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How many people in this day and age have actually died through a Rat scampering around minding its own business? Or a Pidgeon merrily plodding along, quite happy to peck at scraps of food on the ground? Or a Squirrel toying with its nuts?
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The diseases that pigeons and rats carry contribute to the ill health of inner city life in general. People have died, and the reason you don't hear about it now is because it is being controlled. Although you may not know it, most areas have professionally employed pest control systems on a massive scale to help reduce the numbers of pigeons, gulls, rats, and urban foxes.
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That's like saying those people who began culling Hedgehogs were in the right, when they could have just as easily removed them to some place else.
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Jacob when will you learn that you can't solve a problem by simply moving the source of the problem somewhere else?
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Yes it is, because we don't need to hunt anymore. It's pointless. Unless you're living out in the wilds and need to kill Deer for food/clothing, you don't need to pick up a gun and blow the poor things head off.
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It's not "hunting". It's not a primitive instinct either. It's just a form of target shooting. It's hardly "blowing the poor things head off".
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When i read that i immediatly remembered the episode of 'Southpark' were Stans uncle said that he couldn't hunt certain animals for sport anymore [or something like that] and so justified his killing of them by saying he was "thinning out their numbers" and helping nature along.
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I don't justify it like that. I don't do it to "reduce numbers", I do it to remove the fu
cker from my back yard. They are a problem, they cause me a problem. If there is an infestation near my house, and rats or gulls or whatever start causing me problems, then I kill them. Simple.
Yeah, I enjoy doing it. Maybe that's a primitive instinct, or maybe that's because I like target shooting. Whatever. I don't shoot animals because I like doing it though. I shoot animals because I want my fu
cking garbage sacks to stay in fu
cking tact. I've also helped out some friends of mine with the extermination of a rabbit colony on their farm - other than that, I don't really have much "killing" under my belt.
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You are not doing a service to your country because a couple of dead Rats are hardly going to effect the country on a whole.
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No, they aren't. That's the job of the pest controllers, who do a wonderful and very humane job. I help this country on the smaller scale - in terms of my neighbours, friends, and street.
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It's very different because it's the way nature intended it to be.
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No, it isn't. You seem to be grossly unaware of the large scale pest control operations around the UK. If it wasn't for them, we would be OVER RUN. That's a fact, a cold hard fact. You have two choices if you have a gull problem - spend lots of money trying to deter them the "human way", or kill them off. Lets face it, if you were ripping up their garbage sacks, then they would probably kill you too.
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Nature did not intend an Air rifle to be pointed at the face of a small Rat, nature did not intend for that Rat to have its head blown off by a high velocity bullet, nor did nature intend for the corpse to waste away for no particular reason than a couple of teens to get their jolly's from.
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You make it sound like I'm some sick teenager who captures rats sheerly to enjoy blowing their heads off at point blank range. When in reality, I am merely someone who has no qualms about shooting a rat if it comes onto my property. (unless it is, of course, domesticated.)
I don't track them down or wait for them to come along.
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So, that means that if a Dog barks alot someone can happily trot upto it and cave its head in with a shovel? Or if a Cat defacates on somebody's Rosebed, they have the right to shoot it in the face with a shotgun?
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No. They do not. Because essentially that's just life. No matter what happens, the situation with dogs barking or cats shitting in your garden will never get so out-of-control that professional pest controllers advise the government to classify them as vermin. I can cope with the odd cat crapping in my garden, and my next door neighbours dog barking too much - what I cannot cope with, is disease ridden rats running riot in my garden, and gulls tearing up my garbage sacks when the local authorities are supposed to be taking care of the pest population.
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They're making pests of themselves...so, technically, people who are bothered by this have a right to erradicate them.
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No, they don't. I'm not saying what SS did was justified, I merely said I understand why he did it.
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Okay, firstly, Rabbits don't sit in hutches all day long if you look after them properly.
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This one escaped its hutch on a regular basis.
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Secondly, if you give it love and affection, you can become attached to it. Much like people who own Snakes, and become attached to them.
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But the owners of the rabbit that SS killed didn't give it love and affection. In fact, the refused to fix the hutch because they were glad that it was causing SS stress.
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I'm sure when it hears the whooshing of the bullet and the hot led impact with its small and fragile body it knows some c*nt has taken a shot at it.
