Terriermandotcom lets his terriers kill lab rats, but he claims to hate all forms of "canned hunting," including shooting pen-raised pheasants in the traditional British way.
For the record, I am opposed to canned hunting that resembles a person going to a game farm and shooting a tame animal. If it looks like someone is going to the zoo to hunt the animals, that should be a red flag.
However, I am not opposed to game bird preserves, including the ones that stock partridges, New World quail, and pheasants for people to hunt.
Sounds like a contradiction, eh?
Well, not exactly.
In a true canned hunt, the bag is guaranteed. There is no concept of fair chase.
Borat will show you what’s wrong with these sorts of operations. (Ignore that this particular one is run by a raving anti-Semite.)
The animals are kept in large enclosure and are fed by automated feeders. These sound of these feeders is a stimulus that causes the animals to come running. Which makes them very easy to kill.
No rational person could call this hunting. It is literally like taking a firearm to a petting zoo.
Shooting pen-raised birds is often compared to these operations.
There is a problem with this comparison.
When people come to game bird preserves, they want to be able to shoot a bird on the wing.
Birds that are as tame as the canned hunt animals will not fly.
So people who run these preserves do everything possible to make sure their birds are as wild as possible.
This is really a challenge with New World quail species, which readily reproduce in captivity. There are many bobwhite strains that could be called tamer than most chickens.
That’s why those preserves that use New World quail raise the birds in as near isolation from human contact as possible, but even then, the generations of being bred in captivity has an effect. It’s not unusual for employees at these preserves to flush quail using a baseball bat to get them to fly.
Pheasants are much different. Pheasants, even after generations of being bred in captivity, are still quite wild. When released they will often run or fly quite some distance.
These wild traits have allowed the common or ring-necked pheasant to colonize much of North America and Western Europe, even though its traditional range goes from the Caucasus to China.
But in both cases, the birds are required to take flight before they are shot, and it is in flight that the bird has a chance to escape.
Pheasants that have been stocked do have a chance of survival if they escape the shot. It’s a slight chance, but it’s a chance nonetheless.
New World quail really don’t have much of a chance.
Some of them may wander back into the pens where they were raised, but most will die out on their own.
Neither of these scenarios is ideal.
But in the case of game birds, it may be that the preserve is the only practical way in which they can exist in large enough numbers for people to shoot them.
The decline of both the pheasant and the bobwhite are largely attributed to changing agricultural practices. Farmers don’t leave large areas of brush between cultivated fields like they used to. It was in those brushy areas that the pheasants and quail would hide from predators, but modern agriculture prefers more cleanly mowed areas between cultivated fields. Organizations that promote wild pheasants and quail as game birds strongly suggest that farmers improve habitat for the birds, but only farmers who actually want to promote the birds will ever improve habitat for them.
So whatever its shortcomings, the game bird preserve is a necessary evil. We would have to change agricultural practices in this country on a large scale for us to ever have pheasant and quail numbers the way they once were. This simply will not happen.
So we must have the preserve.
***
The notion of having a game bird preserve is something we get from the United Kingdom.
In the United Kingdom following the Enclosure, well-to-do people would have privately owned game, including birds, hares, rabbits, and deer. These animals were managed by people called gamekeepers, who would keep them number of these animals high. In the case of pheasants and rabbits, they would raise large numbers of these animals in captivity and release them. In the case of grouse and hares, they would manage the land to promote the largest possible number of these animals.
This practice still exists, and I totally support it.
It may not be “natural,” but much of the countryside in the United Kingdom is hardly “natural.” Most of it was a forest,
Further, it gives gun dogs a chance to do their work. In this part of the world, there aren’t large numbers of truly wild birds that can be hunted. These practices give the dogs opportunities that they might not otherwise have.
I have no problem with the gamekeepers and private game management in this fashion.
It’s an easy target to pillory, but the keepers know what they are doing.
