Shooting Feral Cats (Trigger Warning).

[PPQ_Purple]

Honestly I don't really see a problem with just shooting them. I mean, it's quick, clean, relatively humane and cheap.

 

[Samson]

Honestly I don't really see a problem with just shooting them. I mean, it's quick, clean, relatively humane and cheap.

I would be amazed if it was cheap, considering it needs well trained individuals and a whole load of liability insurance.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

I would be amazed if it was cheap, considering it needs well trained individuals and a whole load of liability insurance.

Over here in Europe we just let hunting associations or how ever that term translates hunt feral predators during the hunting season. At least that is my understanding of how it works. I am not a hunter. But I know it's a hunting thing and not a paid assassin sort of deal. And if it works for wolves and such why wouldn't it work for cats?

 

[Samson]

Over here in Europe we just let hunting associations or how ever that term translates hunt feral predators during the hunting season. At least that is my understanding of how it works. I am not a hunter. But I know it's a hunting thing and not a paid assassin sort of deal. And if it works for wolves and such why wouldn't it work for cats?

Well, I found one source and it does seem to say hunting is the cheaper option. I am, as I said, amazed.

 

[Farm Boy]

Let people eat it, pelt it, and sell it, and they'll go to work. Or just offer a bounty per carcass.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Well, I found one source and it does seem to say hunting is the cheaper option. I am, as I said, amazed.

Basically, to my understanding, the way it works out over here is that you already have a whole bunch of people with guns that love stalking and killing animals. These are your hunters. But they can only do so at certain specific times of year and vs specific types of animals and only up to a specific and small number of kills all regulated by boring annoying laws meant to ruin their fun and also incidentally to stop them from killing off the population all in one glorious orgy of violence to be sung about for generations to come. So when you let them have another thing to shoot at and tell them it's open season all year and with no restrictions they jump at the chance to do it for free.

The above post contains hyperbole and slight comedy for the purposes of me wanting to be a bit tongue in cheek. Read accordingly.

 

[NovaKart]

From the OP it seems like the feral cat population was in wilderness areas? If they’re in at least semi-inhabited areas that makes it more dangerous for people to just go out shooting.

 

[Farm Boy]

Basically, to my understanding, the way it works out over here is that you already have a whole bunch of people with guns that love stalking and killing animals. These are your hunters. But they can only do so at certain specific times of year and vs specific types of animals and only up to a specific and small number of kills all regulated by boring annoying laws meant to ruin their fun and also incidentally to stop them from killing off the population all in one glorious orgy of violence to be sung about for generations to come. So when you let them have another thing to shoot at and tell them it's open season all year and with no restrictions they jump at the chance to do it for free.

The above post contains hyperbole and slight comedy for the purposes of me wanting to be a bit tongue in cheek. Read accordingly.

We get less and less hunters by the year, it seems. More and more aggressive permitting required. I remember being gobsmacked the season I read that people had to take a doe before they earned their tag for a buck. And deer is actually good eating. Harder hunting probably needs at least a bounty. Even if there are enough thrill killers to do it, they need to be able to afford to do it, and hunting takes time, gear, and travel.

 

[IglooDame]

From the OP it seems like the feral cat population was in wilderness areas? If they’re in at least semi-inhabited areas that makes it more dangerous for people to just go out shooting.

My town is semi-inhabited, and hunters seem to do okay. But to your more general point, yeah, not good (and probably not legal) hunting with a firearm within a certain distance of any road or structure, which quickly takes some inhabited areas out of it completely, time to get the bowhunters prepped.

 

[Farm Boy]

I think air rifles would be a better fit for cats, broken arrowpoint detrius from being loosed into hard structures would be a menace. Though at that point, I would kinda want people on the clock and clearly marked doing it? If it's in town.

 

[El_Machinae]

.... isn't air rifles for cats wildly inhumane?

 

[Farm Boy]

They get pretty absurdly high power. You'd want to aim well, but cats are big.

Edit: a poor hit with .22 short isn't going to be better. It'd have longer effective range, but that is sort of the problem.

