Hunting ethics.

Dont tell my wife

Dont tell my wife

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Kitchener / Waterloo
By now most of the ground hogs are well on their way to popping out the next wave of vegetation eating vermin. I was talking to a hunting buddy about seeing them on the side of the road and how we would soon be shooting them again. He said he would wait until the young ones are older and can fend for them selves. If you shoot the mother the young ones will starve to death. Kind of a nasty way to go. I had never really thought about it that way before. In a way he is right. But is it not the point to kill them before they do damage to the crops we are trying to protect. Nothing easier then a large brown mass on a white background. Last season there were several that we were not able to shoot simply because we never saw them in the tall grass. You could see the trails but never actually see them. They were always long gone by the time we got close. You could see where they lived by the 20 -30 foot wide swath of eaten beans they had left behind.

Any thoughts on my dilemma would be appreciated.


Jeff.
 
To shoot them now or to wait, well its up to you. They are most certainly having their babies soon, killing the mother will certainly cause the death of the babies, I guess you need to ask yourself why you are hunting/killing them. Only you can make that decision, legally you are within your rights, morally its up to you.
On a side note, good luck locating a hunting population in your area, there just doesn't seem to be any left.
 
If you're "Hunting" them, then let them have their brood. They'll be more for you to hunt later.

If you're exterminating them (what the farmer wants you to do) then kill 'em as soon and as often as you can. They are vermin to him, not game. I don't see this as a "Hunting Ethics" type of decision as you a not pursuing these animals as game. Your goal is to exterminate them. All of them. Where the "Ethics" part comes in is when you ask yourself whether you want to be a part of that or not.

Ultimately, the decision is up to you and seeing it from both sides will help you make the choice that is right for you.

:cheers:
 
If you shoot them now they won't have young.They breed in the spring and only have a few weeks gestation period before giving birth. The ones you see early are most likely males out first looking for females to come out later.
 
Good question. All answers are pretty much right... it's gotta be a personal decision.

For what it's worth on my end, when whacking a nuisance beaver (with permission and fully legal, of course) I checked it was at the right point in the season that the kits could fend for themselves. That was only about road passability and property (I weight my scale highly in favour of things that live and breathe). Now if it was groundhogs and I was worried about horses or cows breaking their legs in holes, I'd whack 'em and let the brood starve, since the pain & suffering of a cow or horse outweighs a bunch of rodents. Does that make sense? I mean I'm still gonna have to justify it to St. Peter, lol
 
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bertn said:
Don't feel too much for ground hogs. On the other hand if we start comparing everything to rats there would be no ethical problem shooting whatever whenever....
Click to expand...

A rodent is a rodent when they are declared pests, the rest is situational and personal decision. Around here we shoot beavers as pests, but there was a time when they were extremely valuable. When they start flooding the place everything changes, and its just a big aquatic rat. I'm sure gophers have their place in the scheme of things, but when they started stripping fields guys started spreading strychnine through fertilizer spreaders. Not a legal technique but the poison itself was. When there is less of them fields are jealously protected by people who want to shoot them themselves and spread the fun out over the years. I suspect that the guy who doesn't want groundhogs dieing in the dens just wants more to shoot later, but I don't know him and shouldn't say. I know guys who are like that with coyotes.

We don't have groundhogs here and if I saw one I'd probably stop and take pictures of it because of its novelty. That doesn't mean anything to the guy somewhere else who is getting real damage done, or to the horse with a broken leg. Hell, there's places where the horses are the pests and they don't know what a groundhog is.

If something is unprotected and legal to shoot year round there is probably a reason for it. The decision comes down to the individual, and what he can live with.
 
I'm an avid groundhog shooter (or hunter?) and I've gone through this thought process myself. Bottom line~if I'm there to do what I've told the landowner I'm there to do, it's a shoot-on-sight proposition. I wouldn't be 100% pleased if I eradicated them so thoroughly that I had nothing to shoot the following year, but to approach it any other way would be a bit disingenuous. (talking about me, and the farmers who allow me access to their land)

Feel free to PM me if you ever want to chat groundhogs though, glad to see another Ontario "groundhogger" on CGN!
 
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