Take a second look at the PA laws. I dont think your legal position is as tight as you would like it to be. Your protection of fowl defense (Title 3 P.S. § 459-501) is only an affirmative defense to a civil suit or a misdemeanor criminal charge of cruelty to animals (18 Pa. C.S.A. § 5511). That means that you will have to prove in court that the offending dog was ACTUALLY pursuing your chickens at the time of the shooting. Also, the only PA case on point shows that this law and the exclusion to the cruelty to animals statute only applies in limited circumstances. In the case of Commonwealth v. Ingram, 926 A.2d 470 (Pa. Super 2007), the Defendant shot two dogs which were chasing his farmed white-tailed deer from the outside of the deer pen. When chased by dogs, the deer would run into their cages and injure themselves, rendering them valueless. The court found that the statute which states: Any person may kill any dog which he sees in the act of pursuing or wounding or killing any domestic animal meant that because the dogs were outside the deer enclosure, they were not pursuing the deer. The court looked to the dictionary for the definition of pursue and found that it meant to follow in order to capture, overtake, kill, ect. It reasoned that since the dogs could not capture, overtake or kill the deer, they were not pursuing the deer. Consequently, the Defendant received a sentence of between three days and one year in jail, a year of probation and 500 hours of community service.
The moral of the story is to: 1. wait to shoot the dog until it is INSIDE the chicken pen and chasing or killing chickens. 2. Trap the dog and call the dog warden 3. Catch the dog in the pen and call the dog warden or 4. If the chickens are free-ranging, shoot the dog as it chases one of them.
You may well go to jail for shooting someones dog unless it is pursuing your livestock in such a way that they are seconds away from dying.
Keep in mind that the law on this subject could be very different in each state.