If it had not been for the expertise of English gamekeepers, we probably wouldn’t have pheasants in the United States today, for the scientific management principles that were use to promote the species in much of the country were perfected in England.
***
Now that I have stated my feelings, I know that some of you are going to disagree with me. I am okay with that.
However, I have tried my best to keep my analysis consistent.
Not all people think that shooting game birds on a preserve is a worthwhile activity.
Among them, Terriermandotcom. Yes, you British sportsmen thought he was on your side. He’s not.
In a post entitled “400 Pheasants per Acre?,” Terrierman goes into a tirade against British game shooting. Now, he does have point that some preserves have too many birds on them, but he uses it as an excuse to attack the sportsmanship of British shooters.
In my mind, a bunch of over-dressed men and women walking a line to shoot pen-raised birds is a chicken shoot. There is no field craft, and there is no chance you will go home empty-handed. It’s not hunting, because it does not entail skill or chance or expertise of any kind.
We do not say a butcher has gone hunting, and yet we say a person has gone hunting even if he or she has spent three days in the woods and shot nothing. Hunting is not a chicken shoot and it is not entirely about killing, is it?
So shooting pen-raised pheasants isn’t hunting?
Well, what about letting your terrier kill a lab rat?
Is that hunting?
Who said anything about letting dogs kill lab rats?
Well, Terriermandotcom has a little secret.
He claims to be against canned hunting, but on his original site, called RatDog.com.
RatDog.com is a website that tells you how to train your dog how to hunt rats, something you really don’t need to teach any dog.
I grew up just down a gravel road from my grandparents, and my grandpa kept a store of grain for his horses in an outbuilding near his house. One day, when I was may 5 or 6 years old, I walked up to my grandparents’ house, and as I cut through pasture behind the outbuilding, I cam across a huge rat.
I had never seen one before, so I ran to my grandpa’s house. As I raced through the door, I shouted, “I just saw the biggest mouse ever!”
The rats had gotten into the grain store, so my grandpa had his Norwegian elkhound, which isn’t a terrier, kill the rats. I hardly would call it sport, but some people find it so. It would be more like a chore than a game.
There lots of little things on RatDog.com, among them how to teach a dog how to rat. There is a page on it called “training.” (BTW, does anyone find it hilarious that he thinks Teddy Roosevelt invented the rat terrier? The rat terrier is derived from terriers that have been in this country for hundreds of years before TR was even born.)
On the training site, the process is listed as follows:
Start your puppy with mice.
Wild mice can be trapped with a “tin cat” trap…and placed in a small wire cage to stimulate the dog’s interest in quarry. When the puppy is attacking the cage (start your dog around 4 months old), release individual mice on the lawn or patio for the dog to attack.
Graduate to lab rats.
Once your dog has mastered wild mice, move up to lab rats available from any pet store. Ask for the “feeder rats” (for snakes) kept in the back of the store. If you have your dog kill a few lab rats before moving up to wild rats, it will increase his or her confidence. Contrary to popular belief, your novice dog will probably try to bite the rat to death instead of shake it. Shaking the rat to break its back is a learned behavior.
Track lab rats.
Getting your dog to track rats and other game by scent is a necessary skill that needs to be taught to most terriers. Your dog also needs to learn that you and he/she are hunting as a team. Rat scent can be made by soaking old rat bedding in water for a day and then straining off the water into a spray bottle. Spray the rat scent on a trail leading to a cage of rats hidden under a board, under brush,or in a thick clump of grass. With your dog on a leash, follow the scent to the caged rats and then allow the dog to briefly work the rat cage. If you want, you can allow your dog to “get” one of the rats or mice during this exercise. Once you have trained your dog to track and kill mice and rats, you are ready to graduate to in-the-field killing of wild rats.
Lab rats are actually tamer than pheasants. They stand virtually no chance against a terrier. So Terriermandotcom is actually for canned hunting, which almost as a bad, if not worse, than the type of canned hunt Borat visited. But he’d rather attack British sportsmen and those who use game bird preserves.