 

[Arwon]

How is this for a solution: Making Australia’s native animals poisonous could curb feral cats

An implant that makes Australian animals lethally poisonous to cats that prey on them could help save species on the verge of extinction.​

​

Australian mammals are easily targeted by cats because many are small and they haven’t had time to evolve natural defences since the cats turned up. To provide an artificial defence strategy, Anton Blencowe and Kyle Brewer at the University of South Australia and their colleagues have invented an implant that makes native mammals lethal to cats if eaten, thereby preventing the felines from killing other individuals.​

​

The rice-sized implant is inert when it is inserted under the native mammal’s skin at the back of the neck. If a cat eats the mammal, it is likely to swallow the implant, because cats usually eat the whole bodies of their prey. Once the cat ingests the implant, the acid inside the cat’s stomach breaks it open and releases a fatal poison.​

​

The poison – sodium fluoroacetate, or “1080” – leads to unconsciousness then death in cats by causing an energy shutdown in their cells. It is already widely used in poison baits for feral cats because it is relatively non-toxic to native animals, so it shouldn’t harm other predators that may end up consuming the implant. This is because sodium fluoroacetate naturally occurs in many Australian plants and native animals have evolved resistance to it.​

Paper Writeup (paywalled)

Hard to see how this would scale any better than current methods of poisoning cats, which basically amounts to putting these same kinds of things in specially prepared meat that can be dropped in an area without catching and injecting into numerous small elusive mammals.

Also likely carries some of the same problems with current poisons which is that they have to be location specific because of the diversity of the continent, because plants and resistances in local wildlife vary and so does the range of species present. For instance, some cat poison methods can't be deployed anywhere there's goannas, because they also swallow the capsules whole, and get killed by them too.

 

[Arwon]

Honestly I don't really see a problem with just shooting them. I mean, it's quick, clean, relatively humane and cheap.

The main problem with shooting feral cats in Australia is there's, uh, several million feral cats spread across a country as big as the continental United States.

Basically, to my understanding, the way it works out over here is that you already have a whole bunch of people with guns that love stalking and killing animals. These are your hunters. But they can only do so at certain specific times of year and vs specific types of animals and only up to a specific and small number of kills all regulated by boring annoying laws meant to ruin their fun and also incidentally to stop them from killing off the population all in one glorious orgy of violence to be sung about for generations to come. So when you let them have another thing to shoot at and tell them it's open season all year and with no restrictions they jump at the chance to do it for free.

The above post contains hyperbole and slight comedy for the purposes of me wanting to be a bit tongue in cheek. Read accordingly.

Also we dont really have much of a hunting weirdo culture here. Kangaroo culls for instance are done by professional marksmen, not by random yahoos.

Well, I found one source and it does seem to say hunting is the cheaper option. I am, as I said, amazed.

Makes plenty of sense on specific islands like KI where eradication is a realistic possibility and there's enormous benefit to restoring the ecosystem. Unlikely to be particularly useful on the mainland except in pretty defined areas I suspect.

 

[stinkubus]

How has your country not gotten hunters to wipe these cats out? A few communities in my area had problems with deer population and they were able to get a crew of honest-to-goodness mercenary hunters to come in and snipe them. The deer problem was solved in a matter of days.

 

[Zardnaar]

From the OP it seems like the feral cat population was in wilderness areas? If they’re in at least semi-inhabited areas that makes it more dangerous for people to just go out shooting.

Rural, forested hills and mountains.

 

[Zardnaar]

How has your country not gotten hunters to wipe these cats out? A few communities in my area had problems with deer population and they were able to get a crew of honest-to-goodness mercenary hunters to come in and snipe them. The deer problem was solved in a matter of days.

Terrain and native bush.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

I keep forgetting just how large a territory we are talking about here. Over here in Europe I am used to thinking of things that are a hour driving away at highway speeds as very far away.

 

[Zardnaar]

I keep forgetting just how large a territory we are talking about here. Over here in Europe I am used to thinking of things that are a hour driving away at highway speeds as very far away.

South Islands bigger than England. If Mount Cook was in Europe it's would be about the 8th largest mountain.

Population less than 1.2 million.

It's also rugged as F.

 

[Farm Boy]

Cats go into heat at about 6 months old, gestate for about 9 weeks, and go back into heat in a couple to several weeks after birthing. Nursing does not delay it.