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When I kill an animal, it probably doesn't actually have time to work out what it's hearing before it gets killed outright by a perfect headshot. I never aim for the heart, or any other bodypart, since that would cause a slow death. The bullet hits the head, and the animal falls over or just stops. That is when you know it has died instantly, and I've never had a kill where that didn't happen.
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Ahh yes, because what's more pleasing then having your insides ripped out, being positioned in a manner suitable to the person who killed you and then stuffed with random material and stood somewhere the people who killed you can look at you and say "Oh yes, i did that. Indeedily, i did."
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I've never done that, and I am in fact against taxidermy unless it is for museum/educational purposes.
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That's like saying "Let's kill a Lion for eating Antelope and sleeping.". It's what Foxes are supposed to do, hunt and eat.
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Foxes killing a domesticated cat is perfectly natural, yes. But we as humans don't want it to do that. So their numbers are kept to as close to zero as possible in urban areas. Suburban areas are the entrance gate and training ground of the urban fox, and it is here that they must be killed or captured in order to prevent the common rural fox from becoming a common urban fox.
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Okay, so they shouldn't be trotting around the city, but then again, we shouldn't have built cities in their backyards.
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Cities start off as early human settlements, and move on to small villages, then towns, then big cities. Then they modernise to what we see today. The majority of the UK's cities have been there so long now that saying we shouldn't have built it in their backyard is fatuous to say the least. One way or another, we've got to live somewhere. And contrary to popular hippy beleif, we simply cannot live in harmony with nature. We've got to kill it one way or another, and THAT is just nature, life, and so on.
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I know some people will suddenly think i've gone off the point here, but why not just do what that film portrayed [the one with Jean Claude Van Damme] were those people were hunting the homeless. I find no problem in that, as they're pests. Or, better yet, hunt people who are on deathrow. Or known Paedophiles. Or seriel rapists. Atleast they can think ahead.
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That is a fairly different thing. Yes, homeless people are pests, but they CAN be helped. Animals simply cannot be rehabilitated. They will just continue to multiply in numbers until they are out of control. However, homeless people, paedophiles, rapists, and murderers are all something that advancements in law enforcement and psychology can take care of.
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That's completly different, from what i'm aware you're not a farmer and so you don't actually need to kill anything, if you have a pest problem, fine, try and deal with it in a humane way.
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I am not a farmer, no, but I do know people who are, and have regularly helped them out with their rabbit problems. There is no "humane" way of dealing with rabbits. You can't simply pick it up, put it somewhere else, then walk off, because it will come back. They are already in their natural habitat, so where else do you take it? The truth is, that moving the problem-rabbits to another area will do nothing more than move the same problem to a different place. They need to be killed to remove the problem - and farmers kill animals which threaten their crops is something which has been done for thousands of years.
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Unless the Rats are charging at you with spears and rifles of their own, i don't see why you have to kill them.
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There is nothing else you can do with them. If you move them into the wild, then they will simply attack and kill off the wildlife with disease. If you leave them alone then they just become more and more of a problem until they need to be dealt with.
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Surely making them bleed and spatter puts more bacteria and disease in the air and ground than catching them and releasing them some place else?
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No. When you shoot an animal with an air rifle, it breaks into their skull, burrows into their brain, and then stays there. There is a minimum of blood because the wound has been plugged up by the pellet. In a .22 rifle, firing shot with explosive charge, the hot led actually burns the inside of the wound, effectively stopping the bleeding. This is a method that surgeons use to make cuts that don't bleed heavily.
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Why not use your skills to tranqulize them instead? Why shatter their skulls unfairly? Why not just put them to sleep and move them some place else.
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Because like I said earlier, that would just be a "same problem, different location" situation. It causes their diseases to spread to countryside wild life, and if you relocate them in a city, there is a good chance they will just cause somebody else a problem. There is no good solution to it other than killing them.
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No, you believe you do. But i hardly think your helping lower the numbers of Rats et al. If you went around your town, shooting at random Rats that were posing a threat to people, then fine, that could be classed as helping. But you're not.
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I am, just not on the sort of scale you're talking about. I don't wait for a rat to come along, or go out hunting for one. Simply put, if I have a rat problem that is affecting the nieghbours or my street, I deal with it by gunning them down, and making sure I've got the whole family. If I start seeing rats run across my back yard, then I get the rifle out, wait for it to come by again, and kill it. Simple.