I also question his authority that dogs don’t instinctively shake prey. They likely don’t instinctively shake rats because they aren’t big enough, and they are more easily killed by crushing them. When a large dog catches something of size, it doesn’t matter what that animal is, they will shake it to kill it. It’s an instinctive motor pattern.
Am I against ratting?
No.
Ratting is a very valuable activity.
Am I entirely against using tame rats to train ratting dogs?
Well, not really.
But I question whether this “training” is even necessary.
Dogs will kill rats, unless they have been socialized with rats or have otherwise been trained to leave them alone.
Virtually no training is necessary.
It’s not like the complex behaviors that gun dogs must perform.
Attacking those who shoot pen-raised birds while allowing your dogs to kill domestic rats is, as Rick Perry would say, “the height of hypocrisy.”
So if you British sportsmen think that Terriermandotcom has your back, he doesn’t.
He’s as against your sport as the worst anti’s.
And he attacks you while letting his terriers kill domestic rats.
You know, domestic rats, which are known for being so docile and tame that they are considered excellent dog substitutes.
Not even remotely as wild as a pheasant cockbird– even one that was raised in a coop.
From the point of view of someone that actually runs a British pheasant shoot I found this a very interesting article.
The proportion of birds shot on most shoots is actually around one-third to one-half of the number stocked. Of the rest many will remain living wild on the shoot grounds for another year, though obviously some are lost to predators, and some wander off onto neighbouring ground.
In some areas, if predation is very carefully managed to protect the ground nesting birds, a small shoot can run effectively for several years without restocking.
In America, we are somewhat limited to what sort of predator controls we can do.
Animals like foxes are considered game animals, not vermin, so they have a hunting season. But there is no bag limit. Raccoons have a season, too. No raptors may be killed. You can kill opossums, skunks, and the weasels at any time of the year.
My grandfather used to kill many ruffed grouse during a season in the late 60′s and early 70′s. At the time, fox fur prices were high, and foxes themselves were strictly controlled. Everyone with a gun or small trap was out trying to kill them. At the time, ruffed grouse were quite plentiful.
I’ve enjoyed reading about your pheasant shoot.
most conservationists of the environmentalist stripe (by which I do NOT included biologically illiterate morons like PETA) in the USA are uncomfortable with the notion of killing native predators with the aim of protecting native prey species (at least in natural/pseudonatural settings). It’s one of the most contentious elements of the wolf management debate in the west, IRT highly valuable (because they’re hunted) elk herds and the impact of wolf predation on them. My state has just evidently succeeded in bullying the feds into allowing wolves to be shot on sight as “predators” (a status which gives ZERO protection to any animal) in certain geographic areas, perhaps with some calendar limitation. Which won’t necessarily do anything to improve elk herds, but will certainly satisfy the ancient bloodlust humans have for the “competitors” for “our” food sources
Wyoming has some very screwy laws on wolves.
The last delisting battle I followed, Montana and Idaho had sound management plans, but Wyoming still insisted on letting people kill wolves whenever they see them.
Things never change.
Dogs certainly do instinctively shake prey, and certainly don’t need training to hunt rats. I own a Staffordshire Bull Terrier bitch who is a serious ratter, frustrated in life by the fact that I live on a 50×100′ urban lot and there aren’t very many tiny fuzzy creatures for her to kill.
The first critter she caught was when she was about 11 months old and was exercising in an off leash park. A squirrel failed natural selection (it fell out of a tree), and she caught it and hauled it off, doing her best to shake it to death. She wasn’t successful because she was inexperienced, so she was holding it by the skin on it’s side, and it was a rather large squirrel, so she was having trouble even holding it all the way off the ground. I actually sent my older dog to finish it off, since I was squeamish about doing so. (he crushed the skull)
After that, my bitch did get better at finishing off what critters she got. She spent hours one afternoon staring at a small table with a low shelf, until I moved the table and a mouse ran out from under it. A quick shake killed it. I’ve found a couple of other critters in the yard, and they never had a mark on them, so I assume she shook them to death as well.
