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Originally posted by Groesbeck Hurricane
Of course, once you kill off all the vermin hunters then you have a wonderful explosion of things like rabbits, rats, mice, moles, and other such disease bearing critters. These are the animals that eat the forage for your livestock.
I ALWAYS shoot stray dogs. I will always shoot a sick animal such as a coyote etal. I will never kill a predator just because it is a predator or because I have a prejudice. They just simply don't randomly attack cows for the fun of it.
I don't have what I consider proof positive information as to sheep/goats. Although all the goats on my in-laws place stopped going down when we started killing dogs and they stopped killing the bobcats and coyotes. There was also more grazing as there were fewer rabbits and other such vermin. 2600 acres in West Texas if you are wondering. Uncle started killing off all other animals again recently and his losses due to lack of grazing for the goats keep going up. Simply amazing.
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All very true. Things are pretty out of balance in places. The numbers of predators and vermin go up and down dramatically in any given area. Hunting is a very small factor in all of that; we simply don't seem to be able to make a dent in either population. An excess of either will give you trouble.
It has always struck me as ironic to be shooting Columbian ground squirrels and rock chucks on a guy's place in the spring and early summer, after having shot coyotes there the previous late fall and winter. In the end, however, I really don't think we have the impact we would like to think.
I never could bring myself to shoot the stray dogs. Even realizing they are a huge problem in the areas in which I hunt. I guess I have always left that to the locals, who seem to have no trouble doing that. Even if they know the dog's name. I just can't help but imagine some poor kid whose dog got away just this once, and me not knowing who is who in the zoo, shooting some one's beloved pet. The locals seems to have a better handle on the problem dogs, know who owns who and who is responsible, so I'll leave that up to them to work out.