Lets be honest here no body's broken the law so tell the truth. Lets say you live in the country where its legal to shoot guns & you let your high dollar chickens out that you've been raising for months patiently waiting for the first egg. Your sitting there armed & all the sudden a hawk swoops down & grabs your chicken right in front of you. Would you shoot it are let it kill your baby? OK, I'll be the first to answer here I would shoot to kill so fast no hesitation what so ever.
I do live in the country on 100 acres and i would not shoot a hawk or any bird of prey, i will however keep them at bay with bottle rockets and they have learned where the no fly zone is and do respect it. Even if you did shoot it and kill it you might as well be ready to keep doing it cause others will come so if you have time to sit and wait for them to attack why not teach them to stay away with bottle rockets,you don't shoot at them just try to get over their heads, i use a 2 inch PVC pip as a hand held launcher and can put that rocket pretty close without hitting it. This works great for stray dogs also. Ps if i had a high dollar chicken i was worried about it would never be out of fort knox unless it was going to the show.
Quote:Sounds good to me. Also I kind of like hawks...But wonder seriously about the condition of any animal I'd be able to "save" from them.
Quote:Awesome! I love it. I wouldn't shoot them, but I would like to see some changes in the Migratory Bird Act to allow for some sensible policing of certain bird populations. Then I could shoot them. They are my most successful predator.
As much as I would LOVE to shoot one, I never would. For me, hawks are the hardest predator to protect your birds against, especially if you allow them to free range at all. I have had several attacks when I was less than 20 feet away. Believe me, at the time I would have been hard pressed not to shoot if I had been armed.
I lost 2 chickens yesterday to a hawk and I was so mad about it that I really, really considered baiting them and picking them off with my hubbys .22. What I did instead was cover the top of my 100' X 150' chicken yard with deer netting. It looks like army camp but chickens are safer now from a hawk attack.
It's hard to say what I would do until it actually happens. Would I be upset and sad about it? Of course. Would I be angry at hawks, even ones that didn't do the deed? Sure. But, would I shoot one? I don't think so. For one, unless you catch it on the ground with your bird, it's not an easy target sometimes. And, two, it's too late to do anything about the one you lost, so killing the hawk won't bring that one back. Best thing to do is prevent more attacks from happening.