I always wished she could have more opportunities to use her natural instincts, and even thought about buying her some rats, but it didn’t seem right, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
If Terrierman’s terriers don’t instinctively know how to find and kill rodents, I’m not too impressed with them as terriers.
Once a sewer rat was trapped between my German Shepherd female and Doberman male. Both went for a kill and ran after him. However, just before they caught up with him, the rat had a cardiac arrest. Fuming from mouth he was inactive, except pushing his rear legs back still trying to run, while his forelegs and front part of the body seemed to be paralyzed. Both of my dogs lost interest immediately. They kept looking at the dying rat and me undecided. The rat died few seconds later. The dogs never touched his body.
Seems like Mr. Burns has some psychological issues he needs to work out regarding his dogs and his idea of ‘working’ them.
He’s more familiar with the ‘Denial’ level of his self-made ‘Dunning Kruger diagram’ of dog owner types than he realizes. Go figure.
hmm , my cavalier has caught a couple of mice in her younger days and managed to shake them to death. It wouldnt occur to me that you need to teach a terrier .
& why buy domesticated tame rats , if you’re that keen to see your dog rip a rat to pieces trap some wild ones, I’ve caught about 20 this year , though I prefer my dogs not to lose an eye attempting to kill them
Sorry to say I disagree with you, nothing personal or moral. I just don’t think a fair chase hunt can occur on birds that are not wild (self sustaining in their habitat). While I don’t disagree there would be a lot less to hunt without these operations, I don’t think that justifies them as fair chase. Again no moral judgement passed.
Of course it is not a fair hunt. It is artificial hunt. Or mere, it’s nearer to the symbolistic “hunt game” sports like polo, golf, even that football and formula-driving (sigh).
It’s art, it’s the human sin. Get it?
I like your response, Jon. However, I have no qualms in stating that I hate those hunters who hunt semi-wild / semi-tame birds and animals for some sickening pleasure.
These pseudo-hunters and their ilk are a bane of our society. If you browse websites, you will note these pseudo hunters leaving comments against wolves and cougars in the wild as varmints who kill their stock of elk, deer, and caribou. In other instances, they encourage hunters to go on wild geese slaughter killing hundreds of them in less than an hour using indiscriminate firing from their hides. They go out there in forests armed with all kind of sophisticated gadgets to take down healthiest and fittest of our beautiful predators and prey as trophies only to last in their ‘show-off rooms’ for 3 years at the most.
In one conversation with a group of hunters, I advised them to at least follow the footsteps of great hunter Jim Corbett, who hunted man eating tigers of India in early part of 20th century on his own, all alone on foot, and only sometimes accompanied with his spaniel ‘Robin’. The two had great adventures together. My only disagreement with John Vaillant’s ‘Tiger’ was how the tiger was followed by Yuri Trush and his party. They were nowhere close in ethics to Jim Corbett.
If one is a hunter, he / she should act like a true hunter, giving equal chance to the hunted. If not, you might as well tie a goat to a tree and shoot it.
The problem is that the wild is simply disappearing, and the agricultural practices that sustained large numbers of game bids have simply disappeared.
It’s not really hunting. I will give you that.
But these birds are treated better than most chickens that we find in the supermarket.
My real problem is with these proud “hunters”. The birds may be treated better, but there is no reason that these pseudo-hunters be proud of what they are doing. In he Middle East when Salukis are unleashed on gazelles, they tend to pick and chase the slower and the weaker one. ON a hare hunting with Greyhounds and Whippets (where they are called poor man’s Greyhounds) in a central Pakistani district of Bahawalpur, I observed that the dogs were successful in only 1 in 5 chases. The Afghan Hounds were pathetic at hare coursing never even coming close to them, but Borzoi at least gave a long distance chase. The owner-hunters were at least giving a fair chance to the prey. It was exciting stuff.
