chicken predator ID

[Carl Russell]

@Countymouse 35710 wrote:

….. 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……
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.

These last few posts show exactly what I was meaning. It is a red herring to be using “humane killing” as a measure. Sure you can have your preferences……. you can have your sensitivities……… but there is no one way that guarantees success without the experienced skill of the person committing the act.

Humanity is too lofty for me when it comes to killing. The fact is that the “humane” thing would be to let the animal live. I have made choices that have put me in a collision course with the critters. I have to make a choice whether or not I am going to kill the animal. I have to weigh the humanity of the course I take, but once I make the choice there is no further judgement….. it is me and my interests, or it is the animal.

I can guarantee you that there is not one animal that appreciates what weapon you choose, or what organ you choose to target. There may be people looking over your shoulder who think they can stand in your shoes, and they may think that they have some moral beliefs that you should adopt, but this isn’t between you and them.

If you decide that you are going to protect your interests by making the choice to kill animals, then don’t look back. For me making a quick kill has practical reasons, like making certain that the animal is actually dead and can’t get away. Trapping the animal so that I can either effectively kill it with a body trap, or live trapping so that I can guarantee a kill shot has little to do with humanity, and everything to do with success.

If someone wants to hold me up as a humane killer and shower me with accolades, fine ( because I am good at it), but my sensitivity toward the lives of animals is deeper than that. Killing is a choice I make. So is the manner in which I live my life with intention to minimize the impact on the lives of other living beings. I show my humanity by only killing those animals that I need to kill. I kill a few extra livestock and poultry every year to sell to other people, but as a rule I only kill what I need to eat.

And I take responsibility for killing all of the animals that my choices impact. I kill every animal I raise on this farm, so I keep my stock numbers low, only what I need. I kill the dogs, cows, oxen, and horses that I have brought under my care when it is time. And I try to protect my livestock, poultry, and gardens from vermin so that I don’t have to kill them to begin with.

These choices about taking personal responsibility for the end-of-life of these animals force me to keep it all to a minimum. Justifiable under my own terms. Acceptable under my appreciation for what it means to live a humane life.

So to bring it back to the thread topic……..

Thursday morning I killed a skunk that was caught in a Conibear (set for a woodchuck as I would have live trapped the skunk had I expected him to stick his nose in that hole), but his hips were in one jaw and neck in the other….. typically a deadly trap, the hips prevented a quick kill, so I had to shot him (he sprayed).

Friday morning I killed a raccoon in a cage trap….. on the perimeter of the turkey coop.

Saturday morning found me killing a second coon in the same place.

Sunday morning may include another coon, but will likely mean the death of a fox that showed up just as I was going to check on the trap with the coon in it. He has already stolen bait this evening from a leg-hold I set for him, but I expect to be in sniping from the kid’s place structure a dawn tomorrow morning.

Carl

[jen judkins]

Fascinating turn of this thread and some really good reading!

Geoff, as a surgeon, I find it ridiculous that a bullet is better than a knife. The only benefit of a bullet that I am aware of is its penetrating ability with bone, in a head shot, for instance. But we all know that the head shot is not what kills an animal. Its the bleeding out that does, which is why we go for the large vessels in the neck. A knife (or spear) is well suited to the latter. And with practice, even the small heart of a raccoon is an easy target. And its no big deal if you miss and hit the lung as long as you take out the aorta behind them as well.

Besides, both are just tools. Similar to ones choice to use a D-ring harness vs a belly backer. If you understand how the tool works and are committed to using it, it will always work best…for you. Sure there are folk out there who think one style harness is 100% better than the other, but that’s a ridiculous argument as well.

[mitchmaine]

i think its about commitment. choice of weapons aside, if you choose to kill a critter you owe it to him to do a quick and proper job.
we come by it naturally, from a time when hunting and killing meant living. lately, our brains have interfered and gotten in the way, and we started thinking about it. its a job that still has to be done. if we choose a farm life, killing comes with the job.
our farm was the natural drop off for all the town cats who needed a ride to the country, and my grandmother was a sucker for any cat who was looking for a handout, so every spring our hayloft was full of litters of cats, and my job was collection, and my dad and i would drown kittens. not much fun, but we were doing the job for the folks in town who shifted the problem down to us. death never bothered me to much until the last few years and i have softened a little to the process. now, i make sure something has to die and try and do a proper job. like carl said, most of the animals here, are meant for food. our choice. and the ones that aren’t (dogs and horses) deserve a good quick end for all there commitment to us. when a dog is faithful, or a horse gives years of work, shifting the job of ending their life to someone else seems wrong. just my sentiments.

