Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire I second! All in favor say "Aye!"

No one has quoted form the study that was done by the National Geographic Society a few years past. That bastion of left wing moon bats stated that by conservative accounts over 7 billion ( yes that is with a 'B' ) birds die each year to feral cats. To me that statement pretty much sealed the fate of every cat I see.
You can quote all the wildlife studies you want, but on our lease we instigated a policy of predator eradication several years ago. I am the top of the food chain. No possums, coons, cats, dogs, or feathered competition. Guess what? We got 3 coveys of wild birds now. Coincidence? Me thinks not.

To me cats are targets of opportunity.

And as stated before, I too get a woody when I smoke one.

i tried smoking um...Can't keep um lit.

Cats rank right up there....... almost to same degree as a lying, conniving, manipulating, lazy, parasite, scum of a politician!

When I was a kid, we ad a crazy old spinster neighbor with a ton of cats. When she moved out, about 40 (yes, 40!) stayed behind. Being the ripe old age of about 6, and having at my disposal three dogs that just HATED cats, and a couple of BB guns, we made it our mission to eradicate the feral felines.

Between school, hunting other critters, fishing, and general chores getting in the way, along with the cat's inherent propensity for propogation, it took the better part of 4 years to track down every last one of them (by which time the BBs had upgraded to 22LRs - a marked improvement to say the least).

I will say that we noticed a dramatic decline in resident rabbits, quail, squirrels, and songbirds during the time the cats were around, and a veritable explosion in the populations of all of those critters (minus the quail) once the kitties were gone.

Also, regarding an earlier comment as to the precision of the Wisconsin study, when you consider that multiple variables must be calculated from the actual study data, the precision becomes a bit more understandable. This is very elementary example, but it might illustrate the point. Consider first that there will be a range of numbers as how many feral or semi-feral cats are out there. Now, multiply that cat range against the average range of the number of birds killed by each cat each year, and you get a rather wide range of birds killed by feral cats each year.

To further illustrate the example, if the range of feral and semi-feral cats was from, say, 3 to 5 million cats, and the range of birdies killed by each cat was from 2 to 45 per year (determined by the feralness, lifestyle, and lifespan of the cat, and including kills by Mrs. Smith's fat cat that gets one or two a year and the stray down the street that gets about 1 per week), you could very quickly get a range that looks very close to the 7.8 to 219 million birds killed by cats in WI each year.

Either way, I agree with the cats being nonnative nongame nonprotected species; i.e. targets of opportunity.

Both Wisconsin and my home state of Minnesota have done a considerable amount of research into the �cat problem�. As many on this thread have already pointed out, the sheer numbers are mind-boggling. Both states have concluded that the number one predator of grouse and pheasant is the cat.

The cat problem boils down to predator control in the same manner as wolves. There are approximately 75-million domestic cats in the US. Most studies agree that 65% of domestic cats are allowed to free-range at least part of the time � about 49-million. A conservative estimate of the feral cat population is 50-million.

Folks against controlling feral and free-range cat populations haven�t yet grasped the impact of 100-million invasive predators.

Studies show that about 85% of domestic cats have been neutered or 11-million capable of breeding. While that�s a lot of cats, consider that for every viable cat you see there are four feral cats out there doing the dirty.

i'm smelling cat poop here.
how about some bag totals, fellas?
lefty: that leaves you out. your eradication program smacks of hard, cold truth.
i've mucked out many a stall. pig, cow and horse bidness don't come close, even on an august day pushing 102 in the shade, to cat pee in any shape, form or fashion.

I have a camp in a pretty much uninhabited area of the Catskill Forest Preserve in NY. Several years ago we started noticing a dramatic decline in rabbits, grouse, turkey and other small game. We also were seeing more cats in the area. After talking with the local conservation officer, it was decided to reduce the cat population. Over the next couple years the cat population was virtually eliminated, and small game numbers are back to what they once were. Nuff said!

Aye! If they are feral ( i define feral as running loose without a collar and nowhere near a homestead ) I kill em. Only good thing about the rise of yotes in the appalachians is the slight decline of feral cats. Yotes seem to like em. But then again we kill yotes where we find them too. Feral dogs get the same treatment.
And btw, I spit coffee when I paged down to that cat on the bullets picture. That is just wrong on so many levels. Funny, but wrong :0)

Running lifetime total is probably somewhere around 80, counting the one's that my dogs and I got when I was a kid, the one's that I didn't quite "miss" with my vehicle, the one's that I intentionally popped with a .22, and the one that I got in college that refused to sleep anywhere other than the front seat of my Jeep when the top and doors were off. Snuck up on that kitty and got him in full-stride with a 12 gauge, 3 inch Mag load of #6s at about 7 yards. What was left "cat"apaulted into the drainage ditch behind the apartment complex - 20 feet away from impact point. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

I take a half dozen cats or so each year while canine trapping, never had much trouble giving em' a 22lr in the brain bucket. There is a crazy lady here in town that saves all of her leftovers and even buys cat food to put out in all of the vacant buildings for the stray cats. When I first moved to town you wouldn't have believed the # of feral cats! There are still a bunch but the 22-250 has turned more than one inside out as it attemped to spread my garbage on the lawn.