On another trip of hunting wild boars with Gull Dongs (crosses between Bully Kutta and Gull Terr, the latter perhaps being Old English Bull Terriers of colonial stock crossed with local breeds), wild boars were actually able to fend off a group of 4 -5 dogs.
Of course dogs naturally shake prey. Ever talked to an AKC Obedience trainer? Shaking the gloves on the directed retrieve is a fairly common problem. No one would intentionally *teach* this to their dog, because it’s a battle and a half to get rid of (because of instinctive drift, as outlined in “Misbehavior of Organisms.”)
Isn’t instinct the whole point of breeding working dogs? Yeah, not every dog will instinctively shake prey, but wouldn’t the dog that does be a better breeding candidate than the dog you have to teach how to do his basic function?
I do find the tower hunt rather unsporting. It doesn’t seem much different from shooting clay targets. Of course, I only learned this year that it’s unsporting to shoot ducks on the water, so I’m not really the best judge.
Tower shooting pheasants is harder to justify.
But in this activity, the goal is to shoot.
It’s not to hunt. The birds are essentially living skeet.
Congrats. You did it.
Now some idiots think that Terrerman is an idiot.
Because he is.
“25% of all dogs in the U.S. die in shelters.”
Yeah, whatever.
living skeet is a good way to put it, and I admire your honest willingness to put yourself out there plainly. biofuel and development are indeed taking a dent out of fallow/CRP lands, and these canned birds do have better lives than nearly all chickens. But both of these are relative justifications for what boils down to an indulgent taking of life. it seems odd that someone who is so clearly connected to the well being of one non-human species does not extend that insightfulness to another. I imagine you eat what you shoot. Please forgive if you’ve discussed earlier, I am a new reader.
You should go back and read Scottie’s feral cat posts.
Originally humans hunted because they needed to. In such hunts, there was never any intention of giving the animals a “sporting chance”. Archeological finds of “gazelle traps” which were used in neolithic (or maybe even earlier) times to “corral” wild animals to be killed show this. some cultures promoted respect for the prey and taking only what was needed, but this was mutually beneficial — if you kill them all this year, there’s none to eat next year. It’s only when we do not NEED to hunt to survive that the idea of a “sporting chance” for the prey ever comes into mind. Canned hunts are a means by which modern people “play at” the things our ancestors did for real. It may be no more than = the well fed house cat “playing” with the rubber mouse. But if canned hunts give more chance than a slaughterhouse then it doesn’t make much sense to be ok about slaughterhouses and against canned hunts. Is it hunting? well it certainly isn’t the same as Cro Magnon with a spear against a mammoth, or even against an Irish Elk. Terrierman wants HIS version of hunting but wants to deny others theirs. That’s like a lot of zealots. Peggy Richter
By the way, one reason the Barbado sheep is present in the US is that after the initial project, bunches of them were bred to Ramboillet and others for the horns, back bred for the color and hair qualities and then used on game farms as trophy sheep. They were very popular (and are still used) as substitutes for Bighorns — as domestic (if feral) sheep, there was no license or season on them.
Peggy Richter.
[...] pheasant shoot on Wednesday and yesterday had a look at the interesting debate developing on the retrieverman’s website, about the ethics of shooting pen raised birds. It has led me to thinking about the readers [...]
[...] I hate canned hunting except when I do it [...]
[...] know– the ones that both the animal rights activists and the self-styled defenders of the “true hunt” [...]
[...] know– the ones that both the animal rights activists and the self-styled defenders of the “true hunt” [...]
Late to the comments but my Cairn Terrier wouldn’t have known to shake a rat, he was actually afraid of my gerbils. Of course my Toy poodle has a strong prey drive and retrieving instinct, more so than my Standard poodle. Of course if they bred for looks,not working they may lose the instinct. On the other hand my stray, random bred Pom could catch moles. At 3 lbs she could wasn’t big enough to kill them, but boy could she catch things.