[f3farms]

i have to agree with jen about bullet verses spear on quick kill.anyone who has taken their hunter safety course for bowhunting will tell you that a bullet will leave damage and trama to the wound,slowing the blood flow.an arrow will cut through leaving no trama and the blood will flow without trouble.of course placement is everything with anything of the killing nature.
Rob

[Carl Russell]

@Jen Judkins 35726 wrote:

…… ridiculous that a bullet is better than a knife. The only benefit of a bullet that I am aware of is its penetrating ability with bone, in a head shot, for instance. But we all know that the head shot is not what kills an animal…..

These statements are not entirely accurate.

Geoff’s assertion was that a bullet to the brain was more humane….. A head shot does not instantly kill an animal, but it does actually kill the animals without letting blood. The humane aspect is that it destroys the sensory ability of the animal instantly, which is the basis for the assumption of humane death. A kill to the heart, lungs, or major vessels is certainly affective, but the animal is aware of the pain and suffering.

Now I have declared that I don’t lose any sleep over the pain and suffering, because it is the death that I seek….. how I get there is my business……..

The mower injured fawn I killed by severing the brain stem at the base of the skull with my knife which incapacitated it…. stopped it from squirming….. then I crushed the skull with a stone…… over and done with.

Shooting an animal in the head is very effective for several reasons. First, it incapacitates the animal which facilitates any other action such as cutting major vessels for letting blood. Second, because it incapacitates the animal, it ensures that you will not be attacked by the animal as it suffers. Third, it will kill the animal……. making the act uncomplicated…..

So for the analogy about the tool…….. it really doesn’t come down to the tool. Whether harness or weapon, it comes down to the task. Understanding how the tool or weapon meets the objectives of the task make the choice different. There are tasks that cannot be done as effectively with a belly-backer harness as with a d-ring, just as stunning an animal to eliminate consciousness cannot be done with a spear.

Choose your weapon, and choose your morals, and be prepared to accept their limitations…….

Carl

[Andy Carson]

Wow Carl, possibly 3 raccoon in 3 days. And I thought I had raccoon problems… Sounds like yours are much worse. What are they getting into? Chickens? Feed?

[grey]

For myownself, the choice of using a spear had to do with it being 3AM, in the city limits – no discharging of firearms permitted. I was trying to make a dent in the raccoon population at a friend’s place. They have a medium-sized cat colony to keep the rodents at bay. The live trap only ever caught cats, regardless of what bait we used. Even if it was something they weren’t interested in eating, they’d climb in there for curiosity’s sake and set the thing off. The raccoons were very bold, however, and you could pretty much just sit there and wait for them to come in after the cat food, then run them into a corner and do them in. I pitchforked a couple, used a spear on a couple more. It was messy and not quick. I think I need to learn more about the optimal mechanics of a spearhead. It was very pointy, but I think that the sides were too dull.

[Carl Russell]

@Countymouse 35731 wrote:

Wow Carl, possibly 3 raccoon in 3 days. And I thought I had raccoon problems… Sounds like yours are much worse. What are they getting into? Chickens? Feed?

No coon today…. no fox either.

We’ve been losing a few young birds, one here, one there, with no regularity, so I just started setting the trap, and presto….

I waited from 4:45 to 6:15 am for the fox this morning, but nothing. He didn’t take the liver from the baited leg-hold either. I’m going to tie another turkey neck to the back-log to try to make him work harder to trip the trigger. I can’t seem to get foxes to go into a cage trap.

More later, Carl

[near horse]

I’ll admit I was stupid enough to take the bait on this one but agree with mitch’s comment …. Not sure that you have to bleed out to be dead. I’m thinking of destroying brain function that destroys the ability to perceive pain/trauma etc. The same can’t be said of the heart.

Anyone planning to put down their horse with a spear when the time comes? Just wondering. 😮

[grey]

When I do turkeys, I slit the jugular and carotid. The theory is that it produces nearly instant unconsciousness. They still move plenty, but supposedly nobody is home. I have had on-again off-again problems with low blood pressure my whole life. When I was a kid, I passed out a few times just by standing up. If the drop in blood pressure from standing up is enough to send my conscious mind away, it seems to me that rapid blood loss would do the same.

