chicken predator ID

[jen judkins]

Thanks, Andy for the help on this one! Success.

[Andy Carson]

Nice Jen! They always look so innocent when they are in the trap, don’t they? We know better…

[jen judkins]

@Countymouse 35649 wrote:

Nice Jen! They always look so innocent when they are in the trap, don’t they? We know better…

I know, I took alot of flack from my animal rescue friends on Facebook….who all thought he WAS an innocent victum, lol.

[grey]

@Countymouse 35466 wrote:

Yeah, seriously, a spear. My spear is designed for killing boar (link below, but I paid less). It’s what I take with me when I check out “bumps in the night” that my dog is barking at. These critters tend to hide under and behind stuff so you can’t get a good swing at them. Getting a good angle for a spear is easy even in hiding places and again, you don’t have to get that close or cause the animal to panick and/or do something crazy. It also doesn’t blow holes in buildings, wake up the neighborhood, or cause you to loose your hearing like firing a rifle in a building will. It also makes a bigger hole.

http://www.coldsteel.com/boarspear.html

You could probably clamp a knife to a pole for the same effect…

I have had a couple of occasions to kill a raccoon with a spear. Each time it resulted in a great deal of anguished screaming on the part of the raccoon, when stealth and silence was what caused me to choose the spear over the .22 in the first place. Maybe I need better aim? I went for high in the torso, aiming to get the vitals. My spear lives behind the door.

[Andy Carson]

If your spear is wide and you aim well, the death is very fast. Bullets are all about placement, too. If you want to keep using the spear, I think it would be a good idea to dissect the coon and see where you have been hitting. I suspect you hit too low, as the vitals are pretty high on a coon. I have always gone through the ribs. If you didn’t go through ribs, you likely went too low (upless it was with an anterior thrust). The spear I use is over 3 inches wide and the head is over a foot long. If this gets in the chest cavity of a 20 lb animal (and probably any animal for that matter), it’s going die very fast. I do take this topic very seriously, and picked this tool to quickly kill animals quickly and humanely, not to play around. I think if you can’t get it to work for you in short order, I would recommend going with a gun or whatever works for you, as I do not like the idea of experimenting with ways to kill animals.

[Robert MoonShadow]

I’m always interested in alternative weapons…I’ve used a blowgun effectively on coon when living in the ‘burbs of Chicago…

Is anyone else now carrying a mental visual of Jen in traditional Nordic wear, carrying a boar spear?
…not sure if that’s an excellent reason to continue to stay on this side of the Mississippi, or rather an enticement to finally commit to attending the next Field Days. :confused:

[jen judkins]

@Robert MoonShadow 35665 wrote:

Is anyone else now carrying a mental visual of Jen in traditional Nordic wear, carrying a boar spear? …not sure if that’s an excellent reason to continue to stay on this side of the Mississippi, or rather an enticement to finally commit to attending the next Field Days. :confused:

I bought the elvish style spear…being a surgeon, I felt the precision of it would work well with my style..and haircut;) I like the idea of doing evening rounds with a weapon I can relate to. I promise I won’t bring my spear to the field days, even though I need the practice!

[Carl Russell]

@Countymouse 35659 wrote:

….. I would recommend going with a gun or whatever works for you, as I do not like the idea of experimenting with ways to kill animals.

I like the look of the dog-proof traps, but have never had a problem using cage traps. I caught another coon last night using some turkey guts in a large cage trap. I find that a little observation can find those places where they are likely to travel, and if I catch a chicken or cat, then no big deal. Cage traps and a .22 cal are a pretty successful deadly combo on this farm, and usually I can make the bait more attractive than the effort to get into a coop.

I like the idea of a spear, but I am usually shooting close-up in a cage, or long distance, like in a tree, or on the run, so I always grab a gun. I think in semi-urban areas the spear would make a lot of sense.

Thanks for sharing these ideas.

As far as experimenting with killing animals…….. I have been killing animals since I was 11(41 years)……. and I still feel like I’m experimenting…. Killing is a challenging endeavor, and usually includes doing something that you have never done before, with a living being that cannot be turned off with a switch. Sometimes things just don’t work out the way you think they should.

I just highlighted your comment because I think it is not appropriate to set high morel expectations around killing, because it can cause undo anxiety which either reduces a person’s autonomy, or complicates the process leading to more suffering and difficulty.

I think we need to make sure that we protect the sanctity of life, and make sure that we are not encouraging frivolous killing, but we also need to make sure that people are not restrained from experiencing the interface that they(we) insist on through our cultural habits. Our lifestyles require impact on other living beings….. I believe that people should learn what that means…. and to me that means, at least in part, learning to face into the Life-force of the animals that suffer from our choices.

After-all there are no predators in the wild that kill without practicing and experimenting……

Carl

[Andy Carson]

In formulating my thoughts on this topic, I realize that i do have high moral expectations surrounding killing. Does this serve the greater good? In some ways I think it probably does. Either way, i have a hard time letting go of these feelings. I also grew up killing animals and being around alot of death as is common on a pig farm. Many of these animals had names and i ate many of them. I was taught (and i really internalized) that this OK because we gave the animals a good life and a good death that many animals don’t have. This thought/feeling is hard to get out of my head, and i am not sure I want it gone.

That said, I can see your point, carl, that these morals can paralyze good people in some situations. I don’t see anything wrong with trying well intended techniques and have the potential of being quick and relatively painless. I had intended the phrase “experimenting with ways to kill animals” to refer to frivolous techniques that might have been chosen for non-practical reasons over a more practiced technique. I have to say I have killed many more chickens than anything else. I cut their heads off. It is not an experiment what happens next…

[grey]

I can see what both Carl and Andy are saying, I think. I have seen plenty of people who did not grow up with an agricultural background who are unable to “do the deed”. Paralyzed by the thought of inflicting more pain than necessary in the process of killing an animal. Afraid that they will be unable to do it “quickly and cleanly”. They put so much weight on doing it as painlessly as possible that the threat of messing it up prevents them from doing it at all.

I think Andy might have been concerned that his choice of dispatching animals with a spear might have been seen as whimsical or frivolous, rather than a practical and ethical choice. Not because of what anyone here said, necessarily. A spear is just such an uncommon and archaic tool in this day of guns. I can sympathize – when I unloaded my burden to someone regarding the failed attempt at quickly dispatching a coon with a spear, I was met with an appalled and shocked response. As though I had been deliberately cruel in using a spear.

Having been a hunter and a husbander of livestock for all my days, I take a professional interest in dispatching any animal as “quickly and cleanly” as possible. I am always striving to do better in that department, just as with any other skill that I practice regularly. I was raised to value a quick kill. I guess you could call it a moral expectation. Stuff happens and sometimes things don’t go as planned; I try to learn from those times and avoid a repeat performance. Not just because it has the potential to damage the meat, but because I try not to inflict unnecessary harm. Nature is cruel, but I try not to be.

I don’t think Andy wasn’t encouraging anyone to not hone their skill. He just didn’t want anyone to think that he was just playing around by choosing to use a spear.

Now, if he starts using a trebuchet to dispatch chickens, THEN we might have cause for raised eyebrows.

[near horse]

Sorry but it’s been shown over and over that a bullet is the most humane and effective way to dispatch animals (at least most mammals). Carl has the right technique – live trap them, move the trap to a safe location and shoot them. I can’t support using a spear as a primary choice with better choices available.

[Carl Russell]

I share concerns for quick skillful killing. We can have those high expectations, but we also need to be honest……. sometimes you just have to beat the frickin’ thing to death….and those experiences should help us to develop more sensitivity to increase our skills to not have to do that the next time.

