Poll: Should it be legal to shoot feral cats??

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Should hunters be allowed to shoot feral cats? * 8495 responses
Yes 44%
No 54%
Not sure 2%


I voted.
 
I think this guy is a genius, feral cats are a real problem here in WI. Many of these cats were dropped off in the country by stupid city folk. I always shot them when I saw wild cats around our house.
 
Of course they should be legal to hunt. They are a legitimate predator and really take their toll on songbirds, upland game, and waterfowl eggs and birds. If people don;t want to keep their cats any more, the last thing they ought ot do is drop them off in the wild so they become someone else's problem. That is what is unethical and inhumane about the whole thing. All the feral cats I've shot have dropped in their tracks and not even known what's hit them because they didn't feel a thing. Now that's what I call humane. Putting these miserable creatures out of their miserey is one of the most humane things we can do. Neutering and releasing them back in to the "wild" is not helping the problem; they still need to eat and are still problems because they shouldn't be where they are. I own cats and just becaues I own them doesn't mean that I love cats. Mine are fine, but these feral cats need to be dealt with and are very problematic. They should be legal to shoot under certain conditions. Just don't want the "anit's" to have anything to say when somebody's housecat/pet gets plugged. Cat owners just need to be responsible if they are going to have cats. Just my 2cents' worth.
 
Add: I went to the "don't shoot the cat" website. I've sent them two emails. The first detailed personal observations about feral cats in general and all that obvious stuff.

The second spoke to their questioning of the accuracy of the study, giving some details of direct experience around my wife's home in rural south Georgia.

Datum: The local animal shelter folks did a live trapping effort in an area of roughly a mile radius near my wife's house. In about two months, they caught 72 feral cats. Expand that into all of rural Georgia, and the Wisconsin estimate of around a million feral cats is in no way unreasonable.

The estimate of 100 songbirds per year per cat means two songbirds per week. This does not strike me as unreasonable.

In the FWIW department, I occasionally run across articles from the world of birding about a general decline in the numbers of observed songbirds. IMO, feral cats are contributory, along with habitat loss and such oddities as bird strikes on the various communications towers around the country...

Art
 
Well, what else are you supposed to do with them?

Feral cats are a problem created by humans. It would be irresponsible to let the problem go unattended. That would be like the Superfund site of ecological dynamics.

So what else are you supposed to do with them? Club, stab, dash, or what? Trap them, and then what? Euthanize? Give me a break!

It's just that shooting is kind of satisfying and thats bad for the ultimate goal of progressive civility.
 
Don't know of many places where it's not legal to kill feral cats.
 
Yet another reason cats are bad . . . :neener:

BATES TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) - A man cooking in his kitchen was shot after one of his cats knocked his 9mm handgun onto the floor, discharging the weapon, Michigan State Police said.

Joseph Stanton, 29, of Bates Township in Iron County, was shot in his lower torso around 6 p.m. Tuesday, the state police post in Iron River reported. He was transported to Iron County Community Hospital.

Michelle Sand, a spokeswoman at the Iron River hospital, said Stanton was treated there before being transferred to Marquette General Hospital for further treatment. But Marcie Miller, a representative of the Marquette facility, said there was no record of the hospital receiving a patient by that name.

A telephone message seeking comment was left Wednesday at Stanton's home.

State police said he was cooking at his stove when the cat knocked the loaded gun off the kitchen counter behind him.
 
I have always felt that feral cats were a curse on small game and birds. I have taken every chance possible, to reduce the population of feral cats, for the past 40 years or so. Pet cat, feral cat, they are fair game for me if on my property, or anywhere else I can get a shot at one. Course, I don't much like cats to start with. :)
 
Add: I went to the "don't shoot the cat" website. I've sent them two emails. The first detailed personal observations about feral cats in general and all that obvious stuff.
Click to expand...

Heh, I e-mailed em too. Called em a buncha women and asked em to go bleed all over someone else. Ya, I was always the kid that had to poke the rattlesnake with a stick.

I don't get some yankees. Some of the men up there wouldn't make half of one of our women. I am convinced that these people only survive because others look out for them. Some are highly educated and don't have enough common sense to pour piss out of a boot with directions on both ends. Nothing wrong with it except that these are the people who want to make rules for others with whom they have absolutely nothing in common. The Constitution was written to give most all power to the states because someone in New England has no idea what life is like in Texas so how the hell can they tell us what is best for us?

