Last summer, after Former Neighbor J moved away, he laid upon me an injunction to kill any rabbit I found in his yard – with the common-sense proviso that it mattered what the rabbit was standing in front of.
Since I was a young man shooting Panhandle prairie dogs, I’ve objected to shooting animals just because. I know it’s overly sentimental, and in truth I’ve had to get over my reluctance to kill since moving to the boonies. But I do feel kind of bad about killing small things unless there’s a good reason. J’s distaste for having rabbits in his yard didn’t seem like a very good reason, but I was getting paid. So I carried my 22/45 and killed rabbits.
Then one afternoon a really blatantly good shot presented itself when I didn’t have the .22 with me. So I shot the rabbit with the old beater Taurus .44 I used to carry. For the record, in case you wondered, that’s too much gun for cottontail. Made a mess. Didn’t do it again.
Never actually killed very many things with the 431. There was that one coyote I shot in the ass, but it got away. I don’t know it died, though that’s the safest bet. It never came back, which is all I cared about. Over the almost five years I carried it, I killed a couple of snakes and one uppity cock chicken with it. (A really good headshot, if I do say so myself) And that one cottontail. And that’s it.
Last November I replaced the 431 with a gun that’s easier to hit with…
…and lately I’d begun to wonder if it should bother me that, while I’ve put over 500 rounds through it, I haven’t killed anything with it yet. You know, just to take away its virginity. I’m not normally superstitious, but until I see a gun kill something there’s a part of me that doesn’t really believe it can.
Then yesterday afternoon I had what might be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I was so bemused at the time that it didn’t occur to me until later that in almost ten years of walking in the boonies, this was the very first time I ever saw a coyote up-close before it saw me. They’re normally much smarter than that. The time that came a close second was the one in my yard, but she thought I was gone because the dogs were, and her big mistake was not running far enough fast enough when she had definitely come for the chickens. It’s been my experience that, at least around here where coyotes have been heavily hunted, coming face-to-face with one virtually never happens. I see them occasionally, from a distance, running away. Most often when I’m in the Jeep.
So here was my big chance to break in the new Tracker, and nobody would have said a word of reproach. And it never once occurred to me to do it. I was a few seconds even deciding to draw the gun, and then I carefully shot to hurry it along. It was a beautiful thing, not hurting me in any way, and I had no desire to hurt it. Just because I could.
Guess that means I can’t be Elmer Keith when I grow up.
I think I know what you mean, Joel. Now I don’t have any problems with shooting rabbits, when it would not endanger anything else, simply because there are too many of them here and they are so destructive of what little plant life we have. Many mornings I stand on my deck or walk the horse pasture to put away as many as possible. But I never want to kill animals just because I CAN either.
One morning I was standing on the deck, waiting for a good shot at the rabbits and looking off over the grasslands. Snow still clung to the north sides of the hills and down in the arroyos, and the sun was just casting a faint glow onto the bluffs just west of my place. As I stood there in the light breeze from the west… up from the bluff pops a gigantic wolf, steel gray and black, magnificent fur standing up on his proud neck and back… He couldn’t smell me, and I stood as still as I could manage. Watching him with absolute wonder… I didn’t once think of the gun in my hands either. The .22 pistol might not even have done him much harm, of course, but I had no reason to shoot at him even if I’d considered it.
For just a second or two, he looked my way and then stepped down the bluff, out of sight. I’ve never seen him again, but I would not be surprised if he comes around once in a while. I wonder if he exchanges news with the resident mountain lion. I have not seen the lion in years either, and wouldn’t dream of shooting at him unless he was attacking me. I hope he never does, but it doesn’t hurt anything to be prepared.
I’ve been a hunter for over 50 years and it still bothers me a little every time I pull the trigger on a living thing. I hope I have the sense to stop hunting when I no longer feel that way.
The only animal I’ve actually felt pleasure on killing was a yellow jacket that nested in my jacket sleeve while it was off and stung me on my bicept when I put it on. I reached in, threw it to the ground and stomped on it WITH BOTH FEET. I wanted that deader than hell !
Oh yeah, that would do it. 🙂 I don’t count destructive insects or rodents, myself. I’m just as happy to kill any I can manage to locate. I used to feed my chickens the hand picked tomato worms… and laugh out loud.
I’m bad…
My male parental unit introduced me to Ground Hog shooting when I was a teen.
We were INVITED by alfalfa farmers in Eastern Oregon to shoot off the basalt bluffs bordering their fields every spring, to ‘thin the herd’ (gophers reproduce like .. well .. rabbits … which were our other favorite form of varmint hunting).
Seems that these farmers were raising alfalfa to feed their livestock; it was an economic measure.
Also a humanitarian measure.