I prefer to shoot a horse. Even versus having a vet do it via injection. No, I don’t think I’ll be taking my coon spear to ol Dobbin.

[jen judkins]

@near horse 35740 wrote:

Anyone planning to put down their horse with a spear when the time comes? Just wondering. 😮

Not planning, no….but if I had to, I know I could lay open the great vessels in the neck of a horse with a knife, with very little pain. They are so close to the surface. In fact, if my horse went down with a broken leg on the trail…that’s how I would put them down. Creepy thing to think about, but there it is.

[Andy Carson]

I have never been able to trap a fox, and I’m glad I haven’t had an problems with one so far. My multistrand electric fence has really cut down on the predator pressure. That said, there are definately still ways through or around the fence for a small animal, and I still have to be vigilant. The most obvious way around the fence is to go 200 yards to the south, cross through a field fence, another field fence, travel 200 yards back through through an open field with no cover and get at the chickens. This assumes some thinking on the part of the coon, but I feel that raccoons do not want to risk that 200 yard trip through an open field when they know a there is a dog around and there is no place to hide. The other hole in the fence (for a raccoon or similar) is at a gate close to my neighbors house, but she has 5 barky dogs. My point is that if you know where the critters are coming from and going, a multistrand electric fence can make a big difference, even without fencing the whole place, especially when the ways around the fence is not desirable for one reason or another. It doesn’t compeltely eliminate them, but thins them to the point that that trapping/shooting/patrolling/guard dog can more easily clean up the few that figure out how to get around. I set my trap for several days to catch the skunk that figured a way through the fence and sprayed my dog. I haven’t seen any sign of a skunk either, for more than a week. I figure my dog harrassed him enough that the skunk doesn’t want to come back. It was touch and go for a while, but I this my dog (who is a little over a year old now) is going to turn out to be a good guard dog after all.

[Carl Russell]

@Jen Judkins 35744 wrote:

Not planning, no….but if I had to, I know I could lay open the great vessels in the neck of a horse with a knife, with very little pain. They are so close to the surface. In fact, if my horse went down with a broken leg on the trail…that’s how I would put them down. Creepy thing to think about, but there it is.

It’s clear that there are many ways to kill an animal. In a pinch we do what is necessary.

The questions are, when premeditated, like putting down and good horse, do we have concerns of humane death? If we do, then what method do we choose? When setting a trap with the intention of killing a marauding predator, what is the difference between that and the premeditated killing of your favorite animal?

If it is all shades of grey, then I say the humane considerations are personal, depending on circumstances, and therefore are not pertinent. If you would rather use a spear than a firearm because you’re more comfortable with the use of that weapon, then fine, let’s just be honest about the compromises we are willing to make.

The spear is effective. Does it really matter that much whether it is a “humane” way to kill an animal?? I think not. Should it?? I think not. Does it make sense to try to make a spear seem as “humane” as a hot lead injection to the brain?? I think not.

Although humans have been killing animals for a long time, we are not predators. We are opportunistic omnivorous scavengers. We learned to hunt and kill, because of how beneficial it was to our survival. Killing has always represented a challenge for humans. We are not physically equipped with anatomy designed for killing, so we have had to devise ways to get the job done. I think the emotional component has always been a challenge as well. It’s not easy to deal with, and as a culture we don’t spend a lot of time trying to help each other come to grips with it.

I applaud all of you for your courage in facing into this question. Life really is a messy business, and our modern world would have us believe otherwise.

Andy, that rascal fox has been stealing my bait in contorted ways, doing an excellent job at avoiding the leg-hold trap, and of course he hasn’t come while I am awake……. Now that I have him coming at the bait from the other direction, I think I will set a few traps in his new trail……

More later, Carl

[grey]

Jen, I found this an interesting read; it is titled “The Emergency Euthanasia of Horses”

http://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/vetext/inf-an/inf-an_emergeuth-horses.html

The part about the equine body’s reaction to massive blood loss was new to me. Makes sense after I thought about it some, but it wasn’t what I was expecting. Good to know ahead of time. Stay away from those thrashing legs and expect it to be pretty horrific. I take my horses up into the wilderness fairly often and I always seem to find plenty of time to think about the ways in which things can go terribly wrong, and what options would be available to me. Like you said, not pleasant to consider, but as stewards we must.

[Andy Carson]

Oh, OK, I’ll keep on the new topic of this thread. I also find it to be a fascinating discussion. I was going to share some thoughts, then thought I would try to get it back on the topic of chicken predators… Now I am too tempted.

