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Old March 8, 2005, 06:24 PM   #1
Mannlicher
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A new meaning for 'take out the cat'

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...s/hunting_cats

I have to say, I am all for it.
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Old March 8, 2005, 06:59 PM   #2
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I concur!

Song birds are protected and anyone whose cat is caught killing song birds are held responsible. So, if a cat was on my property and I knew it was killing the song birds, then I feel it is my duty to help protect them.

Not to mention, it's fun to shoot cats, they are the devil.
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Old March 8, 2005, 08:34 PM   #3
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I'm in.
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Old March 8, 2005, 08:53 PM   #4
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Cats have been chasing and killing birds... it's just what cats do. Do they threaten the balance of nature of songbird reproduction compared to the other various factors that effect the population of said "songbirds".

If you saw a cat killing a sparrow or starling, is that enough justification to kill said cat?

I remember my mom fed the birds for over 30 years, kept journals of what she saw, etc..... One day a hawk plucked a bird off one of her feeders, she freaked and started to rant, I found it amusing, reminding her that that's the way of it. Felines can not stop chasing and killing birds no more than that hawk could.

So lets not all traipse down the do gooders highway and try and save mother nature from herself. It don't work.

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Old March 8, 2005, 10:44 PM   #5
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Stray dogs are known to kill HUMANS, and yet hunting them was not proposed.

Don't tell me about "self-defense" is always a right; we're talking hunting here.

I find the proposal a severe misplacement of priorites.
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Old March 8, 2005, 11:13 PM   #6
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Quote:
Do they threaten the balance of nature of songbird reproduction compared to the other various factors that effect the population of said "songbirds".
YES. Cats are not native and they definitely affect the population of native birds AND OTHER WILDLIFE such as lizards, snakes and assorted other small animals in a major and negative way. The "messing with mother nature" was when cats were imported--not killing them off now. It's not a matter of saving mother nature from herself, it's a matter of saving her from those who allowed feral cats to proliferate.
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Stray dogs are known to kill HUMANS, and yet hunting them was not proposed. ...we're talking hunting here.
Exactly--the regulation of animal populations is a matter for the game commision--who regulates hunting. Therefore a hunting law would seem to be the ideal way to regulate the population of feral cats. Self-defense, as you pointed out, has little or nothing to do with hunting or the regulation of animal populations.

BTW, in some areas of the U.S. hunters ARE encouraged to kill feral dogs and cats so I'm not sure where you're going with that...

Before anyone starts to hyperventilate, I am not a cat hater--in fact I own one. But it's a pet so I control its movements. It stays inside. That keeps it from getting run over, catching diseases, irritating the neighbors, killing birds, lizards or other wildlife, getting chewed on by other cats, chewing on other cats, or getting eaten by feral dogs or coyotes. I guess that seems pretty unreasonable to some...

Just for fun, here's a similar thread from THR. Interesting comments by Mr. Art Eatman on down the page a bit.

http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=129092
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Old March 8, 2005, 11:38 PM   #7
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Rich Lucibella.....Beautiful cat Rich, it dam near looks alive. Maybe it is! Great shot for the "Big Top"!! What part of the country were you in?
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Old March 8, 2005, 11:47 PM   #8
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this is just a little wierd dont you think. i've taken shots at stray toms in our yard before but ammending laws so that cats can be killed on the basis that they eat too many birds seems a little bit absurd.

Quote:
has estimated that between 7.8 million and 219 million birds are killed by rural cats in Wisconsin each year.
could you be a little more vague please theres quite a margin there.
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Old March 9, 2005, 01:07 AM   #9
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Quote:
theres quite a margin there.
Yeah, but even the small side of the wide margin is way too large.

BTW, if you check out the link I posted you will find that there is already an unenforced law on the books in Wisconsin REQUIRING hunters to kill feral cats.
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Old March 9, 2005, 07:10 AM   #10
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Like most statistics quoted in the press, the number of songbirds actually killed by cats is a lot smaller than quoted numbers. When I was in Minnesota years ago there was a big flap about stray cats and songbirds. I asked how the number of dead birds was arrived at and was told they took the estimated number of stray cats, assumed their diet consisted wholly of songbirds and multiplied by the number of birds a cat could eat in a year.

Loss of habitat in the wintering areas is much more of a threat to migratory songbirds than stray cats.