A colony of ground-hogs will graze a field of alfalfa so thoroughly that. by the time it was ripe enough to harvest, half of it (the better half .. the tops) had been turned into gopher poop. And new, younger groundhogs.
The ground-hogs had to go. Either that, or the cattle would be fed by fodder which had to be purchased. That kinda took the whole “profit motive” out of the industry. Farmers were having to take second jobs just to support their family. No farmer can afford the time away from his fields just to make a living, and in this area the majority of farms were “Century Farms”, meaning they had been in the family for 100 years or more.
The alternative, if we didn’t shoot them out?
Poison.
The only other way to keep ground-hog population down is to lay out bait … usually strychnine .. which would certainly kill out the hogs.
But it would also kill the scavengers which fed on the bodies. We’re talking about coyotes, ravens, eagles, hawks, buzzards, and even the occasional black bear.
Poisoning those poor innocent varmints is the last choice of the desperate. NOBODY wants to resort to that extreme ‘solution’.
Oh, and by the way .. land-owners on the lands bordering the mighty Columbia River had the same problem. With new greet crops made possible by modern irrigation methods, land-owners were raising potato crops to rival those of Idaho .. but the rabbits were eating the foliage and decimating the yield. So .. poison or guns? They invited varmint hunters to keep hares out of the fields, and we would take as many as 100 jack rabbits in one Saturday morning, shooting at ranges up to 300 yards.
So, as much as I do appreciate those of your readers who bemoan the lack of ‘humanity’ in killing God’s Little Creatures, I personally stand on the other side of the equation.
All God’s Creatures got to eat. When it comes down to dead varmints vs farm kids who do without because Papa didn’t get enough of a paying crop this year to meet expenses, I’m shooting Jack and Gophers every weekend in the spring.
Just for laughs, of course.
Don’t actually recall anyone having said that, Jerry.
Unless it’s going in the freezer, I don’t kill it. Freezer means deer and elk for me. When you have a dead elk laying at your feet dead by your own hand, it’s a solemn moment for me. That’s a big life to take. The rest of them get a pass. I enjoy seeing the critters out and about. It’s the reason I go out.
You were not killing just for laughs, Jerry, but for sound economic reasons. If you happen to enjoy shooting, I don’t think anybody here is going to yell at you. 🙂 The ranchers here will gladly allow anyone to shoot the varmints on their land, for much the same reasons.
We have a similar problem here with prairie dogs and other crop destroying varmints. Unfortunately. the deer are seriously destructive too, but we can’t shoot them except one or two, with very expensive government “permission slips.” Until recently, we couldn’t shoot wolves even caught “red handed” killing livestock, and it is still a crap shoot with the “law” to shoot them or mountain lions or other predators that are happy to bring down a cow or horse. Life isn’t fair, that’s for sure. And, of course, the more government tries to do things people think will change that, the worse it gets. 🙁
Around here, we have a whole bunch of deer and a pretty good population of turkeys. I don’t hunt any more, but welcome those who do if they practice responsible harvesting procedures. This has developed into a system whereby we receive a goodly portion of the harvest in return for the privilege of accessing our land. On occasion I have been known to aid in the field-dressing and “dragging out” part of the deer hunt, and have assisted in the skinning and quartering of deer hung up in the big tree in our back yard. Coffee and other refreshments are usually available, too. Most of the turkeys taken here are dressed out to keep only the breast, and we are blessed with all the rest to cook down and preserve . . . a good deal for us. Free food with no real work involved.
The only thing I shoot are the pests such as groundhogs that are a real problem undermining our outbuildings and the darn ground squirrels that undermine our lawn and flower beds. We see the occasional coyote and just let it go unchallenged as they are part of keeping the rest of the population under control. If we or our neighbors had critters that might tempt the ‘yotes it would be a different matter, but they aren’t currently a problem and we don’t see them often. We do see more tracks in the snow than we see the actual ‘yotes themselves.
Works for us.
“Don’t actually recall anyone having said that, Jerry.”
Implied, then, if not expressed. I plead guilty to creative license.
There was a time when I didn’t like the taste of beef, because ‘venison’ was much more flavorful.
Now I buy my meat from the grocery store, for two reasons: because I’ve grown old and too lazy to hunt, and because hunting has become too expensive.
I once spent a week hunting Antelope in Wyoming. I killed a buck which dressed out at 80 pounds. I figured it cost me about $15 a pound … but it was worth it, then. And Pronghorn Antelope is an ‘acquired taste”.
That was 30 years ago. I’ve grown civilized, and don’t kill my chickens. The reason why I continue to read your blog is because you have chosen to take the hard road and live the lifestyle that my grandparents lived by necessity.
They’re all long gone now, of course. But you have reminded me of what life in America was like when they were young people. And I appreciate that.
Which doesn’t mean I won’t tweak your blog from time to time. Nobody likes to be a sycophant.