It's just home pest control.
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Besides, my Nan lives on the outskirts of quite a rough area, and when going into town on a night, i never see any Rats, although it is known that they are there [droppings etc] so, i fail to see how you are doing a justice.
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Sometimes that happens - you recognise the signs of a rat infestation but you see no rats. That is when you need to do a *bit* of hunting to find them, but that is the only hunting most people like me ever do. I mean, who the hell wants rat doppings all over the place right? Nobody.
Either you call in the pest control people and get charged rediculous amounts of money, or you do what they do anyway, and kill the thing.
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Rats tend to avoid human contact, and thus barely have contact with them at all [unless they're living in their house] so you must sit up at night in your backyard taking pot shots at them.
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No, I don't. I'm quite a sharp shooter, so when I spot one I can usually pick it off there and then with a perfect headshot. Yes, rats do avoid human contact - but that doesn't mean to say you never get the chance to take a good shot at one. You know when you've got a problem when you start seeing them often!
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If you want to reduce a pest problem, get a Cat or Dog.
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I have both, and the cat regularly brings in mice and small rats. The dog is far too passive to want to chase rats or vermin, since he is a grayhound. The cat regularly has to be taken to the vet to be treated for the various diseases these rats and mice carry.
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So? That's like saying the death penalty is fine and dandy because people are going to die soon anyway.
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People lay poison traps, that cause the mice and rats a great deal of pain and suffering before they die, and this is how most rats/mice end their life. However, if you ARE good enough to kill rats instantly, then it's a much more humane way for them to go. And because I only ever kill rats when they are a problem (because that's the only time I ever see them), it is to me a better way of sorting the problem.
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If this is about the Seagulls attacking people then why not just do research on alternative methods of getting rid of them?
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There are no alternative methods. People shooting them from their homes and professional egg poaching teams are what keep their numbers down. Other than that, there is no other means of dealing with the adults. And the garbage collection people refuse to take garbage sacks when they are in cans for some reason...
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Sure, you may kill a couple of thousand, but that doesn't exactly stop anymore from being a bother.
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Well actually, yes it does. Since I've started killing them, bagging them, and burying them, they've been leaving my house alone. These days, I only have to shout "SHOO" out of my window on the very odd occasion.
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A couple of months later that thousand will be replaced by more...and more...and more etc.
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It may be replaced, but you'll find less seagulls attempt to nick your garbage. Somehow they just know it will be more risky...
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In summary, by killing something you justify it by saying you're helping to keep the numbers down. When in reality you aren't.
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No, I've already told you, I justify it by getting rid of a problem without having to pay the pest control people to come around and sort it. And the problem with gulls, well, they simply refuse to sort that out because they usually fly away by the time they get there.
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You are merely making way for more of their kind to take it's place and so the cycle continues with no long term benefit or solution.
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That's where you're wrong. The ONLY solution, for both long term and short term, is to kill them. Pest control contractors are already doing their best to reduce the numbers around towns and cities, but for a homeowner there is little else you can do except either kill them yourself, or pay for someone else to kill them. It's not up to the homeowner to reduce numbers - it's up to the homeowner to erradicate localised pests.
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To find vermin, you must go looking for it.
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No. Wrong. Massively wrong. I never go looking for them unless I find droppings around my property and need to work out where they are. Otherwise, I simply shoot on sight.
The gray squirrels for instance cause me problems sometimes because they steal things from my garbage sacks - most everything I kill in terms of pests has something to do with garbage in fact. Killing them doesn't do any bad - it only ever helps. I don't ever have to look for them - they come to me. If the pests aren't at my house directly causing me a problem then I do not go out looking for them just so I can have an excuse to kill something.
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ats hardly prance around in the garden, singing tributes to Donny Osmond until somebody shoots them.
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Nope, instead they choose to dart about your back and front yard, looking for places to nest and garbage sacks to steal from.
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You have to wait for them and in doing that you are merely looking for a kill without reason.
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I don't "wait" for rats. I don't know where you've got this idea that I basically sit in my garden polishing my rifle waiting for one to come along and make my day. It's not like that. It's just the same thing as owning a mousetrap or leaving poison bait around the house. Except I can't do either because I have pets. What else am I supposed to do? Let them continue to rip up my garbage sacks and litter the street? Leave their shit all over my carpet? Make nests in my garden and under my floorboards?