I am in favor of controlling feral cats but don't think pet cats should necessarily be kept indoors all the time as this is not their nature, any more than it would be for dogs.
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Old March 9, 2005, 10:01 AM   #11
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Quote:
Estimates between 7.8 million and 219 million songbirds killed by cats.
Pure & unadulterated = B.S.

Loss of habitat, availability of natural foods, severity of wintering conditions, disease, natural mortality rates, land management practices, agricultural pesticides, all have a significant effect within populations of birds. The #'s taken by cats are minuscule by comparison.

For those who feel the need to kill cats, reminds me of a Three Stooges skit, where the punch line is - For duty & humanity!


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Old March 9, 2005, 10:47 AM   #12
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TPAW-
He was killed in New Mexico. Took two rounds from a 4" 500 Linebaugh and ran 100 yards to another tree. Put a 45-70 thru his chest, frontally, and he still managed to come down and go another 50 yards.

One tough cat. One BAD shoot.
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Old March 9, 2005, 02:26 PM   #13
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It's always fun to see said Hawk pick up the cat which is trying to get the song birds... besides a hawk would have a better meal of a cat... And equlibrium would then be re-established
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Old March 9, 2005, 02:47 PM   #14
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Dang it, does every thread have to turn into a politically correct argument? Jeesh. Cats kill birds, peole kill cats. So what?

Cats don't always kill for the food ya know. The sport hunt them songbirds a lot and thats a capital offense in my book.
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Old March 9, 2005, 08:38 PM   #15
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It's estimated that there are a million feral cats in Wisconsin.

7.8 million songbirds killed a year only requires that each cat kill 8 songbirds in an ENTIRE YEAR.

Are you guys actually saying that you think a feral cat living off what it can find or kill wouldn't kill 8 songbirds in a 365 day period?

I know well fed house cats that do that--and they're just killing for fun.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohio Annie
don't think pet cats should necessarily be kept indoors all the time as this is not their nature
My cat is afraid of the outdoors because she's never been outside. You know, to keep her
Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnKSa
from getting run over, catching diseases, irritating the neighbors, killing birds, lizards or other wildlife, getting chewed on by other cats, chewing on other cats, or getting eaten by feral dogs or coyotes. I guess that seems pretty unreasonable to some...
Anyway, as far as I can tell, nearly ALL pets are disinclined to have their movement restricted. If you take the approach that restricting the movement of a pet should be avoided because it is "against their nature" then you pretty much have to say that HAVING pets should be avoided because it is not the nature of animals to be pets and/or have their movement restricted.

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Old March 10, 2005, 08:39 PM   #16
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Although not a cat lover, I am against this. I think it only puts gun ownership and hunting in a bad light. Now the anti gun nuts have one more reason to win people over to there side. Something like this helps PETA.
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Old March 11, 2005, 05:38 PM   #17
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I'm a cat lover, and I would agree with this law under ONE condition, they eat what they kill .

Now, having said that, I don't think there should be a "hunting" law. Maybe a law that says that you can keep down the population by shooting them when they get too overpopulated but not just for sport.

We have ferel cats in my neck of the woods (got bite by one also and had to get rabie shots) and as long as they aren't bothering my things or my uncles (dogs, the shed, etc..) and aren't creating a problem then I just don't pay attention. If they start to become a problem, then I lower the population again.

But, I try to make the most humane shot possible so no pain or slow death.

Wayne
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Old March 11, 2005, 06:04 PM   #18
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 12-34hom
If you saw a cat killing a sparrow or starling, is that enough justification to kill said cat?
Well, I said that protecting song birds that are illegal to kill was my justification. The European Starling and certain sparrows are not protected in Pa, so if a cat was killing them, I would wait until it was done, then shoot it for being on my property.
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Old March 12, 2005, 10:26 PM   #19
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Kill cats

Where I live, all dogs and cats are required to have a collar, a license and a rabies tag, they are also restricted to being confined to the owner's property or on a leash.
Any animal without a collar is open season, if with a collar and tags, it may be captured and turned over to animal control, they call the registered phone number once, if no response in 2 days they are killed.
If you cannot capture the animal, you can kill it if on your property.
Don
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Old March 12, 2005, 10:42 PM   #20
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I once worked for...a federal agency concerned with the well-being of birds and various other critters. Once in a great while, and normally with great public protest, this agency would commence to whacking feral cats on the portions of public land it controlled.