Wow, I got a little off topic there. Sorry. I'm gonna go mow the yard or something.
 
Each year I shoot at least two dozen feral cats. They wreak havoc on the turkey poults on my land upstate. I don't particularly like killing anything I don't eat but the population would be out of control if I didn't. They not only kill and eat the poults but also the red salamanders that are part of the turkey's diet.
 
WOW. again (posted in the other thread) can't believe how many cats you guys nail!!
woo hoo! if there are this many roaming around, have at them.
i will say though, a photo worthy prize??
it makes me laugh a little, but looking at my kitty here, that is a pretty sick one.
shooting ferals bugging you is one thing, hunting them down as sport, ugh.
id treat them as any other pests- you kill roaches, but you dont go out looking for them.
 
If the cats are truly wild, i saw fire away!

The problem is someone is going to shoot someones house cat, which isnt cool. I agree if you own an animal, you should make sure it stays on your property and wears a collar. We all know there are instances where a pet might escape and have no collar on.

Scenario 1:

You are giving your cat a bath, naturally you take the collar off. The cat flips out and jumps out the window and runs away (cats dont like baths). Buba is sitting next door just looking to blast a cat with no collar. Here comes "snowball" all wet, no collar. BOOM!! bye bye snow ball. Chances are You are going to go ballistic. Someone killing your pet is not cool.

We all know there are jackasses with no common sense that are goign to be blasting away at anything resembling a cat.

I voted yes on the poll. just try not to shoot the neighbors pet.
 
By and large, folks aren't shooting feral cats where other folks' house pet cats are likely to be. Generally, house pet cats stay fairly close to home. They're not gonna be way off in some farmer's or rancher's land--and if they are, they're hunting and shame on'em.

I had to deal with the stray cat/dog thing for several years, when a subdivision began development next to my 230 acres outside of Austin, Texas. I worked with the kids there, so they could pass the word to their parents: Dogs with collars, okay; no problem. Cats in my pasture? Big mistake. I rated "my" quail above stray cats. All in all, though, the subdivision folks worked with me okay. The tradeoff was that I taught their kids about outdoor stuff.

Never let common sense go on vacation...

:), Art
 
If you know it is feral then have at it. I have had to remove 15 feral cats from my mom's property. We managed to live trap a couple but the rest got wise to that so we had to shoot the rest. A nasty bit of work that took 3 weeks to finish. However some people tend to think that it would be a green light to shoot any cat they see. It I found my collared daughters cat blasted in half by some fool we would have a severe problem in the works. I would hate to see a headline where a bubba was dropped for shooting someones pet.


Some of these ignorant folks would think it was fun to shoot at any cat.

"Yup lookie there Jim Bob looks like a feral cat"

"Gosh darn you must be right Ernie he musta found that there that collar in da trash"

BLAM BLAM

"Hehe chunky salsa Jim Bob but what we gonna shoot now"

"well lookie there Ernie that lady is being followed by that there feral dog on a rope. It's sneaking up on her we better blast it."

I have had the misfortune to have been out in the wood hunting with people who shoot just about anything that comes along. Then turn around and make some asinine excuse why that porcupine had to go, or why that racoon was a menace to the forest. Heaven help if a coyote was to show up. I do not associate with them any more.

Killing for killing sake is the sign of a sick mind . . .
 
People who care about their pets should do everything in their power to protect them. Coyotes, feral dogs, other cats and cars do not care how a cat ended up in their path without a collar, and neither do I.

Years ago, my father tired of being overrun by cats and began trapping them with a havahart trap and turning them over to animal control.

He kept track of how many he trapped for a short period but finally gave up. Sometimes he would catch a couple in a single night using only one trap (he had a separate holding container) and in one case, IIRC, he even got two in the trap at once. In all that time and after trapping literally hundreds of cats he caught maybe one or two cats with collars on--and this was in one of the larger suburbs of Dallas--not out in the country.

greymoor,

Killing simply for killing's sake may not be a good thing, but in the case of feral cats it accomplishes a desirable goal. ;)
 
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