I am pretty damn good at killing, especially dispatching up close, and while I take my time to do it right, quick and painless, I also stand ready to do what needs to be done. And while I strive for perfection, at least part of my calm collected approach has to do with the fact that I know how unsavory it can be, and I have no guilt or sense of judgement holding me back. And when they’re dead, they’re dead.

I cut up a fawn once while mowing hay and had nothing but a knife and a stone to put the poor thing out of its misery while my horses stood unattended hitched to the mower. It was as quick and painless as I could make it, but any observer probably would have been upset. My spirit was laid raw, but I grew as a result, because it is those poignant life-moments that draw me close to the Earth in my life’s work.

I understand what Andy meant, I just wanted to clarify for others that while it is worthy to strive for perfection, we realize that everyone needs to start somewhere, and sometimes it ain’t pretty.

Carl

[Andy Carson]

@near horse 35705 wrote:

Sorry but it’s been shown over and over that a bullet is the most humane and effective way to dispatch animals (at least most mammals). Carl has the right technique – live trap them, move the trap to a safe location and shoot them. I can’t support using a spear as a primary choice with better choices available.

Ah ha!!! This is exactly the response I was suspecting from someone. I think you are playing devils advocate here, but I’ll play along. I dare you to show me a single study demonstrating that a spear to the heart doesn’t kill an animal quickly and humanely. Seriously. Dare on!!! :p

[near horse]

Can you prove you’re getting a spear to the heart every time? You also mentioned lungs as a target (if I read it right) and destruction of lung tissue is nowhere near a quick nor humane death. And as good as you might be, your hand speed is no match for the speed of a fired projectile. A well placed cinder block to the skull would work too but it’s the “well placing” that concerns me. So start with the most rapid/effective method and then work from there IF, as Carl mentioned, it doesn’t work out as planned.

To add some credibility to my experience – I’ve also killed animals by various means due to circumstance. From a doe with a broken back on the highway I killed with a tire iron to one of our own goats that I had to kill with a sledge hammer – not pretty, fast nor very efficient but necessary. As a student I helped out on a project looking at how quickly various traps (conibear etc) killed beavers and muskrat using physiological signals from implants to determine time of death …. Worked on the kill floor at the meat lab facility at the university, euthanized probably 100 dogs/cats working at an animal hospital —- so this isn’t some squeamish response to killing of animals. It’s from the perspective of someone who’s had plenty of blood on his hands.

Also – Who’s going to fund a study of the effectiveness of a spear in killing a raccoon? The humane trapping study from the 1980’s was considered borderline back then. Now it would be unthinkable. But there have been studies of putting down horses etc and a bullet is found to be the quickest which translates into most humane.

[Andy Carson]

It’s not my responsibility to prove what I did was humane to you, I was there and i saw how it went down and was happy with it. I am not saying it is the best tool for everyone in ever situation, but is a legitimate and very effective tool.

On the other hand, it is the responsibility of the person who says “studies have proven time and time again” to prove that statement. You have failed to produce a SINGLE reference comparing a spear to a gunshot, much less a whole group of studies that demonstrate this statement “time and time again.” Until these studies are produced, you statement is wholey and factually wrong. No doubt about it. I understand you are going to bring up lots of speculation and personal experience (none with a spear!), but none of this detracts from the fact that you simply do not know how humane a well placed spear can be until you use one and use it well.

The truth is a poorly placed gunshot can and will produce a slow and inhumane death just as well as a spear can. Have you ever shot a deer in the lung? It’s a heck of a lot better than a gut shot. Heres two examples of things that happen all the time with rifle hunting. Are rifles always humane??? Clearly not. It’s all about placement. Do you also disapprove of bowhunting? This is an even smaller spear that has less energy at the point of impact, produces a much smaller hole, and can’t be placed as accurately as a tool that never leaves your hand.

We all have our own subjective experiences to draw from and many of us (including myself) have killed enough animals to know when it was done well and when it wasn’t.

[Author]

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