Face it. Part of farm life is critter control, and we’ve been very fortunate not to have had too many issues from wildlife.
Last year, Erik decided to buy a .22. Not just any .22, but a wicked-looking, black-ops styled one! He even put a red dot scope on it so his son could point and shoot with very little skill.
Unfortunately, the poor kid is too afraid of being eaten by coyotes to go out rabbit hunting with it, and Erik never bothered showing me how it works. So . . . .
Yesterday morning I walk out just after 9am like I always do to go feed the chickens and pigeons. Since it had been warming up, I’d left the wooden coop doors open, with the chickens shut inside their chicken-wire room just like I’d done for the last 2 years without issue.
Imagine my horror when I walked-up to find my favorite fat chicken a bloody mess! Her entire back-end was gone and she lay in a collapsed heap on the floor of the coop. No doubt she had died from shock and pain as whatever had gotten her had VERY SLOWLY eaten her, bite by bite.
I have a friend (I love her dearly) who has decided to go vegan to protest the in-humane way animals are kept as food. While I understand her decision is completely her own and I hold no ill will against her for it, I DO get a bit burned with ALL of the exaggerated posts and stories she posts online about how horrible farmers are to animals. To make it worse, she’s a news anchor!
As a farmer, my number one goal is the safety and well-being of my animals. While not all farmers hold these same values, NO ANIMAL does. No animal cares about the well-being of it’s prey/dinner. It doesn’t care if it leaves a family orphaned, nor if it causes excruciating pain. Animals are cold and selfish — they do what they need to survive.
As I surveyed the crime scene in my coop, I became aware of a fuzzy body tucked-up in the back under my nesting boxes. Raccoon? Possum? Fox? I saw the small, baseball-sized hole it had made in my chicken wire. Now a vegan would have opened the door, and shooed the critter out, telling it to have a nice day.
But I’m a farmer, and I care about my animals. So I ran to the house to get a gun!
Alas, Erik had been on a gun-buying binge lately, and the .22 was not in the rack. After searching I finally found it, and loaded the clip.
IT TOOK ME 10 MINUTES TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO CHAMBER A ROUND.
Finally happy, I run back outside waving my gun in the air, ready to take-on the critter. But I can’t get the red dot scope to work, and the iron sights are blocked by that dump contraption, so I knew I’d have to point and shoot!
I quietly opened the coop door, and ushered the chickens out to safety (they could care less about the possum OR the dead chicken body).
The fluffy critter still slept. I half wondered if maybe the rooster had attacked and killed it. I could faintly see it breathing, so I guess it was too full of fat chicken to be bothered.
I quietly walked-in, took aim, and fired!
Missed!
The fluffy critter still slept!
Pop! Pop! Pop!
Still missed, but at least now I could see tiny bullet holes in the wall of my coop, so I needed to lower my gun.
Pop! Pop!
A shell casing bonked him and he shuddered slightly.
Man, this guy can sleep through anything!
I lowered the gun again and fired-off four more rounds.
This time I could see it was a possum, he raised his head to hiss at me and wreath slightly.
Pop! Pop!
He lay still.
When I scooped fat chicken out with the shovel, she weighed roughly 20 pounds. I was bummed. I’d hoped to cross her to the Light Brahama rooster and make some meat chickens that grew moderately fast. Oh well.
When I drug the possum out (by his tail) he was a good size fellow! Much lighter than the chicken though.
I dumped their bodies off by the woods, side by side.
Erik later showed me how to turn the red dot on.
I figure some target practice is due with the .22 and my hand gun sometime soon!