I'm curious to see what all y'all think about varmit hunting. Varmits or "Small Game" includes things like rabbits, squirrels and the most hated prarie dog. Now in addition to some of these critters being mighty tasty and having good pelts (okay, that's just rabbits). Many of these critters do not have soft fur and carry diseases that make them inedible. Thus hunting for them falls in to two primary catagories.
-For Profit: This is mostly restricted to prarie dogs and ranchers happily pay to have shooters come out and reduce what happens to be a severe nusance on their property in a fashion that is far more enviromentally friendly the filling the praire dog towns with poison gas.
This is a enviromental balance and a buisness motivated move. The various varmits don't have much in the way of predators and to many of them can cause severe enviromental damage, and extensive prarie dog towns can cause injury to cattle, horses and the ranch hands themselves. They also tear the hell out of any vegetation one might have growing.

The other catagory of course is,
For Sport:
this has similer benefits to for profit hunting but is done purly to improve one's skill, aim and of course to help manage a public nusiance in an enjoyable manner.

What do you all think of this? It has obivous benefits and the way these critters breed it's not like any one's gonna hunt these suckers to extinction. So go/no go on some good ol'varmit smacking?

If they're using poison gas, then I'll get enraged. As far as I am concerned, very few people are actually knowledgeable enough about how to use any type of gas, especially aerosols, for pest control.

For the concept as a whole?

I don't like it, but I can live with it.

For sport, I don't see it as a legitimate reason. Either there has to be a dire need for an extermination which overrides any innate value in life. They have to be presented as a pest first.

I'd rather see mass relocation then extermination, but I understand that's not always economically feasable.

My mozilla spell checker says it's varmint, I really don't know though, I think people here pronounce it varmt, so I think varmit must be regional.

Same thing, the "n" is a regional thing as far as I know, most people spell it like they say it and I say it "varmit".

I always thought it was "varmint". Or is that something else entirely?

I just got back from squirrel hunting today. I was kind of pissed off though because I forgot to bring any plastic bags to carry the meat home so I only killed four and left.

quote:

And for all those of you who are wondering, no, we are not all rednecks in Louisiana and we do not eat varmits on a regular basis

I rather enjoy varmit, bunny is delicous

THey are working on things such as that amp. I know the meat is edible as well, because I have eaten nutria sausage, twice. Once just a piece of sausage and once the sausage was cooked in with jambalaya. As far as I remember, it tasted just like normal sausage. And for all those of you who are wondering, no, we are not all rednecks in Louisiana and we do not eat varmits on a regular basis, it was just for some day that was but on by the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

Where did you all pull "for fun" out of? Sport and fun are not the same thing, say that to a serious varmiter and you'll get a pretty serious earful.

Someday the nutria are an excellent example of what sport/pay varmiting is for. The reason the nutria population is out of control is that they have no natural predators in state, now you could import the predators but then they could get out of control too, the easiest way to control the population (especially if they do have nice pelts) is set up a hunting season, maybe post a bounty for a certain number of nutria brought in and of course take the bodies and skin the suckers for pelts as was originally intended.

On Coyotes:
Depends on the person lotta folk see them as a threat more then a nuisance and I know plenty of people who coyote call for that reason. When the Coyote population gets big enough (and they breed fast) they attack cattle, pets, children and all sorts of rather important things.

I agree in green in the fact that killing things for fun is repulsive. However, down here in Louisiana, we have an animal known as the nutria. Nutria are basically big rodents that are not native to Louisiana. They were originally brought here for their coats, and then their population got out of hand because the industry failed. Now they are eating away the marshes and causing coastal erosion, which is a major problem that Louisiana is facing. Something needs to be done about the nutria, but is there an alternative to killing them? I really don't know.

I personally think killing things for fun is repulsive. However, I have mixed feelings on animals such as these because I live in WV and people talk about it all the time. I don't think I have problems with the rabbits and squirrels, but people talk about killing the coyotes all the time, and I don't know whether that's stepping over the line or not. I mean, I know it's to protect their cattles, but I'm not quite sure...

So yes, you just recieved a very inconclusive response.