OK, Geoff, I think your new argument against the use of a spear is just very thought provoking and I think a decent argument. No, I would not kill a horse with a spear if I had a gun as an option (although it would be my first choice if I could pick from a non-firearm weapons). And yet I feel just fine about killing raccoons and possums with it. Why the difference? The honest truth is that it is different to me because it feels different to me. Is it because the horses is 100 times bigger? This is definately a factor, but I would also choose the gun over the spear to kill a 20 pound pet dog. Is it because I can handle the dog or the horse so as to insure a very accurate gunshot with no damage to my property? This is another factor, but again this isn’t all of it… Is it that I have plenty of time to get the rifle and load it without the animal running off or unjuring my dog? Again, this is only part, but I could have simply grabbed a rifle instead of the the spear. Granted, I am not very comfortable keeping a loaded rifle next to my door, but I could figure out ways to make this safer in my mind. Is it because I don’t want to wake up my neighbors and have to explain what I am doing? This is another big factor, but again, if they knew I was shooting a raccoon most (not all) would be fine with it and even if the other one calls fish and game, I am not breaking the law. Still, who wants to invite inspection and scruteny from inflexible non-thinking dogmatic “This is the right way” law-enforcers? I would rather keep it quiet… Still, I could take the cage to the back of my property and shoot it without anyone bugging me about it later, so this is only part of the answer for me. Another part is that I feel I have a duty to provide a high degree of care to animals I have chosen to bring into my life and my house. I made no such pact with these critters who invade from outside, and I apply my moral/ethical/humane standards that pertain to “hunting,” rather than killing of domestic animals. For a a more detailed discussion of spears as hunting weapons, see the below section entitled “spears as hunting weapons.” I put this section below because there really isn’t a need to compare the effectiveness of these weapons to make my point. For me, it is the combination of all these factors that make a spear the weopon I grab when I go outside to check things out. Anotehr factor is that I can use the dull end as a makeshift goad, to herd chickens, to keep goats from escaping, or simply as a walking stick. It is in many ways a choice of conveniance as a more deadly replacement for the shepherds crook I broke killing a possum. It is my choice alone and I try to not judge others who are doing similar things.

The most difficult thing with these types of ethical/moral choices is the statement that I do “not judge others.” This is true in “normal” situations, but if I saw a person throw a live cat in a fire, I would think of them as a monster and would probably (depending on other factors) try to stop it. Is this the right thing to do? I feel like it is, but I don’t have a logical, internally consistant and all inclusive rule that explains why this is a case where interferring is the “right” thing to do and also explains when interferring is just speculation and prejudice on something you simply don’t know. Even though this is not internally consistant and in some ways doesn’t make tons of sense, I am not bothered by it. I think that all of us who kill animals have come to some sorts of tenuous rationalizations of why and when and how it is OK, and why and when and how it is not OK. Being perfectly honest, I doubt any of them make perfect logical sense.

Spears as hunting weapons
Spears meet and surpass “acceptable” standards as hunting weapons for large game, much less a raccoon. See reference below, which calculates the kinetic energy, momentum, and sectional density of a heavy spear (like mine) and a light spear (like Jen’s) to various other weapons, including a 30-06 and a 357 mag. You can see the heavy spear has almost 30 times less energy than than a 30-06, and 6 fold less energy than a 357, but who is killing animals in traps with a 30-06? This is, by the way, the only gun I own. A 22 is a much more accepted “standard” killer of varmits in traps, and I calculated the enrgy of the 22LR at 103 ftlb for a 40 grain bullet moving at 1080 fps -practically identical to a heavy spear and inferior to the force generated by a light spear. As is explained in the article, total energy is only one factor that is important in killing, which makes sense as by this measure alone a heavy spear is less powerful than a light spear. Other important factor is momentum (how much force does it take to stop the projectile) and a heavy spear has nearly 3 times the momentum of a 30-06, and over 30 times more momentum than a 22. A spear also has almost 8 times the sectional density (ability to penetrate) as a 30-06 and is over 18 times more sectionally dense as a 22. So, all together, a spear is superior is every way to a 22 as a hunting weapon, and is compareable to some rifles in some aspects. So, we may need to revisit the thought that a spear is simply inferior because it doesn’t have gunpowder.

reference:
http://www.thudscave.com/npaa/articles/howhard.htm

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