refused them. I (nicely) informed her that I fish and could neither support nor understand their idiotic way of thinking. She kind of got huffed up and said they were gonna ruin our fishing. I asked how and she said they were even going to hire scuba divers to scare the fish away from our hooks! I said that ought to be interesting due to the fact that all of us Cajuns fish with dynamite. I told her that better be one tough diver! She came unglued!! Needless to say their objections did not stop the library from loaning, or the kids from using the fishing equipment. I think it actually hurt them here. Hell EVERYONE fishes here and when the general population saw what was happening PETA lost what very little support the had to begin with. I mean trying to keep underprivlidged kids from fishing?
 
Note that all animal rightists get very emotional over the fate of one or of a few animals, yet give no thought whatsoever to the good of a species.

They are uninterested in learning the meaning of "carrying capacity" of an ecosystem, and what that entails for various users of the system. Thus, an artificial over-population of deer and the ensuing starvation is of no importance, compared to the "evils of hunting", etc.

They have twisted the meaning of "cruelty" away from the rational meaning, such as beating or starving or over-working a domestic animal. The problem for folks like us is that a large percentage of city dwellers know no more about wildlife than do the PETApeople, and "preventing cruelty" sounds just really, really good...

Art
 
Anyone who has spent time in the far north knows the damage dog packs can do. More than one native community has quietly gone out and culled them.

In my more civilized rural surroundings dog packs form from time to time. My rule is that a dog with a collar and looks reasonably well fed is allowed to pass through unmolested providing it is just passing through. No collar, thin, aggressive or unkempt is a different matter.
 
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