Off Limit Game

B

Bella

New member
I am a hunter and I ask that this thread doesn't become a hunter bashing hunter thread. We get enough of that from the PETA crowd.

My favorite type of hunting is small game and upland game. I enjoy grabbing my shotgun and my dog and head out to field or desert.

I have hunted big.game on occasion. In fact I hope to bag a pronghorn if I ever draw.a tag.

I have tried waterfowl hunting, but its not my cup of tea. First of all I don't like the taste of duck or goose flesh. Secondly I find ideal duck hunting weather to be more ideal for sleeping in.

Now I won't hunt for coyotes or wolves. They are too dog like. I realize they are not domestic dogs. I am also aware that in are causing problems in certain parts of the country. If you hunt them I have no problem with it, you even get my blessing for helping control a nuisance animal. Now if any sort of canine were to attack me or my dog, I won't hesitate one second to shoot.

Are there any game.animals, that for.whatever reason, you could never shoot?
 
Most are protected anyway, but I won't kill song birds, wood peckers, or birds of prey. (Scavengers like crows and magpies are fair game, if they're a nuisance.)

I get extremely irritated when I see people do it, or come across evidence of such.


There are three categories for me:
1. Food.
2. Nuisance animals.
3. Animals you leave alone.

If I will eat it, it's food and I'll kill it. (Even Cougar, Bobcat, and Bear are in this category. If I tag one, I'm going to eat what I can.)
If it's a nuisance (and legal), I'll kill it. (Invasive species like Eurasian Collared Doves are in this category. They are perfectly edible, but I just let them rot.)
If it doesn't fall into one of the above categories, I leave it alone.
 
I agree 100% with FrankenMauser. Basically if it's food or a pest, I have no problem shooting them.

The real problem is they all seem to like my yard and I'm just enough inside the city line where shooting is a no no. So far a few of my neighbors have shot pests with .22 LR and no one has said anything but I've yet to try it...

Tony
 
First,this is about my own preference,no intent to impose on anyone else.

Critters that might be very old.Sturgeon and snapping turtles come to mind.

I know,you don't shoot those,but they come to mind.
 
I had some sturgeon once, I won't again so you won't find me fishing for them. That's off topic here anyway...

No snappers here but from what I've heard they're a lot of trouble for a little meat. I'd pass unless one was a pest on my land.

I suppose it's a matter of taste. Anyway so long as it's not a protected critter, it's fair game...

Tony
 
I have made a living climbing trees for well over 30 years. To me, tree squirrels are kindred spirits. For me to eat one would have to be a matter of survival. Even then I would feel like it was cannibalism. Coyotes have been my allies in the past. Once in eastern Kansas my crop of cantalopes was being devastated by rabbits; I couldn't kill enough of them to make a difference. Just when it looked hopeless, an itinerant band of coyotes moved in and ended the problem within a week or two at most. If coyotes were raiding the chickens, I could see doing something about it. Build a better hen house first. Those song-dogs did me a big favor and I haven't forgotten it.
 
Like Hartcreek, I have no desire to ever kill a mountain lion. Bobcats are on the table because of the damage they can do to a turkey population. I don't think I'd be into hunting much of the traditional African "big game" but the medium sized game would be a hoot (not that I could ever afford such a trip).

I guess about the only thing I would absolutely refuse to hunt in the US is the sandhill crane. I just don't see the sport in that. There are only a few places in the US where they are hunted anyway.
 
Of course raptors are not game animals, but even if they were, could not shoot them. I like songbirds too and would not shoot them either, but since cats take them, feral cats are fair game. In fact in Colorado at one point, DOW officers were encouraging hunters to shoot feral cats if seen while hunting. House cats are about equivalent to prairie dogs to me.

I stopped duck hunting since they taste like pond scum around here, but they are not "off-limits" to me. I guess if they are legal to take, I can't see any game animal truly being "off limits" under the right conditions, even though there are several I choose not to hunt.
 
If it is legal to shoot it I will hunt and shoot it. Doesn't much matter to me. Ducks, geese, rabbits, squirrels, deer, wild pigs and other game all go to the table.

fox, raccoon, yotes, crows, groundhogs and the other stuff like that will be hunted when the opportunity arises. Need to control the population of the nuisance critters too.

I have even hunted a farm where the owner told my buddy and I to shoot every cat we saw. People dumping them on his property and they were causing issues around his barn/cows.
 
No Sir !!!

Now then, you did say "game" animals and even though I don't shoot some, I would not hesitate to shoot them, in the future, for whatever reason. Some I shoot to eat and others I shoot as a conservation effort. Given all that, I don't consider a cat to be a game animal and they are safe, in my back yard. In the field, is a different situation. That is when I go into my shoot, shovel and shut-up mode. .... ;)

Be Safe !!!
 
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I don't consider a cat to be a game animal and they safe, in my back yard. In the field, is a different situation. That is when I go into my shoot, shovel and shut-up mode. ....
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Feral cats are fair game around here and legal to shoot. No SSS needed. If it were illegal, I would abstain, like any other hunting violation and would suggest others do the same. While I have no problem hunting any game animal where legal within it's seasons, there are many I just don't prefer to hunt. I used to hunt geese in the fields across the road for years and always found some way to use the meat. Just ain't worth the effort anymore, especially when there's other tastier options out there. Another local hunter that hunts geese got busted for giving his geese away to folks that do like to eat them. Almost got the folks he gave the geese to busted also. Apparently, possessing a wild goose carcass without a license or the proper stamps is a Federal offense. So is shooting more than your possession limit, and if the folks you gave the geese to still have them in their freezer, they still count against your possession limit.

Most of what I don't hunt is like geese. Since I don't enjoy eating them, I have given up hunting them for other quarry. Just a matter of priorities and time to hunt. Predators and furbearers that are hunted for reasons other than eating are exceptions.
 
If its a game animal and legal then I don't have any qualms about killing it in general. However many a game animal has "escaped" me because I simply didn't feel like killing it. Maybe I was just simply enjoying the hunt/day and didn't want to clean a squirrell or deer or whatever. Maybe I knew I had enough already harvested etc. I don't know of any spirit guides or kindred spirits that I have so that doesn't enter into my thinking at all.
 
Are there any game animals, that for whatever reason, you could never shoot?
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Never?

"Game Animals"?

None. If it's edible, convenient, and legal to hunt ....... it's apt to become lunch.

Animals in general? If it's a nuisance, including being in competition with me for a resource (my garden, for instance) then it's WAR, and I'll kill it, or it's young, at every opportunity ........

Beneficial animals (bluebirds, for example) are encouraged to take up residence (nest boxes) ....
 
Some of you mention that you wouldn't shoot birds of prey even if it was legal. I wouldn't either. It reminds me of an interesting interaction I had with an hawk a couple of years ago.

My dog and I were quail hunting on a ranch In one area there were piles of brush strewn all over the place. We were going from pile to pile trying to flush quail out. Some brush piles had birds and some didn't.

I was heading towards one pile and my dog was running towards it. Next thing I see is a hawk swoop down towards my dog. It then was following my dog. It was flying just a few feet above her. I had no idea what the hawks intentions were. While I said I wouldn't shoot a hawk, if it attacked my dog all bets were off.

The hawk wasn't interested in attacking my dog, it was interested in attacking quail. It landed on the brush pile that my dog was heading towards. Some quail did flush out and the hawk.went right after them. Apparently it decided to use my hunting dog to secure its breakfast.

That was cool!
 
Young/small animals. I've seen countless deer shot where a person had two antlerless deer tags so they would shoot a doe and this seasons fawn.

Beyond that I'm fine with all legal animals. Although yesterday I went to the public hunting grounds to scare up some pheasants and there was a pile of 3 squirrels left in the parking lot. Someone needs to open up a season on those type of people. Along the same lines I have also found piles of carp, gar, dogfish and other species. These people give sportsmen a bad name.
 
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