Feral cats (and "feral" is the key word - not your neighbor's cat at your bird feeder) are not pets that simply aren't at home - they're housecats that have adapted to living in the wild and were very possibly born in the wild. They're not a native species to north america (there were no herds of domestic shorthairs roaming the plains with buffalo when the white man showed up), and they cause serious trouble for many of our native species.

I like cats. Owned several, will probably own them again. I'd prefer not to shoot them. But I understand that sometimes it has to be done. Spaying, neutering, collaring and controlling pets is a responsibility of pet owners. More of that would lead to less shooting of feral cats and dogs.
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Old March 12, 2005, 11:56 PM   #21
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Wandering by from THR...

Look: The animal shelter folks trapped some 72 feral cats in an area of maybe a thousand acres or less, of rural and wooded land including farmland fields. I don't know if that's a common sort of number or high or low. Still, a cat to every 14 acres doesn't strike me as unduly high. I imagine the combination of birds, mice, squirrels and rabbits in 14 acres could support one cat quite easily.

Regardless, it's a potential for any similar landform. So, how many thousand-acre equivalent areas are there in Wisconsin? Dig out your atlas and do some reasonable guesstimating.

The 1995 article claimed 100 songbirds per cat per year. That's two birds a week, and I gay-ron-dang-tee you that's entirely doable, entirely likely. That's based on my own observations of housecats and birds in town, in the country and in relative wilderness. We even have feral cats in the darned desert! FWIW, I watched a neighbor's cat in downtown Austintatious do in about three mockingbirds a week, for a couple of years.

Any way you slice it, the numbers are scary when you multiply it by the number of states with songbird nesting areas...

Around my wife's house in south Georgia, we used to commonly have robins, cardinals, brown thrashers and poor wills. Time of year varied, of course. I've seen almost none in recent years.

IMO, it's more than just habitat losses...

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Old March 15, 2005, 05:01 PM   #22
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The hazard in killing a domestic cat, feral or otherwise, is that someone like
me might see you do it. Then YOU would become the quarry. If you must do it, I would advise you to at least file the front sight down on your weapon. That way it won't hurt so bad when I ram it up your A$$.
I doubt that bird killing has anything to do with your motivations to use domestic cats for target practice, but I would just point out that over twice the number of birds you quoted as being killed by feral cats die every year from starvation. Even with that, it doesn't look like we are in danger of running out of birds of any type - other than ones driven to extinction by humans. By the way, cats don't hunt for fun; humans are the only species that does that.
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Old March 15, 2005, 05:17 PM   #23
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Been watching this thread develop and I must say, DR_MAX and I think alike.
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Old March 15, 2005, 05:22 PM   #24
Rich Lucibella
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Dr-Max-
Sure am glad (for one of us) that you weren't around when I killed my last Bobcat. I do it whenever possible on my lease, as they particularly like young deer (and the calves you'll be buyng at the WinnDixie next season).

Killing for fun? How about killing more than you'll return to eat.....MANY predators do that; including cats, known to hunt on full stomachs. So, if they have a food source on the ground and insist on killing another fresh, can I call it "killing for fun", too?

"Domestic" Cats?
Quote:
the domestic free-ranging cat is actually a harmful exotic species, like a zebra mussel with name tags.
http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/fwt/back_...er98/cats.html
Note the operative term, "free ranging", there? If you keep your cat housed, leashed or enclosed, you have every right to expect his safety. When you let him range onto your neighbor's property, he's the predator; Farmer Jones is simply defending his own property rights.
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Old March 15, 2005, 06:24 PM   #25
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The reason that we keep the herds of ferels down here is due to disease (including rabies but that is rare here but not zero chance of and it only takes one to spread it really quickly) and the destruction of property. I could care less about the songbirds (we have mainly crows, ravens, and some really nasty jays).

I don't worry about the birds that I love to watch, the Ospry, Hawks and Eagles eat the ferels anyway .

I am a cat lover, and as such my cats are "nipped and tucked" if you get my drift. As a responsible cat owner I make sure that they have shots and are tagged (and we don't have to tag cats here). It's the people that aren't responsible that create this problem, and unfortunatly, when the herds get too big they have to be thinned.

(And if you're wondering why we don't do the trap, "nip and tuck" thing is because the humane society and animal control won't do anything and the society that tried it can't keep up and can't get good rates for the "nip and tuck")

Wayne

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