When I was in college we had a number (read that TONS!!) of feral cats running around campus. What made me mad were the people that were in no way associated with the university coming on campus to feed the things. If I caught them they were asked to leave. I also disposed of the food and water left behind. All feral cats do is spread disease.

BTW, here's a fun link for all you cat lovers! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

For the fun of it!

Scott

Up the Valley, in the little ranch town of Corvallis thirty-several years ago, our neighbor at the other end of the alley was a sweet old widow lady who couldn't bear the sight of all those hungry cats hanging around her back porch. She had two solutions:

� She left food and water on the back porch so they wouldn't go hungry.

� When the catulation at that end of the alley got too heavy, she asked her shooter neighbor (me) to come and thin 'em down to one or two � right there in her back yard, in her fruit trees, even in her barn, in full daylight, right there in town.

The .22 one-hander was a superb thinner and not a boring tool to use in that civic service. I don't think it ever dawned on her that she was baiting-up recreational shooting opportunities for me.

Alas, those days are but quaint nostalgia in today's enlightened modern society � even here in the Bitterroot, where old-time Darby residents proudly call themselves "Darbarians." Our old towns are no longer ranch towns but have become bedroom complexes for The People's Democratic Republic of Missoula, the university town at the lower end of the Valley.

It's kosher to kill unwanted babies, of course, but predaceous cats are as sacred as they were to Cleopatra and King Tut.

We've got this PITA bitch who's a deputy with us at the SO. She's wacked, she runs around with dog & cat food in her car and feeds strays on county time, eventhough we have a good animal control system. This trick won't call them due to knowing that most will be put down by animal control.

She a city girl who's from a political family (Democrat) and our sold out sheriff thinks he needs the votes, so she can get away with crap like this. She once stopped a kids pony ride in a shopping center parking lot that the owner had a permit to conduct. The animals had water and we know this fellow and he takes care of his animals, this broad goes up and feels the ponies forehead and say's that they are over heated and causes a big scene and starts pulling kids off the ponies and gets into a pissing contest with the owner of the ponies, which resulted in intervention from higher authority.

A few days later a couple of us put together a plan, we found a very recent road killed cat, and with some 550 cord we tied the cat to the back of her patrol car. So when she left the SO to go home that morning she's dragging this dead cat behind her car all the way home.

She didn't find it until the next day and she raised holy hell, went all the way to the sheriff, they even assigned an investigator, this to please her. They went as far as questioning all of us on the shift and couldn't come up with anything. I'ld love to had a picture of that cat bounceing down the road tied behind her patrol car.

That's a funny mental picture.
Another crazy old bat oughta town a few miles didn't want to let me trap at the bridge 1/2 mile from her house because she was afraid I might catch a cat. About the time she was saying no her husband showed up and said the he11 with the cats, go ahead and trap. Ended up being a lot better place to catch cats than coon so after 4-5 cats and 2 coon I pulled the traps and left. Reason the cats were in there so thick was the creek bottom is chock full of pheasants - go figure.

Sounds like a good reason to put the traps back in or set-up close for a little nighttime varmint hunting with a quiet rifle and good bullets. Not only are the tabbies thick, but I bet the foxes, coyotes, bobcats, etc., are keying in on those pheasants, too.

Just had to do it <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

best,
bhtr

I like cats,but ours are indoor cats and neutured.

There's a big row going on now in the small city I live in.All dogs have to be licenced but cats don't,that pisses me off to no end.Irresponcible cat owners let mittens out at night to come and howl and fight in my yard.The city says there's not a cat problem,I tell them to come and look in my wifes flower beds,they say get a humane trap and turn in any to the SPCA.That's not going to happen,cat season has now been officially opened by me and some neighbors.We'll trap em alright but they ain't going to the SPCA.

When I was a kid, we had lotsa dogs that roamed the neighborhood, and the free running cat popultion was minimal. I did, however, manage to dispatch a few thru the years .

The pistolsmith (I can't think of his name) who runs the Pistol Parlor in Flagstaff was clearing-out his clothing line a few years back � and dadburnit, I was flat broke! or I would've bought the tee shirt with a cartoon that showed a fellow at his front door, saying over his shoulder, "Go back to sleep, Dear. I'm just putting the cat out."

He had a broom stick stuffed into the keyhole, and around that stick, the legs and tail of a cat stuck out wildly splayed in five directions.

When I told my wife about that cartoon, she said something like no wonder the guy's wife woke up.

.

Right here dude! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> I nominated Mr. Smith for the "10" Award somewhere else but shall refrain from the details amongst (cough!) honorable men. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

I forward this from a fella known as Old Elk Hunter for your review. His wit is a bit dry for some...

It has been unseasonably warm here. I was heading home from coyote hunting yesterday. Stopped in traffic for red light. Glanced to my left and noticed a guy holding a large cat in his lap and had one also on his dash. I have seen people with dogs (poodles) sitting in their laps while they drive, but not cats. And I have never seen an animal on the dash. Strange fellow was sort of effeminent. He noted me looking his way and started to smile but probably noticed my camo clothing when he decided to mouth "f---- you". I had done nothing to justify that so I reached down an got my dying rabbit call and blew it for all its worth. As I drove away he was still at the light trying to disentangle himself from two very startled cats.

It brought a tear to my eye. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />