Nope, no remorse. I do, however, have some personal rules as to when I'll shoot which animals. I generally don't shoot groundhogs until after they're had a chance to raise their young. I don't shoot any predators/furbearers when the fur is bad, and I let them walk if I'm not in the mood to take the time to skin them.

Back in higschool when I had coon dogs, I'd typically kill 100+ raccoons in a season. To a teenager, that extra couple hundred bucks I usually got for the hides was nice, and I certainly didn't feel any remorse about it. A lot of farmers practically begged us to come hunt their property when the coons were getting into their corn.

no remorse

I love groundhog shooting with everything from .17HMR all the way up to .45-70's and .375's. I shoot a lot of coyotes and crows, the odd fox, and have "disciplined" a couple of beavers who were in the process of flooding out my property. Feral cats are shot on sight on my land. Occasionally a raccoon gets into the chickens, and I do my best to make sure he doesn't get back out alive. Felt a little bad for the beavers.

But why does everyone actively hate predators so much? Sure, coyotes are way over-populated in a lot of areas, and are causing problems by eating housepets and livestock. Feral cats are a serious problem for native populations of songbirds, and the others can be similarly troublesome...but they are just animals doing what they do. With the exception of the cats (an introduced alien species with no natural niche in the local environment) all these species are natural parts of the landscape, and fit into the natural scheme of things. Shoot them? Sure. But hate them, hoping to shoot them right out? I just don't understand that attitude. I don't hate that critter when I shoot it, any more than I hate a whitetail or bear that I am killing during the fall season. Quite the contrary: I personally find coyotes to be some of the most challenging and interesting animals to hunt, and I admire them greatly.

I will be moving out west within the next year or so, and am looking forward to the ground squirrel shooting that is available in the area where we are buying property. Who knows, maybe I will work up a good hatred for those little guys...but I doubt it.

It often seems as though some hunters love to push the I'm-helping-the-farmer-by-shooting-these-nasty-critters agenda, and it often sounds like they are trying to justify what they kill by using that argument. There is nothing to justify...if you legally kill a creature (and, yes, it's "kill" rather than "harvest"...they're animals, not corn) you have nothing for which to apologize. Eat it, use the fur, whatever...but don't get all red-faced and self-righteous, telling anyone who'll listen about how mean/bad/evil that creature was and why you are a hero for killing it. The animals are just being animals, and by hunting them you are just being a hunter. No need for guilt, recrimination...or justification.

I hope this isn't considered a thread-highjack...I thought it was in keeping with the discussion here.

John

+1 JMW.

I've never not felt remorse killing an animal. It doesn't stop me from hunting but it does give me pause for reflection sometimes.

I stopped hunting for a number of years because I didn't have the stomach for it too much. It seems I've gotten over that part of my life

I must say though that I feel a whole lot better killing animals the "right way." I prefer to hunt when it puts meat on my table and especially with the bow rather than the gun. I love hunting gophers with my longbow but not so much with the rifle. Strange though because both ways means a dead gopher.

quote:

Originally posted by SR4759:
I always feel remorse when I do not shoot the two big noisy turd producing dogs in my neighbor's back yard.

BTW I am pretty sure that livesstock are rarely injured by critter holes. I grew up in cattle country that near the places that the cattle legends Oliver Loving and Charles Goodnight got started in the cattle business. That land is infested with armadillos among other things. I have never seen or heard of an animal being injured from stepping in a hole. That included the talked from the kids I went to school with from all over that county. Cattle for the most part move too slowly to get hurt and when they do get in a hurry it is usually on a cow path that is already beaten down to pavement hard dirt.

I agree. I've never seen a cow break a leg in a badger hole and if I was riding a horse that was too dumb to miss one I'd sell him for sure.

quote:

Originally posted by mikem0553:

quote:

Originally posted by SR4759:
I always feel remorse when I do not shoot the two big noisy turd producing dogs in my neighbor's back yard.

BTW I am pretty sure that livesstock are rarely injured by critter holes. I grew up in cattle country that near the places that the cattle legends Oliver Loving and Charles Goodnight got started in the cattle business. That land is infested with armadillos among other things. I have never seen or heard of an animal being injured from stepping in a hole. That included the talked from the kids I went to school with from all over that county. Cattle for the most part move too slowly to get hurt and when they do get in a hurry it is usually on a cow path that is already beaten down to pavement hard dirt.

I agree. I've never seen a cow break a leg in a badger hole and if I was riding a horse that was too dumb to miss one I'd sell him for sure.

They turn in to good rattle worm dens out here and might as well nip that in the bud.

I must be a pussy too. I have a bit of remorse every time I kill some thing. Even includeing those dam possums and coons I catch in the live traps every summer that mess with the bees at night.
Taking a life to me isn't a thing I take lightly. Yes I hunt, I like the taste of wild game and it is affordable to me more so than buying pork and beef.

Al

On my last Oregon sage rat hunt there was a horrid cold gale blowing over the fields. Sitting beside my portable bench I was pounding sage rats into splats that resembled paintball impacts. I took a shot at one little rat at about 200 yards, but the bullet hit just under it. Varmint Grenades completely disintegrate on impact and the squirrel was fragged, it flipped over on its back, its feet running in place. I decided to end its misery with another shot, so took aim through my scope. Just as I was squeezing the trigger the image blurred out in a flash, then when it came back the rat was gone! When I looked up from the scope I found the rat hanging from the talons of an osprey. Such is the another day in the life of a sage rat. When we enter the fields each spring, local raptors from bald eagles to ospreys and some I don't recognize begin watching us and waiting. They circle or perch on power lines to swoop down as we move along and do the clean up, along with smaller birds such as magpies, woodpeckers and (in California) ravens. A flock of birds landing where I shot at a rat means that I didn't miss. This is the ungilded natural world.

Still for all that, it is good to have some self-discussion about the meaning of life, because it is only through the heart of Man that self-conscious compassion, empathy and the perception of ethics enters into the material world. These virtues exist nowhere else, and may be the reason the stage was set with human characters. Between the sage rat, the osprey and myself, I was the only one concerned with the rat's possible suffering. That then, is our true nature and the trap of existing as mortal corporeal beings subject to disease, famine, criminal acts and wars. We are the victims, practitioners and judges of such things.

In my own personal experience, I have been instructed to shoot all badgers on sight. My farmer/landowner uncle hated them things. His farm is plagued with gophers which attracts badgers. He told me that when a badger gets hungry he digs a hole(looking for a gopher). Badger holes are 3-4times larger than a gopher hole. badger eats something like 10 times a day. Do the math. Every badger i have ever killed(6or7) were looking at me in the middle of digging a hole. These things are a farmers Satan wrapped in brown fur. When I was a teenager I used to work for my uncle baling hay on his farm in Montana. While coming in for lunch from the field one day I saw a badger slinking across a fresh cut hay field. Big field, 80 acre or so, he had nowhere to go so I tried to run him down with the service truck. missed the first time and the damn thing attacked the tires of the truck. swung around for a second shot and missed agian. That only pissed him off worse. Finally gave up. Needed a gun. didnt have one. Badger 1 me 0. I have a lot of respect for them but totally understand why farmers hate them. Imagine driving a car down a street and hitting a 1x1x1ft pothole, can do some damage to equipment. not to mention injuries to livestock.

heres one from acouple years back