Re: Christmas Day in Texas
I'm still fairly new around here, but it certainly looks like this thread (or more specifically, this subject of trapping) sure raises some shackles on ALL sides.
Some folks seem to think that trapping an animal in a steel jaw trap where it lays around suffering afterward is wrong. So here's the solution: Land mines. Maybe even claymores and trip wires. Hey; at least the animal won't be laying around for long after tripping off a bouncing betty, right?
No?
OK then; fine. So we're back to either traps, or some other method of pest control. Hunting by stalking is fine, and I have no problem with that for sport hunters. But there seem to be problems with these animals in some areas that go beyond sport hunting. And different situations require different responses. You wouldn't use a .30-06 in the local petting zoo on elementary school field trip day, right? So why condemn someone else for using what works in THEIR location and situation to meet THEIR need for eliminating the animal(s) in question?
Whether you nuke'em from orbit (it's the only way to be sure!) or put on a loincloth and chase them with a sharp stick; in the end the animal is just as dead, right? So the need to eliminate it becomes a matter of efficiency. If it is needing to cover that missing spot on the trophy room wall, then sportsmanship should be paramount. But if it is a matter of making sure that Little Jimmy isn't Kitty Chow on the way to the school bus stop, then use a frakin' GE minigun if that's what it takes.
But whatever it takes for YOUR situation, have enough respect for the other guy to accept HIS needs may be different from yours and vice-versa. (Except for the argument that "We took the animals' land from them to make farms"- I'll buy that one just as soon as the mountain lion/coyote/groundhog/etc. takes me down to the Register of Deeds Office and shows me where he legally purchased said land and pays his taxes on it. Til then; IT'S AN ANIMAL. It may be a part of nature, but so is man and therefore man has a right to hunt anything he can just as that animal does in nature. It hunts cattle, man hunts it. It uses fangs and claws because it has them. Man uses rifles and traps, because he has them. It's all a part of nature. But man did not "take" the land from the animal.)
Anyway, nice rifle, and nice cat.