reflection of first time chx kill

[Coops Dad]

The same applies to wild pigs; the sows drop several litters a year and, left unchecked, can strip an ecosystem of everything but poison ivy and kudzu. They eat fawns, turkey, duck and quail eggs, every ag crop imaginable, and they tear up the land more effectively than a city boy with a front end loader.

 

[Cackel Shack]

It's hard to kill something you know and have cared for. But, that's how it should be . . . a difficult but necessary thing to do.

It's not only hard to kill a chicken you have cared for, but for me.......it's also hard to eat it. Because as I sit down at the table, the face and body of that bird appear before me.

 

[Iluveggers]

DH has gotten 2 does and a very young male the past 2 years hunting. He doesn’t like to take more than we will eat. Down to just a few steaks in the freezer. Doe meat is much more tender.

 

[Morrigan]

It's not only hard to kill a chicken you have cared for, but for me.......it's also hard to eat it. Because as I sit down at the table, the face and body of that bird appear before me.

The first few times processing chickens, we put them in the freezer for several weeks, maybe even a few months, before eating them. The passage of time helped, as well as the intermingling of the chickens in the freezer, so I didn't know who was who when I pulled one out.

Now, I'm fine with eating a butchered chicken after the standard 2-3 day rest period in the fridge. I just got more comfortable with the entire process as well as knowing that, if I'm to eat meat, this was a preferable way of going about it. At this point, I find supermarket chickens hard to eat -- less tasty and I know their lives weren't the best.

 

[Morrigan]

If a deer herd gets overpopulated you can have a lot of problems: disease, overgrazing, more road kill, and such.

in the absence of other mortality factors, killing every adult, antlered buck in the herd every fall would result in the deer herd doubling in only a handful of years

I wish California would wake up to this. We get massive deer and deer tick problems in the suburbs -- gardens denuded and cars hitting deer on the road. Eventually, mountain lions start moving in to hunt the deer. When it gets really awful, I suspect that some hush-hush herd culls take place by the game authorities.

 

[3KillerBs]

I wish California would wake up to this. We get massive deer and deer tick problems in the suburbs -- gardens denuded and cars hitting deer on the road. Eventually, mountain lions start moving in to hunt the deer. When it gets really awful, I suspect that some hush-hush herd culls take place by the game authorities.

Some developments in the east that are too densely-populated for shooting have actually hired bowhunters to thin the herd.

 

[Molpet]

Some developments in the east that are too densely-populated for shooting have actually hired bowhunters to thin the herd.

Several forest preserve a few miles east of me have sharpshooters hired to thin the herds.
To west of me, with a high power line in-between, is a forest preserve. I allow a friend to hunt my property and encourage does. My cousin across the road has a relative that hunts their farm. So far they haven't had to cull that forest preserve.

 

[Beaker99]

Some developments in the east that are too densely-populated for shooting have actually hired bowhunters to thin the herd.

Our conservation dept thins out the hiking areas every year with hunters. You have to.

 

[Iluveggers]

The Amish keep the population from exploding by us. We may apply for a nuisance license at the farm though…then we can prevent them from destroying the crops like they have been if the current fence build doesn’t work. We have enough family that will eat what we get.

 

[bobbi-j]

Our state DNR regulates the deer population with doe permits. Unfortunately, they’re usually about 3 years behind. More permits when the population is down, fewer when there is an abundance of deer. We have to apply every year for them.