I love everything about hunting except for the killing, gutting and eating of animals, which is why I like to shoot varmints. You can tell yourself that you are helping the ecosystem by removing excess predators or harmful disease carrying marmots, you don't have to gut them and you certainly don't have to eat them and I hate to admit it but it's fun to shoot prairie dogs and woodchucks.
Two of my brothers and I went out to Wyoming a couple of years ago to hunt coyotes, which is kind of odd since there plenty of coyotes here in New England which are usually much bigger than the western coyotes. They each got one. I was shut out, which is fine because I bear no animus towards them, the coyotes that is.
Coming from Connecticut where you can only shoot an animal after it exhausts it's last appeal to the s.p.c.a.. the a.c.l.u. and the state supreme court, Wyoming was a a different world. If there are rules for the hunting of coyotes or prairie dogs in Wyoming they are few and far between. You don't need a license, there are no bag limits, no restriction on firearms. When you talk to a rancher this live and let kill attitude begins to make sense. Coyotes can be very harmful to livestock particularly when the cows are calving. Most rancher will shoot any coyote on sight if that were to ever happen as coyotes are indeed sneaky little bastards. Prairie dogs can carry plague and if left unchecked will breed beyond belief creating prairie dog towns with gigantic populations. These prairie dogs towns consist of innumerable holes in the ground where man and domesticated beast can twist and break a leg and lots and lots of prairie dog shite.
1 comment:
Really? When you talked to a rancher s/he said that coyotes were bad? I'm shocked. I bet if they would quit shooting coyotes they wouldn't have such a prairie dog problem. That might be one too many cars on the logical thinking train for a person to grasp, though. Great blog, by the by.
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