Thursday, February 2, 2012

Stray Dog Update...

I've got to get off my 'pooter because storm clouds have rolled in and my inverter is chirping like a maddened telegraph. But so far, no joy.

Boy, they've been everywhere on Landlady's property, though. Tracks everywhere I looked, including all over the barn. And the rabbit is gone, so they came back last night or this morning. Gonna be carrying the AK instead of a pistol for a while, methinks.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Umm you mean AND your AK right? Please tell me you did not really mean "instead."

MamaLiberty said...

And do be careful, Joel. Even though these particular dogs don't seem aggressive... they can get that way in a hurry, especially if cornered or injured.

Don't take any chances, please. :)

Kevin Wilmeth said...

+1 on the "and" comment, for a very personal reason:

I became the center of attention of a pack of feral dogs once. I was probably 17 at the time. It was in a hunting blind in Texas, about six feet off the ground, and the pack showed up in the pitch blackness, first circling and then making overtures toward the rather convenient ladder up to the blind itself. I had a deer rifle and a mini-mag flashlight.

Lessons learned: 1) It's hard to manipulate a rifle and a flashlight at the same time. 2) It's hard to maneuver a conventional deer rifle on a close-range, moving target with one hand. 3) a mini-mag is inadequate for such a task (I run Sure-Fire lights now). 4) Those dogs only disengaged when one of them got hit. (It took three shots.)

Now I'll grant that your AK would be a hell of a lot more manageable than that M70, with one hand...but not like a 1911. After my pulse rate went back down (the encounter impressed me greatly), I swore I'd never be without a pistol while hunting again. (Happy to say I've been 100% there. :-)

The postscript to that story is that when it got light, I saw that what I'd hit was a brightly blonde golden retriever, with a heartbreakingly brilliant blue collar on. I nearly threw up, figuring I'd hit someone's pet, but the guy who ran the lease took considerable effort to convince me I'd done what I needed to do.

Anyway, despite all that points to otherwise, here's hoping you never see those critters again.

Anonymous said...

I know this goes against the mainstream here, but is there any way to not kill them?

I understand that feral dogs are a danger.

Joel said...

That's not against the mainstream at all, really, since what Claire wants is, more or less by convention, the mainstream around Joel's Blog.

Unfortunately, the answer - unless you're prepared to let them just run around loose, reproduce without limit and eat all your livestock and small children - turns out to be no.

Other options have been explored.